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E.TO - Enterprise Group


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60%-100%+ upside in small, well-managed, booming business, Canadian company.

 

-Canadian company servicing the oil&gas, energy, infrastructure sectors.

-Comprised of TC Backhoe, Calgary Tunneling and Horizontal Auguring, E-One, Arctic Therm, and Hart Oilfield Rentals

-Management seems competent

-Roll-up company: looking to buy companies selling privately, inject funding and expand them, and sell them in the public market.

-Historically have paid around 3x EBITDA for their businesses

-All their services have more demand than they have equipment

-Very deep construction roster for CT&HA even with an LNG boom off the table (and LNG boom is likely coming)

-Management: "We bought 4 companies in the last 15 months and we bought them right and never paid more than 3 times EBITDA and now it’s time to show the market that we know how to make money with these companies. That is definitely a priority, spend the money wisely, organically grow these companies and maintain that high EBITDA margin that makes us bigger and better than other operations out there."

 

 

 

Good write-ups:

http://quinzedix.blogspot.ca/2014/01/enterprise-group-inc-energy.html

http://quinzedix.blogspot.ca/2014/06/half-time-report-part-2.html

http://www.pifinancialcorp.com/email/e-jun20-14.pdf

http://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/value2/Idea/ViewIdea/111556

 

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Interesting idea.

 

Any primer you could suggest to know about the LNG business/economics so I can get a broad idea of the trend? As I understand, there's a huge discrepancy in LNG prices between Asia & North America and there's lot of money to be made in transporting it. But how does this company fit into that overall picture?

 

Can you expand on the risks? Energy price volatility?

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probably some speculation regarding q2 earnings, which will  be lower due to the weather. Wouldn't pay attention to it though.

 

Id read this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn6e2kejbh7k7qm/Enterprise-transcript-from-March-27-conf-call.pdf

 

I studied a lot of multibaggers lately, and it seems a lot of them were benefited big time by economic tailwinds. And I think this one is about to benefit from a huge tailwind. And the beauty is, even if that tail wind doesn't happen it still looks cheap.

 

It sort of is like the saying, when the tide goes down you figure out who isn't wearing any clothes. With this one, the tide is still down, and you can clearly see they are wearing clothes. And the tide is about to go up a lot. And somehow this seems to be barely priced in, trading at somewhere between 5-10x forward earnings.

 

The biggest risk I can think of here is that they o not execute properly. But management seems competent, and so far Q1 has shown some signs of what is yet to come.

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Guest 50centdollars

Oh ok. Has anyone joined his investment club? I haven't followed him for a while but I know a few years ago he had some really good picks.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Is anyone else a bit uneasy with management?

 

Seems to me that Jaroszuk is a bit of a player.  He's concurrently the CEO of two other publicly traded companies (Leis Industries and Samoth Oilfield).  Nothing wrong with that, per se, but this must be unnecessary distraction. 

 

Jaroszuk was also a director of United Protection Security Group -- not a pretty story if you look into it.  Fredy Ramsoondar was the CEO of that operation, and also a director of Enterprise... so there are ties there of some sort.  To Jaroszuk's credit, he resigned from United Protection and Ramsoondar appears to have been booted from the board of Enterprise shortly before United fell apart.  But this type of history is unsettling to me.  It also appears O'Kell filed for bankruptcy in 2003. 

 

I guess the question is:  Are these guys really prudent and upstanding financial stewards, or are they just riding the current wave in the oilpatch?  Seems like an important question for a rollup like this.

 

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yeah management is not crystal clear, but they seem competent. And since the CEO owns a lot of shares I don't think there is much risk we get screwed. Jaroszuk also bought a bunch of shares with his own money. So basicly if you think this will end badly you are betting on Jaroszuk being an idiot. I would not own this without high inside ownership.

 

reading from various transcripts and interviews he does not look stupid. Also we are at the start of a rising tide here.

 

this sort worries me though:

I dont really want to get into it but ive met them. also an analyst at a small shop dropped coverage immediately after a raise. When a small cap expresses to the makret that its strategy is to do many more raises the small shops jump over themselves to have coverage and high price targets. dropping coverage is a big red flag.

 

Also it seems that desmond guy runs things. He was answering more questions in detail on the transcript. He is also the one buying some of those warrants recently.

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yeah management is not crystal clear, but they seem competent. And since the CEO owns a lot of shares I don't think there is much risk we get screwed. Jaroszuk also bought a bunch of shares with his own money. So basicly if you think this will end badly you are betting on Jaroszuk being an idiot. I would not own this without high inside ownership.

 

reading from various transcripts and interviews he does not look stupid. Also we are at the start of a rising tide here.

 

this sort worries me though:

I dont really want to get into it but ive met them. also an analyst at a small shop dropped coverage immediately after a raise. When a small cap expresses to the makret that its strategy is to do many more raises the small shops jump over themselves to have coverage and high price targets. dropping coverage is a big red flag.

 

Also it seems that desmond guy runs things. He was answering more questions in detail on the transcript. He is also the one buying some of those warrants recently.

 

Agreed that Jaroszuk's ownership is a (big) positive, but it looks like the vast majority of his holdings came from exercising cheap options as opposed to open market purchase.  Since 2009, his only transactions above 0.20 have been sales. He dumped about 2.5mil shares in 2014 when it was trading over $1. Similar story for O'Kell on a smaller scale.

 

I don't think they're out to explicitly screw shareholders. I just get the feeling it's a board composed of Jaroszuk and his buddies, and that makes me nervous.  These guys treat themselves pretty well.  Jaroszuk doesn't have to be an idiot for this to end badly.  He's done very well by this venture to this point. If it goes bad from here he has still made a good penny, and if the music keeps playing then his fortune grows.

 

By the way:  Any idea what the related party transactions entail?  For FY2013 they list 750K of "management and consulting fees" and also 525K of equipment purchase/rental.  There are also a couple loans to related parties that I never like to see, although they have all been paid in full.  To date in FY2014 they have $350K of management and consulting fees to related parties.  Sorry if this is written down somewhere and I've missed it.

 

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And since the CEO owns a lot of shares I don't think there is much risk we get screwed.

Uh... it doesn't work like that.

 

He's concurrently the CEO of two other publicly traded companies (Leis Industries and Samoth Oilfield).

A lot of the CEOs of small Canadian companies are the CEOs of multiple companies (more so on the TSX Venture).  Part-time CEOs if you will.  Usually these stocks do very poorly.  And they often have high insider ownership too.

 

E.TO might be an exception.  I've never looked at it.

 

(Um... there's a whole industry built around fleecing investors.  You need to be careful of really small stocks especially when there is a part-time CEO involved.)

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So to sum it up, pro's are:

 

-their technology seems legit

-cheap based on forward earnings

-at the start of a massive booming industry with huge backlog

-insiders have been buying with their own money

-they appear competent and disciplined with what they pay for acquisitions.

-really nice margins to back  up the whole bullish argument

-doesn't take a genius to run this business right now

 

con's:

 

-CEO is multitasking being a CEO

-Has been involved with shady dealings in past (anyone have more details about any shadyness?)

-despite inside ownership, they already made bank basicly

-if this industry matures margins will probably go down

-possible self dealings (allthough those related party transactions appear small in grand scheme of things)?

-not sure how effective those patents really are.

 

I guess investing is weighing the con's vs the pro's and trying to not think too black and white. If capex investments are a success then it is trading at 4-5x earnings right now.

 

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Nice work, doc75 into looking into management. Should be noted, VP O'Kell, is also on the BOD for the two companies Jaroszuk is CEO of.

 

I have to say I like what management has done so far with Enterprise. Their acquisitions seem to be paid for at cheap multiples (~3x ebitda), and often the equipment has proprietary technology, and sounds like large build-out capabilities/backlog.  Also, the sales team is doubling so actually realizing capacity looks likely if the demand/market stays steady. The conference call from 6 months ago was exceptional:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn6e2kejbh7k7qm/Enterprise-transcript-from-March-27-conf-call.pdf

 

Management really speaks like they know the industry very well, focused on limiting downside by multiple revenue streams and maintenance/infrastructure contracts diversifying away from oil and gas industry growth (though well positioned to capitalize on an LNG boom).

 

I'd agree that I'd prefer a CEO and VP with management focus on only one company.

 

I think it's really likely the stock is 60% higher after the results of the first cold weather months, so Q4 results posted in the new year. But once the 1q15 results are posted and the earnings potential of their acquisitions and build-outs are revealed, the stock could double. I think a really attractive quality to this stock is the option for massive gains not necessary for a strong base case. If the winter weather is cold and projects run on track and there are signs of LNG investment, this stock could go through the roof. There's also the unique 6.5mm drill bit slated to hit the yard now which offers a new type of underground tunneling for Calgary Tunneling, that management thinks has a chance of being the new mandated technique given its reduced environmental impact. And they would be the sole providers of it. That is not in the current earnings, it's another free-roll.

 

 

 

 

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