Laxputs Posted August 7, 2015 Share Posted August 7, 2015 Alliance Aviation. 50m m-cap. 30k USD average volume. Leading Fly-In Fly-Out (FIFO) operator in Australia (Oz). Some mines are too remote to drive economically (or physically). They service 10 commodity sectors. None of them coal. Recently the company landed a tourism job to Taz. Combine two of the most unsexy industries Aviation Services and Mining and you have my 8% position. Company sold off after discontinuing dividend and revising revenue lower. Risks 2 customers make up 26%. It's an aviation company. It's a mining company. :) MOS The fleet is purchased not leased. 2 planes were very recently sold above BV. The company trades at 40% BV. These assets are very liquid (fly them to any market). They are the largest operator of FIFO; lots of mines will stay open They were profitable during 2014 downturn. July/15. Debt manageable at only 2x EBITDA. Interest covered 6x. 86% revenue on contract, with visibility. Can do 1/3 of their 52m m-cap in cash 2015. Very hard for MOS to be greatly impaired given liquid BV and mgmt willing to act on it. Some Notes Insiders buying in July. Recent cost savings from selling maintenance in Adelaide of 1.7m. Not exposed to fluctuations of jet fuel as costs and savings are passed on to customers as per contracts. Mgmt recently confirmed m-capex of 20m/year. Cash flow FY 15 and 16 will be higher than earnings given "significant improvement in cash flow over and above the improved operations performance due to favorable tax adjustments" Valuation Mgmt has guided to 13m NPAT FY 15. FY 2016 I'm getting 203m revenue which works out to about 16m NPAT. 10x on that should be 1.51$/share. 3x from here. I suspect the dividend is coming back in the not so distant future now that debt is very manageable; that catalyst will drive the share price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 7, 2015 Share Posted August 7, 2015 Interesting find. When commodity prices are low and appear to stay low for a long while, do mining companies can still afford to (and have to) fly workers in and out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laxputs Posted August 7, 2015 Author Share Posted August 7, 2015 No doubt some mines shut down, and AQZ would have felt the repercussions given they guided to lower revenue, sold two planes, discontinued a dividend. But all of the mines they service are brownfield. They have contract visibility as can be referenced by their presentations. They are making gains in tourism aviation services. But the upside is not based in a recovery of mining. Just business as usual. There is definitely a chance revenues fall further if more mines shutdown. But downside seems truly protected given management very recently sold two planes above book value--they are clearly conservatively managing the company given their debt levels are already manageable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 7, 2015 Share Posted August 7, 2015 I see. It does sound interesting. Thanks. I've been toying with the idea to build a basket of beaten down OZ mining service companies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laxputs Posted August 14, 2015 Author Share Posted August 14, 2015 Earnings announced. Guidance met. Will consider dividend reinstatement in FY 16. Actively marketing to tourism operations. Guided to 20m m-capex and reiterated cost savings due to maintenance base closures, staff reductions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laxputs Posted August 21, 2015 Author Share Posted August 21, 2015 Up 10% last night on 4x normal volume. News of the Oz gov ruling on competition laws. Not really sure how this affected AQZ as positively as the market sees it: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f9e67eb2-e76c-41b1-8679-b33fee6bda74 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I'm still looking at this. Something looks dodgy... In FY2014, they reclassified A$17.6m of PPE as inventory which jumped from $8m to 24m. The relevant footnote redirects you to note 4. But note 4 doesn't explicitly explain what's happened. Then in FY2015, a $3.4m profit on the sale of inventory is recorded as Other Revenue, only disclosed in footnote. This makes up 30% of the underlying NPAT. It looks to me they liquidated some PPE in order to prop up the profit. I have no problem they downsize the PPE base and sell down stuff to pay down the debt and generate some liquidity at difficult time. But doing it stealthly in order to hide deteriorating profit says something about the integrity of the management. In FY2015, a further $12m of PPE is reclassified as inventory without explanation again. Looks like they are preparing for another go. Apart from this, other problems I have with the management: - In the original communication in May 2015, they said the 2 Fokker 100 planes were sold above BV. But then in the annual report, it becomes a $3.2m impairment. Again, no explanation. - When they put out the profit warning in Aug 2014 ahead of the annual report, they gave crap like "asset recognition and inventory balance" to explain the reduced underlying profit. Well, underlying profit by definition is not affected by non-cash transactions. - I don't quite understand why they need both a Managing Director and a CEO. The question for myself is, is 50% discount to BV enough to offset all this hairy stuff on the top of the difficult trading environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yadayada Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Where do you see the 2014 inventory thing? I only see it in 2015 for 7.7m$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Where do you see the 2014 inventory thing? I only see it in 2015 for 7.7m$. Are we looking at the same company? See attachements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Morningstar shows the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yadayada Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I missed that, thanks. How does that manipulate profits though? It only manipulates cash flows right? In 2014 I only saw Contract revenue and charter revenue. And in 2015 they had 7.7m of other revenue as well. I guess this will be a new thing to look out for going forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portfolio14 Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I missed that, thanks. How does that manipulate profits though? It only manipulates cash flows right? In 2014 I only saw Contract revenue and charter revenue. And in 2015 they had 7.7m of other revenue as well. I guess this will be a new thing to look out for going forward. Read the notes in FY2015 annual report! (Shortcut: search for "inventory") If you ask me, they are hiding stuff in the footnotes for a reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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