Ability to grow further24 May 2020 00:05
Was interested in this because it showed up on an EV / FCF screen that I use. EV of £25m and cash generated of £10m. Its trading a 2.5x. Then I saw the growth in the income statement. What a gem! Or so I thought.
Did a bit of digging and a couple of things take the shine right off:
- Of the c. £12m cash generated from operations this year, £5m of it was from working capital. Going back to 2010, in no year has cash generated from working capital exceeded £1m. The key driver in 2019 is a £3m reduction in WIP over 2018. Nothing has changed in the operations so this has to revert to the mean at some point. I think cash is over inflated at year end.
- There is a comment in the latest accounts - "During the year our structural steel businesses, Billington Structures and Shafton Steel Services operated at near full capacity." I'm not sure the business can grow much further without further very significant capex to expand capacity. This business is at the peak of its productive capability.
Looking over the results from the past 10 years, looks like this is possibly at the peak of its cycle. The comments from management in the accounts suggest the market softening which also hints towards this.
Not saying share price wont increase in the short term - it still looks very cheap, but not for me until I could see a way for it to grow beyond its current level. One I will follow though as looks like a good business so will try to get in when its closer to the bottom of the cycle.