I am not convinced by the new CEO. He is not cut from the same cloth as Mike Creedon. This company is no longer on my watchlist. It's not about the company, its about who is steering the ship, particularly for a business that is a serial acquirer on a buy and build mission. Creedon was a finance guy, previously CFO who avidly studied the great serial acquirers (Buffett, Leonard, etc). The new guy was formerly a COO, with an engineering background, no prior CEO experience, no finance experience, no M&A experience. I am out. He may prove me wrong, but I'm not betting on a three-legged horse.
Thanks for the detailed write-up. I am not very familiar with the company so forgive my ignorance but I have a question for you. CEO doesn’t want to go over 1xEBITDA in net debt so there is no cash to tap when it comes to debt for acquisitions at the moment. CEO also doesn’t plan to dilute shares significantly. This leaves us with cash generated. In 2023 my back of the napkin maths suggests this was £6.75m in 2023. If this money is used for an acquisition at 4xEBIT then EBIT will increase £1.7m. My question is, are they generating enough cash to produce the 15-20% annualised growth you mention? Again, forgive my ignorance, I am just glancing at the financial statements.
You talk about a dip in revenue growth due to lack of acquisitions resulting in buybacks and this being the best outcome. Why is a lack of acquisitions a good thing, is it not better have plenty of acquisitions to make at 4-6xEBIT than buying back your stock at 12xEBIT?
Thanks for the great question. EBITDA is a blunt instrument. I tend to look at adjusted free cash flows (true owner earnings as Buffett would say). My numbers are nearly double those that you are using (see the table in my article labelled, "SDI Group: Adjusted Economic Earnings and Margin"). Your numbers are adversley impacted by a one-off impairment charge of £3.5m on Monmouth Scientific. The impairment, together with higher intangible amortisation and interest charges, has meant the statutory operating profit has reduced from £10.2m in FY22 to £6.8m (your number) for this year only.
Monmouth Scientific was acquired in December 2020, when COVID-19 was driving strong revenues and profits for the business. Revenue mix has shifted away from standard biological safety cabinets back towards more custom/modular fume cupboards, laminar flow cabinets and clean-rooms. This has necessitated a change in Monmouth’s logistics, as the number of units to commission at a site has declined despite overall sales remaining high. Furthermore, the business has needed more engineers to commission units in a very tough labour market. All of this has taken time to implement. Monmouth also moved to a new purpose-built leased facility in April 2022, which was capitalised at a cost of £4.6m on balance sheet in accordance with IFRS 16. The costs of this brand-new leased site were higher than anticipated. The combination of the aforementioned factors has had an impact on Monmouth’s trading results.
Another factor to note is that the business made two of its largest acquisitions to date in 2022, both profitable and immediately accretive. However, due to the timing of the acquisition, the cost appears in corporate numbers immediately, but the revenues only partially feature in the most recent set of numbers. So the debt used to finance those acquisitions features without the counter balanced uplift in earning being evident yet. This will feature in the next set of numbers.
The company has also acquired non-core assets in the form of real estate in recent acquisitions. That has the potential for a large uplift in value if applications to change its use from commercial to residential are approved. The business will, at some stage, divest these assets to unlock capital that will be applied to future acquisitions.
Add to all of this the organic growth of the business, which is slow (single digit) but promises to improve due to cross selling opportunities within the group (leveraging each other's customer base and opening new jurisdictional distribution channels) but also moving some of the supply chain in-house (some of these companies have sourced inputs from third parties in the past but can now source the same from other SDI subsidiaries). This is the benefit of acquisitions being narrowly focused in scientific equipment within the same niche industry. So there is a snowball effect in play here.
In terms of repurchasing its own stock, and on my adjusted numbers, I think that SDI is currently trading at near 7x economic earnings. This looks cheap. I am not advocating repurchasing instead of acquisitions - all capital allocation decisions need to be made on a proper evaluation of opportunity cost. I am simply saying that if acquisition targets dry up, then rather than forcing itself to acquire business for the sake of it (and perhaps diluting group margins as a result), the drop in the SDI share price is fortuitous because it opens up another interesting capital allocation option. I believe that this is the way Henry Singleton would have viewed it - he bought back 90% of Teledyne stock at depressed prices having previously acquired well over 100 companies. It's all about being fluid and playing the hand that's been dealt to you at any given time.
I hope that this addresses the issues that you raise.
I am not convinced by the new CEO. He is not cut from the same cloth as Mike Creedon. This company is no longer on my watchlist. It's not about the company, its about who is steering the ship, particularly for a business that is a serial acquirer on a buy and build mission. Creedon was a finance guy, previously CFO who avidly studied the great serial acquirers (Buffett, Leonard, etc). The new guy was formerly a COO, with an engineering background, no prior CEO experience, no finance experience, no M&A experience. I am out. He may prove me wrong, but I'm not betting on a three-legged horse.
Thanks for the detailed write-up. I am not very familiar with the company so forgive my ignorance but I have a question for you. CEO doesn’t want to go over 1xEBITDA in net debt so there is no cash to tap when it comes to debt for acquisitions at the moment. CEO also doesn’t plan to dilute shares significantly. This leaves us with cash generated. In 2023 my back of the napkin maths suggests this was £6.75m in 2023. If this money is used for an acquisition at 4xEBIT then EBIT will increase £1.7m. My question is, are they generating enough cash to produce the 15-20% annualised growth you mention? Again, forgive my ignorance, I am just glancing at the financial statements.
You talk about a dip in revenue growth due to lack of acquisitions resulting in buybacks and this being the best outcome. Why is a lack of acquisitions a good thing, is it not better have plenty of acquisitions to make at 4-6xEBIT than buying back your stock at 12xEBIT?
Thanks
Thanks for the great question. EBITDA is a blunt instrument. I tend to look at adjusted free cash flows (true owner earnings as Buffett would say). My numbers are nearly double those that you are using (see the table in my article labelled, "SDI Group: Adjusted Economic Earnings and Margin"). Your numbers are adversley impacted by a one-off impairment charge of £3.5m on Monmouth Scientific. The impairment, together with higher intangible amortisation and interest charges, has meant the statutory operating profit has reduced from £10.2m in FY22 to £6.8m (your number) for this year only.
Monmouth Scientific was acquired in December 2020, when COVID-19 was driving strong revenues and profits for the business. Revenue mix has shifted away from standard biological safety cabinets back towards more custom/modular fume cupboards, laminar flow cabinets and clean-rooms. This has necessitated a change in Monmouth’s logistics, as the number of units to commission at a site has declined despite overall sales remaining high. Furthermore, the business has needed more engineers to commission units in a very tough labour market. All of this has taken time to implement. Monmouth also moved to a new purpose-built leased facility in April 2022, which was capitalised at a cost of £4.6m on balance sheet in accordance with IFRS 16. The costs of this brand-new leased site were higher than anticipated. The combination of the aforementioned factors has had an impact on Monmouth’s trading results.
Another factor to note is that the business made two of its largest acquisitions to date in 2022, both profitable and immediately accretive. However, due to the timing of the acquisition, the cost appears in corporate numbers immediately, but the revenues only partially feature in the most recent set of numbers. So the debt used to finance those acquisitions features without the counter balanced uplift in earning being evident yet. This will feature in the next set of numbers.
The company has also acquired non-core assets in the form of real estate in recent acquisitions. That has the potential for a large uplift in value if applications to change its use from commercial to residential are approved. The business will, at some stage, divest these assets to unlock capital that will be applied to future acquisitions.
Add to all of this the organic growth of the business, which is slow (single digit) but promises to improve due to cross selling opportunities within the group (leveraging each other's customer base and opening new jurisdictional distribution channels) but also moving some of the supply chain in-house (some of these companies have sourced inputs from third parties in the past but can now source the same from other SDI subsidiaries). This is the benefit of acquisitions being narrowly focused in scientific equipment within the same niche industry. So there is a snowball effect in play here.
In terms of repurchasing its own stock, and on my adjusted numbers, I think that SDI is currently trading at near 7x economic earnings. This looks cheap. I am not advocating repurchasing instead of acquisitions - all capital allocation decisions need to be made on a proper evaluation of opportunity cost. I am simply saying that if acquisition targets dry up, then rather than forcing itself to acquire business for the sake of it (and perhaps diluting group margins as a result), the drop in the SDI share price is fortuitous because it opens up another interesting capital allocation option. I believe that this is the way Henry Singleton would have viewed it - he bought back 90% of Teledyne stock at depressed prices having previously acquired well over 100 companies. It's all about being fluid and playing the hand that's been dealt to you at any given time.
I hope that this addresses the issues that you raise.