Applying Just Culture to improve investment decisions

Thursday, 11 July 2019

Tubi or not to be (ASX:2BE)

ASX:2be Modular plant tubi group

12/07/2019

Trav Mays
 



Today we will be looking at Tubi Limited (ASX:2BE) a recently IPO’d growth company with a bright future ahead of it. Whilst reading this, please keep in mind that this is my attempt at evaluating agrowth company, which is not a style of investing that I have a lot of experience with. It was however suggested to me by a very smart investor (Mr. Joshua Baker) and I also saw that “The Gentleman, an ASX growth investor who blogs for Ethical Equities has it in his portfolio, so I thought it was worth a good look.


Before we get started, I would like to expand a little on my thoughts about the difference between value and growth investing.Without growth there isn’t value (other than a pure asset play), the two go hand in hand, as Warren Buffett said in his 1992 annual letter “The two approaches are joined at the hip: Growth is always a component in the calculation of value, constituting a variable whose importance can range from negligible to enormous and whose impact can be negative as well as positive”. By calling this company a growth company, I am referring to the fact that there is little to no history for Tubi and with the company changing so dramatically in the near future, the metrics that I normally use are completely useless. So I have instead put a lot more emphasis on trying to predict future growth.

Company

Tubi group (2BE:ASX) is a HDPE pipe manufacturer with a twist, they have created a patented modular manufacturing facility, allowing them to produce their pipe onsite. This has a number of advantages over a conventional fixed factory, the main two are that they can produce longer lengths of pipe, due to them not being limited to available space on truck beds and there is no need for transportation, cutting expenses down immensely. Along with their modular factory, they have the ability to put large diameter (up to 315mm OD) HDPE pipe on a reel for transportation. Whilst not currently patented, this technology is quite unique and gives Tubi access to additional revenue streams.


Tubi was founded in 2009 by Marcello Russo, who up to this point had worked for 15 years as the General Manager of Cromford, a plastic pipe manufacturer. Just 5 years later, they had completed their first plant and successfully manufactured pipe for the British Gas Coal Seam project in Queensland. From here they have gone from strength to strength, below is an excerpt from Tubi’s prospectus.

ASX:2BE Tubi Group
As you can see, after supplying to ISCO Industries, they were awarded the contract to supply the Central Plains New Zealand Irrigation Project, a 10-month long project that supplied irrigation water to farmlands. The success of this project paved the way for the 2 year take or pay contract with MPS Enterprises in the Permian Basin. 7 months later, MPS signed another agreement with Tubi, requesting a second modular facility and another 2-year supply contract. December 2018 was a busy time for Tubi, not only did they secure the second MPS contract, but they sold a modular factory to Iplex to be used exclusively in NZ, commissioned the building of these two plants and Jeff Shorter came on board as CEO.

The sale of the modular plant to Iplex was an Equipment Purchase Agreement, under which, Iplex is prohibited from selling or transferring the plant to any other entity or person or transporting it to another country without consent from Tubi. Along with the Equipment Purchase Agreement, they have signed a 3-year Service Agreement, which pays Tubi a monthly service fee for support of their modular factory. Under the Equipment Purchase Agreement, Iplex has agreed to pay for the modular factory in instalments, with 40% being paid on signing of the agreement (21/12/19), with the rest paid once the plant is delivered to site and successfully passed its SAT (site acceptance test). The modular plants take 9 – 12 months to construct, so the final 60% should be paid sometime in the first half of FY2020.

The contracts with MPS are far simpler, they are your typical 2 year Manufacturing and Supply Agreements (MSA). Within which, Tubi has a protection clause that stipulates that MPS must purchase a minimum quantity of pipe per year. On completion of the contract, the agreement automatically renews for an additional year unless either MPS or Tubi supply advanced notice that the plants are not required. They also give MPS first right of refusal to enter another MSA on any additional mobile plants that are constructed.

Along with securing the two contracts outlined above, in December 2018, they also employed Mr. Jeff Shorter as CEO. Mr. Shorter, a Texas based veteran of over 25 years in the oil and gas, piping and steel industries, holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a MBA from Youngstown State University. Mr. Shorter begun working at the top level of management in 2002 as VP and GM of Maverick Tube corp. He has since worked at the top level for several companies, most notably Flex Steel pipeline technologies, Tenaris and Sturrock and Robson. There isn’t much info online about Mr. Shorter, but it is clear that he has worked at large organisations in senior positions and compliments the other members of the board’s skills excellently.

Following on from this, Tubi completed a pre-IPO capital raising, issuing 50 million shares at a price of $0.20 per share, raising $10 million. This money was then used to help fund two additional mobile plants (four in total), costing a total of $22 million ($5.5m each).

They then went on to list on the ASX on the 14th June, issuing 28.8 million shares at a price of $0.20 raising $5.76 million, valuing the company at ~$50 million. As opposed to issuing to raise funds for growth or acquisitions, Tubi has listed, primarily, to allow the founder, Mr. Marcello Russo, the opportunity to receive a return on his investment. There are no new shares being issued for the IPO, all 28.8 million shares are coming from Mr. Russo’s slice of the pie, see below, encouragingly, he still owns quite a large percentage. Please note that the no. of shares is a little misleading, Mr. Willsallen and Mr. Tilley both have a stake in the 104,014,980 shares, they don’t both own that amount.

ASX:2BE Tubi Group

Competitive Advantage


Tubi’s mobile plant gives them a number of competitive advantages over the conventional factory, but essentially it comes down to their ability to produce HDPE pipe sections in lengths that exceed 50 feet. Whilst the $/lm (Linear meter) will be higher than a conventional factory, their ability to reduce both transport costs and the number of welds brings them out ahead, by a considerable margin. MWH Global in their document titled “An introduction to the Central Plains Irrigation Scheme” commented that “A major advantage of making pipes on site is the resulting speed of installation, since the number of welding operations (which can take many hours at larger diameters) is reduced by a factor of around 7”.

CS&D Services did a thorough analysis (find it here) of the Central Plaines New Zealand Irrigation Project and found that the number of welds needed was reduced by 80%! When you add this to the transportation savings, Tubi was able to reduce the total projects cost by $3.217m (~16%), a saving of $0.32m per month. CS&D’s breakdown of the costs can be seen below.

ASX:2BE Tubi Group

Along with the cost savings, Tubi has that advantage of being able to set up their self sustained plant in just 2 days anywhere on the planet. They also have both an Australian and an International patent, helping to reduce competition. There is another company called Poly Piping Systems, who also have a mobile HDPE plant, but from what I can tell, despite them holding the patent for mobile plants, they have yet to start any projects. I’m basing this off their website as the only images of the plant are CGI and every other photo is just a stock image. Other companies offer mobile plants, which are essentially mini HDPE factories, requiring concrete foundations and large sheds to be built on site.

Evaluation

As this company doesn’t have a long track record, we will be making a lot of assumptions, but if we are conservative, it should give us a somewhat solid foundation to build our house of cards on 😊.

We will begin the evaluation by approximating the revenue a plant has the capacity to generate in a given year, obviously this will vary depending on the size of the pipe but is a good starting point to begin with. In FY2017, Tubi generated $4.66m in revenue, this was from the initial 3 months of work on the NZ Central Plains Irrigation Project. In FY2018 they had the mobile plant operational for 10 months, 8 months in NZ and the final 2 in Texas working for MPS, generating a total revenue of $17.38 million. As you can see below, they generated a higher amount of revenue per month in FY18, $0.19m more. Unfortunately we can only speculate on the cause of which, it could be from a final push at the NZ site, or the Texas site is producing more costly pipe, fingers crossed for the latter.
ASX:2be Tubi Group
Now that we have established the average amount of revenue one plant can produce in a given year (I’m sure you are all rolling your eyes at the moment, saying “Come on Trav, you can’t extrapolate from 2 data points and then create your whole thesis around that” and you’re right, more data is always better, but as this is all we have, so as long as we don’t let the assumptions get out of hand we should be ok), we can estimate the sale price of the Iplex unit as well as the FY EPS for any combination of plants we can think of.


In HY2019, Tubi generated $17.172m in revenue, which included 40% of the total Iplex unit cost and 6 months of continuous work in Texas. Using the average Rev/month of $1.65m, we can estimate that Iplex paid $18.24m for the unit (That’s a gross profit of $12.74m and a gross margin of 70%).

ASX:2BE Tubi group

Now that we have approximated the cost of the Iplex plant and the potential revenue from a single plant, we can estimate the FY19, FY20 & FY21 EPS and from this it’s FP/E and PEG, with the hope of trying to equate if they are currently under or overpriced. As we have no information regarding the Iplex Service Agreement, I have just left this out, which is most likely making this approximation too conservative, but given the results, I think we can look at it as cream. Other assumptions made are as follows:

1. First plants are constructed and shipped to site before the end of HY20 and the second lot of plants are constructed and producing for the whole of FY21 
2. EBIT margin of 8.8%; taken from their prospectus 
3. Tax rate of 30
4. FY19 revenue is HY19 + 6 months of continuous production of one plant at the average monthly revenue calculated above 
5. FY20 revenue includes 18 months (1.5 plants) of production + the remaining 60% of the Iplex plant 
6. FY21 revenue is from 4 plants producing for 12 months 
7. No new shares are issued
ASX:2be tubi group
Peter Lynch famously said that a company’s P/E ratio should roughly equal the growth rate of the company. Essentially, he is stating that a company’s PEG (Price/Earnings/Growth) rate should be equal to 100 (or 1, depending on your denominator), anything below shows a company that is undervalued whilst over 100 is a company overvalued. The tricky part is choosing the right growth rate, above I have simply used the approximated growth rate in EPS in the next year, with FY21’s growth rate of 25% being the added benefit of one extra plant. As you can see below, I have changed the growth rate’s around a little, I have looked a little further out for FY19, bringing it up to 60% and assumed a little worse FY21, reducing FY20’s growth rate to just 50%. 

asx:2be tubi group

As you can see, we have approximated values that are indicating that Tubi is currently under-priced. Very encouraging, especially given my conservative assumptions and the fact that this doesn’t include the service agreement revenue.

Risks

This type of stock has several major risks associated with it and I wouldn’t recommend people even begin to start their own research, if they are not more risk tolerant than the usual. There is a plethora of articles, anecdotes and statistical evidence that show how extreme the odds are against an investor who purchases a company at its IPO.If it wasn’t for the skill of Mr. Baker, who recommended it, and the fact that this is not a capital raise, it is just an opportunity for the founder to cash in on some of the hard work he has been doing over the past 10 years, I would never have looked at it.

I have used several assumptions in my evaluation, all of which would be subject to any number of cognitive biases, confirmation, framing effect, in group etc (Feel free to pick any number from Barry's great list) all having either a negative or positive effect on the evaluation.

Whilst they do have the first movers advantage, they are reliant on the modular factory patent. If there is a way for them to either lose it or a competitor can find a way around it, they could be in a lot of trouble from the big pipe producers. They are currently working with pipe producers as opposed to competing against them, so this risk is somewhat mitigated, but if there is a big enough margin, competitors will always follow suit.

Another risk is that after they sell the unit to Iplex, the vast majority of their ongoing revenue will come from MPS Enterprises. If there was an issue either within the Oil and Gas industry or MPS, they have little to no protection.

The mobile plants take between 9 – 12 months to produce, this means that future growth, after the 4 ordered plants will come about somewhat slowly.

Marcello Russo sold his shares for just $0.20 cents each, they are currently trading at a 80% premium to this ($0.36).

This stock was suggested to me, Matt Brazier again with extremely timely advice wrote this a day or 2 later on his blog “It is ok to get investment ideas from other investors if you also thoroughly investigate these stocks independently by scrutinising primary sources. It is tempting to skimp on this process after you have been spoon fed a seemingly compelling thesis. You may earnestly attempt to do the research without realising that you are merely going through the motions. If you don't do the work properly then you don't know what you own and if you don't know that then you are asking to have your money taken off you.” This could definitely be what has happened during this analysis.

Whilst I have tried to overcome these risks with conservatism, it is almost impossible. I do however think that I have taken adequate precautions and the level of potential growth is high enough to warrant purchasing at today’s prices.

Discussion

Whilst Tubi may not yet have contracts for 2 of their ordered plants, they are starting to ramp up their operation, more specifically the number of employees. In June 2019 they filled the following positions, a Senior Operations Manager in Texas, a Technical Sales Manager in Texas and a Project Engineer based in either Sydney or Texas who will be required to spend 5 months in Texas, 5 months in Sydney and 2 months in Europe. I don’t think we should read too much in the 2 months in Europe, but clearly they are looking to expand there in the future. Right now though, they are rightfully focusing on the Permian Basin, having hired a Texas based CEO and recently moved their headquarters to Texas. Which is a smart move, as the Permian Basin is now the world’s most productive oil field.

Initially when I saw that Tubi had sold a plant to Iplex I thought that they were going down the wrong path, selling instead of renting out their modular plants. However, I now believe that they have sold this unit to Iplex because they are focusing on the Permian Basin and didn’t want to spread themselves too thin, which is great to see. I have witnessed a number of start ups (I’m not sure if this still constitutes a start-up) expand to fast, it’s as if they believe that all they need to do is expand, expand, expand and eventually they will tip over a point and everything will be fine. But during this rapid expansion, if you don’t keep a tight ship, you allow bad processes and cultures to develop (Uber for example, although if Tubi expands rapidly and gets to the same evaluation as Uber, I wouldn’t be complaining 😊). A good balance between the rapidity of growth and the time it takes to ensure that once you get big everything is set up for further growth is a tricky balancing act.

Conclusion

Tubi is an excellent company with very large insider ownership, forward orders in the bag, easily scalable, limited industry and geological specific risks (they can move anywhere and work for more industries than just oil and gas), a proven concept and a very simple business to understand. The success of these modular factories is clear, as the only two companies to have used them so far have either purchased a factory for themselves or started another contract. It doesn’t come without risks though, I do believe that the potential rewards from this company outweigh the risk, but, an investor would need to be quite risk tolerant to even consider doing their own analysis on this one, a lot of things need to come together for this thesis to pan out.

As always, thanks a lot for reading, I really appreciate all the feedback I have received so far. I have also just recently found twitter , give me a follow if you like and/or send me a msg, it’s always great to meet other ASX investors. If you don't have twitter we can connect on Linkedin .

Thanks for reading


Just Culture Investor


Trav Mays

The author is a current owner of a portion of Tubi Group, given this, they may be subject to one or a number of biases, more specifically anchoring and/or confirmation bias. This article is neither general nor personal advice and in no way constitutes specific or individual advice. The website and author do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this website or on any linked site. This website is not a substitute for independent professional advice and users should obtain any appropriate professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances. The material on this website may include the views or recommendations of third parties, which do not necessarily reflect the views of the website or author, or indicate its commitment to a particular course of action  

Subscribe

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp

Latest post

New Site