Applying Just Culture to improve investment decisions

Tuesday 2 July 2019

Learning from Laserbond (ASX:LBL)



02/07/2019

Trav Mays
 


LaserBond (ASX:LBL) recently hit an inflection point, after some excellent management decisions and some tailwinds, shareholders have been rewarded with a 244% gain over the past year. Today we will be investigating if there are gains still to be made and to see if there is anything we can learn.

LaserBond first come to my attention whilst researching XRF Scientific (click here for that post). A number of excellent articles, such as Mr. Joshua Baker’s on Livewire titled “A platinum crucible in the rough”, compared XRF to Laserbond. So ever keen to learn more, especially about inflection point investing, I decided to dive deeper to see what nuggets of knowledge I could uncover.

Company

LaserBond, originally called HVOF Australia P/L, was founded by Mr. Gregory Hooper (Currently Executive Director) in 1992, working out of a small workshop in Ingleburn NSW. (HVOF stands for High Velocity Oxygen Fuel, which is a type of thermal spray system that uses combustion to heat and propel particles near supersonic speeds. These high flying particles collide with a material, forming an extremely high density low oxide coating.) Gregory’s brother, Mr. Wayne Hooper (Currently Executive Director) joined HVOF in 1994 and together they were at the forefront of laser cladding innovation, building one of the first high-powered cladding systems using a 6kW CO2 laser. In 2007 they listed on the ASX and changed their name to LaserBond Limited, listing for $0.2 per share and a market cap of just over $13 million.

The capital raised from their listing was quickly put to use, they invested in R&D and purchased Peacheys Engineering in Gladstone Queensland for $3m in 2008, as an attempt to capitalise on the growing gas industry. Unfortunately for LaserBond, the Queensland division wasn’t able to get any traction, the global financial crisis hit and then the large increase in activity within the Gladstone region pushed both rents and employee expenses up immensely. After a number of bad results, in 2013 they sold off 5 large pieces of equipment and their order book for $750,000, ceased all machining and fabrication work within the area, moved a number of other pieces of equipment to NSW and continued to do surface engineering work for the region from their NSW premises.
 
Whilst the Queensland division wasn’t doing very well, the rest of the business was, in fact they were doing so well, they had to move their NSW facility from the original workshop to a larger facility in Smearton Grange, just to keep up with orders. Not only that, but after 12 months of trials, LaserBond had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Gearhart United, within which, Gearhart committed to exclusively commissioning LaserBond for all their laser cladding work. To accommodate this large influx of work (estimated at the time to increase revenue by $1.2m, a 12.75% increase to FY2013’s revenue), LaserBond established a South Australian branch and to ensure the success of this branch, Mr. Gregory Hooper was later relocated to head it up (October 2014). Whilst the business was doing well, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the Queensland divisions loss; in 2013 LaserBond wrote off the remaining $3.6m in goodwill and posted an adjusted Net Profit after Tax loss of $0.72m. 
Laserbond ASX:LBL earnings per share eps

It was shortly after all this (February 2014) that the chairman, Mr. Timothy McCauley decided to step down. Having started back before LaserBond had IPO’d, he had done an excellent job during some extremely difficult times. Mr. Allan Morton was appointed his successor in March 2014, which in my opinion, is when the seeds for the 2018 inflection point were planted.

Mr. Allan Morton an Engineer by Trade, obtained his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Technology in Sydney, later going on to obtain an MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to starting at LaserBond, Mr. Morton had worked as an engineer at CSR and successfully moved up the ranks to the operations manager role. After this he worked at a number of companies in high executive roles and/or founded a number of his own companies. Not of any real importance but interesting nonetheless, he worked for 3 years as a general manager for a company called Quickflix limited, which had the very same idea as Netflix. Having started out as a company that shipped the latest DVD’s and Blu-ray’s through the mail (they still do this), they have evolved into a streaming website, offering all the latest blockbusters, on a subscription basis, either online or via the mail! I had never heard of these guys and I am not sure if they are still operating, as they delisted from the ASX at the start of 2017, but their website is still up and running and it looks like they have some new movies on there, so it looks promising. Might be worth checking out if you are looking for another subscription or have had enough of Netflix. Anyway, one very interesting and relevant role he had, was as a founding partner of Waypoint Strategies (Founded in 2010), a consulting group that specialises in turnarounds. Which is just the type of manager LaserBond needed at this time in its history.

LaserBond started off as an innovator at the cutting edge of the surface engineering industry, they had however become complacent, drunk on the profits from the mining expansion, they had taken their focus off the company’s vision, “To be a global leader in the research, design and implementation of advanced surface engineering technologies”. This is clearly seen in their R&D spend below, after spending $0.57m (16% of revenue in 2007), the R&D spend for the 5 years between 2009 and 2013 was reduced to almost nothing, with 2013 actually being $0.

Laserbond ASX:LBL R&D revenue eps

Mr. Morton came on board and changed all that, with the following couple of years reading straight out of a turnaround play book. Having divested the unsuccessful QLD branch, they reduced expenses (they implemented Lean Manufacturing in 2014), they focused on organic growth and started to reinvest in themselves, more specifically, the core of the business, its research and development department.

Laserbond ASX:LBL expenses revenue

LaserBond kicked a lot of goals over the next couple of years, so to keep this post short, I have condense them to dot points:

  • Feb 2015: They created a new class of Down-the-Hole (DTH) hammers and associated drilling components that last 2.44 times longer than the average DTH hammer, which equates to a 7% saving on the total drilling cost.
  • The lean manufacturing techniques they implemented in December 2014 improved the 2HY 2015 gross margin of the NSW division from 49.3% to 53.2% pcp.
  • April 2015: DTH hammers begin testing in European geothermal wells
  • July 2015: Laser bond splits into three divisions, Services, Products and Technology. The Services division continues their core surface engineering work, the Products division to continue to manufacture specialised products and the Technology division to oversee the licensing of its technology to non-competitive international markets.
  • October 2015: Lodged two international patents on a ground breaking laser cladding process, using the laser deposition method
  • FY2016 Increased investment in themselves, more specifically employment, Advertising and research and development
  • May 2016: Entered an agreement of collaboration with the University of SA
  • August 2016: Awarded $3.22m over three years from the Commonwealth Government to fund the design, building, installation and commission of a dual robotic multi-axis handling system, which included a 16kW laser.
  • September 2016: Enters first technology licensing contract with a crushing equipment manufacturing company in China. LaserBond is to deliver a turnkey package with all work done in-house from design to commissioning for $1.45m. The contract also includes 5 years of training and support, in return for a revenue based fee.
  • February 2017: Awarded $2.616m as part of a three year collaboration with the University of South Australia and Boart Longyear (total govt fund $8.266m) to extend wear life of critical pieces of mining equipment.
  • February 2017: Signed a non-binding strategic partnership to pursue mutually beneficial commercial products and services with Boart Longyear
  • FY2017 report: Products division became profitable

Laserbond ASX:LBL profit before tax pbt segment products services technology
Other includes R&D and Technology divisions

  • September 2017: Mr Allan Morton steps down as Director
  • August 2018: Signed a Technology licensing agreement with a UK multinational engineering company
  • December 2018: LaserBond breaks into the US Steel Industry market with their Composite Carbide Steel Mill Rolls, which typically deliver 5 to 15 times the life of a standard roll.

All of this laid the groundwork for the huge increase in earnings per share for the first half of 2019, see above. Before I go into my evaluation of LaserBond, I would like to take a moment and see if there was anything that should have stood out, in the hopes of spotting the next company about to hit an inflection point.

The Pursuit for Baggers

LaserBond’s share price ,after hovering around the mid-teens for the past couple of years, exploded around the mid of 2018, gaining 244% between the 24/06/18 and 17/02/19.
Laserbond ASX:LBL share price
I for one didn’t see this coming, but that doesn’t mean others didn’t, take the person who goes by the handle Wini on Strawman.com (If you aren’t familiar with Strawman.com, I highly recommend you check it out, excellent source of investment ideas and you get to see what some beasts of the investment world, such as Wini are currently interested in. Think of Hotcopper without the trolls), this person literally posted about LaserBond three days before it started its climb, Talk about timing!

Laserbond ASX:LBL strawman.com

So what should we be looking for? Mr. Christopher Mayer in his book “100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-to-1 and How To Find Them”, studied all of the stocks that where at least a 100 bagger (when you see bagger after a number, in this case 100, it is referring to a return of 100 – 1, I think it was coined by Peter Lynch, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in the comments) between 1962 – 2014, of which he found a total of 365 that weren’t tiny to begin with. He then investigated these 365 companies further, in the hopes of finding commonalities and found that they all had some if not all of the following 6 ingredients.

1.       Start small (but not too small, median sales figure was ~$170m)
2.       Low multiples preferred
3.       High returns on capital
4.       Owner operators
5.       They invested in themselves and
6.       Long time horizon; compounding

So I thought it would be fun to explore each of these six to see which, if any LaserBond had leading up to the huge increase in share price.

1.       Start Small
LaserBond in 2018 generated $15.6m in revenue, a profit of 1.25m (excluding the inventory write-off) and had a market cap of $12m, so they had the first characteristic covered. Revenue and profit both had been increasing since 2015 (2016 profit decreased due to their large investment in themselves) with HY2019 alone producing $10.5m in revenue and $1.2m in profit. They have a goal to increase revenue to $40m within 3 years, still a long way to go, but there have been some quite encouraging developments recently. After taking a large dip in 2016, their profit margin has returned to their historical average of the high 7s and in HY2019 had actually increased it to 10.8%.

Laserbond ASX:LBL margins ebitda npat gross

2.       Low Multiples preferred

Starting from a low multiple gives any earnings growth an extra boost to the share price. As opposed to starting from high multiples, where a slight decrease in the earnings growth rate, can place 2 downward pressures on the share price. Starting from a low base helps to slingshot the share price higher. It’s like an alley-oop in basketball, the increase in the growth rate puts up the shot and the increase in the multiple slams it in the net.

In 2017-2018, LaserBond had a P/E of around 10, a price to sales of less than 1 and an EV/EBITDA of around  5, all values that a typical value investor would purchase the share. This is especially true if you are a fan of Tobias Carlisle as he says an EV/EBITDA score of 5 or below is cheap, not quite as cheap as the deep value stocks he typically looks for, which have a score of 3 or less, but a cheap stock nonetheless. If we look back to 2014’s values, we can see that they are very similar to those seen in 2017 – 2018, which makes we wonder if I had of bought at this time, would I have continued to hold for those 4 – 5 years, especially with the 2016 drop in earnings?

Laserbond ASX:LBL full year evaluation

3.       High Returns on Capital

High returns on capital is about the quality of the business and management’s ability to find and execute projects that generate high returns. Clearly to get a return of 100 – 1 the company will need to be able to generate good returns on capital over a long period of time. There are a number of ways to calculate returns on capital, I prefer Returns on Invested Capital (ROIC) and as you can see above, LaserBond has been able to generate quite high values in recent years. The same can be said about their Returns on Assets (ROA) and their Returns on Equity (ROE). So again, they have this one covered.

4.       Owner Operators

A leadership team that conducts its self as an owner operator is far better at creating shareholder value than a team that is purely motivated by money. This is because by motivating the executives with purely monetary gain, you are essentially shifted the focus from the longer term projects that produce real and lasting shareholder value to the short term goals that bring about no shareholder value but ensure the executives are hitting their KPI’s and receiving their bonuses. If you have ever had a side gig or run your own business, you know the difference you feel about the work when you are doing it for yourself, as opposed to doing it because you are paid.

One way to look for an owner operator leadership team is to look for companies that are still being run by the founder. LaserBond was no longer being run by the founder, he had been put into a position that better suited his skills, as the head of R&D, but his brother, one of the original company employees was still running it.

Another way to see if the executives are shareholder focused is to see if they own a large percentage of the company, this way, both shareholders and executives gain when they generate shareholder value. LaserBond’s executive team at the time owned 23 – 24% of all outstanding shares, with the Hooper brothers making up the bulk of the owner ship. This is very encouraging.

Laserbond ASX:LBL insider ownership

5.       They invested in themselves

LaserBond, after a couple of years of neglect have been continuously investing in themselves since 2014, with another big investment in 2016. The fruits of which can clearly be seen.

6.       Long Time Horizon

This one has to do with it taking a long time to reach a return of 100 – 1 as it takes time for the company to capitalise on its previous good work and then build on it and capitalise and then build on it and over and over. Clearly LaserBond have done well to continue to build on the momentum they started back in 2014, with the share price now showing a more realistic valuation of the company than in the past.

Mr. Mayer’s research emphasises the power of small cap value investing, look for well run small companies, that are currently mis-priced (low multiple), with a management team that is aligned with the same goals as the shareholders and hang-on through all the ups and downs, simple J (Disclaimer: I don’t believe you should buy a company and just hang on, if you see changes to the fundamentals and/or the story has changed, a re-evaluation is needed). LaserBond was this type of company in 2017 and 2018. I think this is one that a typical value investor would have purchased if they had turned over the right rocks, it’s just a manner of overturning enough rocks until you find one as good as LaserBond. Easy to say in hindsight, I know, but it doesn’t help to beat yourself up over missing a stock.

Evaluation

LaserBond is a great company, well run, good returns on capital and have had some large wins in recent times, most notably their expansion into the American Steel industry, but that doesn’t mean that they are currently miss-priced enough to warrant purchasing.

LaserBond has stated on a number of occasions that they are aiming to generate $40m in revenue within the next 3 years, using this, their NPAT margin and the trailing 5 year EV/EBITDA multiple we can try and approximate a figure the market would place on this result. LaserBond in 2018 had a EBITDA margin of just 14.3%, they have however said that they are working on increasing this margin (it was 17.9% in 2017), so I have instead used 16%. I have also increased the number of shares using the past 5 year growth rate and also used the trailing 5 year EV/EBITDA multiple of 7.5. As you can see below, if they are able to achieve their revenue goal of $40m and the market assigns a historical margin, we are looking at a 9% gain on today’s prices, 5% if they miss it by 10% and 14% if they exceed it by 10%. If they instead assign a multiple of 10, we are looking at gains of 20%, 26% and 33%, respectively.

Laserbond ASX:LBL share price

Whilst I have calculated that the share price is currently between priced about right and a number that I believe doesn’t offer enough of a safety margin for me to purchase, I am reminded of Matt Joass article on inflection point investing, where he explains the human brains inability to extrapolate anything other than linear forecasting very well, see below. I am wondering if I am falling into this trap now, maybe I am working off estimate 2 or 3, when I should be working off estimate 4.
Laserbond ASX:LBL inflection point
Image source: https://mattjoass.com/2018/11/10/inflection-point-investing/

Conclusion

Mr. Morton did a great job helping to refocus LaserBond on their core business, the results of which are clearly beginning to bear fruit. They have divested the non-profitable parts of the business and grown organically whilst reducing expenses and have achieved a HY2019 EPS just shy of the EPS produced for FY2018. I do however believe the market has repriced the company about where it should be, given the recent developments and their growth. They did generate $10.5m of revenue (45% increase pcp) in the first half, but given that their revenue is close to 50% first half 50% second half, they will still need to double that in both halves before they reach $40m revenue, not an easy task, but definitely achievable.

I set out to do this post to try and learn from other people’s successes. Instead it has reignited my belief in value investing, but at the same time, emphasised the need to look for companies going through inflection points. Missing a small percentage of the upside is better than purchasing and holding out for years in the hopes the market might see the mistake it has made. It has also shown me that I need to spend more time on Strawman watching what other great investors such as Wini are doing, reading their reviews on companies and learning what I can from them.

Whilst I missed the ship with LaserBond, it’s great to see that there are potentially still mispriced companies out there, especially given how long this expansion has been going on for.

If you liked this and would like to read more, I have started working on a series about inflection point investing, read my first post about XRF Scientific here, the second post about Korvest here, the third about Paragon Care here and don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss out on my upcoming posts. I am on Twitter  and Linkedin  if you’d like to connect, feel free to send me a msg, it’s always great to meet other ASX investors, especially those who have a different view point 


Thanks for reading

 

Just Culture Investor


Trav Mays



Sources:
5.       www.Strawman.com


The author is not a current owner of a portion of LaserBond, they may however still 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. The author could change their opinion on any of the holdings at anytime and are not under any obligation to update the website if/when this occurs.

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