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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William JH who wrote (75909)	10/10/2000 12:24:45 PM
From: ItsAllCyclical	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

William JH, thanks for the link. I said it was only careless if the link you were referring to didn't exist or was the GRP link. At 70 mil in market cap it's a tiny company. Also they're only partially in the energy business... >> In 1999, Water Transmission and Tubular Products revenues represented approximately 57% and 43% of the Company's net sales, respectively. << Tubulars is a pretty broad category. They make the smaller diameter pipes. To be honest I don't know if they make any of the same pipes as NSS or MVK. Based on their yahoo profile I don't think they have the same product mixes or I'd expect them to be trading for more than 5x earnings. After reading it thru though it's hard to tell why they are missing exactly - tubular of water related? They don't break apart the numbers. >> because of lower profit margins in its tubular products business caused by lower selling prices and higher steel costs. << Historically though steel prices are still very cheap. >> `Although steel costs have declined in recent months, the company is still working through its higher-cost inventory,'' Northwest said. ``To further complicate the situation, prices in certain product lines have declined in the last 60 days further reducing the spread between steel costs and finished goods pricing.'' The company also said it has lowered its earnings expectations for the water transmission group for both the third and fourth quarters. Due to revisions in schedules, the projects currently in process are at lower margins than the mix of projects the company had expected to produce during this period. Also, production difficulties in one of the company's facilities have resulted in lower than expected margins. << I think this is something to be mindful of, but I'm not alarmed. The company is very small. There could be a number of factors at work. Different manufactures are at different points in working off old inventory. NSS completed the last of their 1999 investory last quarter. The CEO is on record as saying that future prices should be substantially higher. As such they should have easy comparisons quarter over quarter and year over year for the foreseable future. Either way this is a short term issue imho. I think tubulars will have the same ramp up as some of the land drillers, but they will benefit from both high oil and ng prices vs the land drillers are more exposed solely to NG. Good or bad depending upon how you look at it. I want the diversity.