To: Psycho Killer who wrote (718 ) 3/4/1998 2:30:00 PM From: ChrisJP Respond to of 2232
James, Thanks for the analysis. I do not buy the "book value' part of HNLY's story. Never did. You forgot to mention one other way Magra can be profitable -- increased sales. When you are building a business, you have a lot of costs no matter whether you sell a lot or nothing. When sales are low, they are disproportionately high percentage of revenues. These can be thought of as overhead. As an example, internet access costs are the same whether your office has 1 person or 20. A T1 is a T1. Your accountant costs the same (more or less) whether you make $2M or $4M. These are just some examples. As sales increase, this percentage decreases. I did not like the impression they gave that their recent increased costs were due to one time expenses. People costs are recurring. But the outlay for their PCs, a server, SOFTWARE, a phone system, furniture, for example, costs a lot up front, but does not need to be replaced for a few years. These costs could easily amount to $200,000 or more. Look what they last report would have looked like if you subtract $200,000 from their expenses !! Magra appears to be still "ramping up". The real question we need to know: is are they mostly through ramping up ? And will sales increase enough so that the overhead part of the equation becomes a smaller percentage of their revenues ? BTW this is why HNLY is so cheap -- They aren't profitable yet. We are buying on the hopes that they will be. HNLY's management's story is that this is the case. They anticipate much higher sales. With their sales margins, and many one-time expenses behind them they should begin to turn a profit (we hope) ! Regards, Chris