To: hooters_akimbo who wrote (1398 ) 2/26/1999 11:45:00 PM From: hooters_akimbo Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 3222
I grabbed the following "snippet" of a recent interview with Mr. Pian off the Web. Complete text can be read at: stock-line.com WSR: Now that you've accomplished the restructuring, can you give us a summary of where you stand in terms of overall sales and earnings? SETO: Excluding the acquisition we just divested, our fiscal year ending January 31, 1999, sales would be about $4 million with a net income of just over $600,000. We have 11 million shares outstanding. Going forward for calendar 1999 ending December 31st, we're forecasting about $11.5 million, with a net income of $2.3 million. So we're close to 24 cents a share on the existing outstanding. And going forward beyond that, we see somewhere between $15 and $20 million. This does not include any additional acquisitions and we are actively pursuing acquisitions. WSR: What is the profile of an acquisition? SETO: Technical companies, well managed, profitable, from good to exceptionally good profit margins, in the right industries or technical industries that give us a nice broad base; and also have fairly decent marketing ability. WSR: How strong is the competition for your existing product line? SETO: In diamond tools, there are only two others in the whole world. This product is an absolute necessity to produce a semiconductor chip. No one in the world can make a chip without using our product to cut it up. Once a wafer is processed and all the circuitry is there, it's pretty much useless unless it's cut up into small segments and placed inside a housing, which is called a device or a chip. A diamond blade is the only way to do that. Many technologies have been tried and tested, including all types of lasers and wires and air cutting and abrasive cutting. Nothing works. Everything is detrimental to chip manufacturing. So the way to do this is only with the diamond saw blade and a dicing saw. WSR: You have accomplished the restructuring. You have a profitable company. You're planning acquisitions. What do you see as the main challenges to make sure that you stay on track? SETO: Well, I think we've just got to stay very close to all our industries and the technology within them. Make the changes if necessary and adjust to that. We're pretty well recession and depression proof with all the industries that we are servicing. We're pretty much of a debt free company, and that includes all five divisions. We have a few hundred thousand dollars in a credit line, which of course gives us a lot of strength. We have a strong asset base now. WSR: So you actually have segued to my next question, which is: If an investor were interested in purchasing shares in your company, what are the things that you would tell them to take a good look at before they did that? SETO: Again, I think we have a very strong technology base. I think we have got a good marketing team, both within the company and with the reps and distributors throughout the world that are working with us. We have a very aggressive buy back of our stock, because we feel that it is extremely underpriced, undervalued at this time. And we expect dramatic growth. We're talking three to five times in the next two years, and a lot of that will go down to the bottom line. Our gross profit margins on some of our products, like the diamond tools and the technical ceramics, are between 50 and 70 percent. The other product lines that we've just acquired are in the 30, 40 percent; one approaching 50. So we have a good base to work from, and most of that'll drop to the bottom line. We are using the minimum amount of people to produce the maximum amount of revenues and profits. It's kind of the way I've done things pretty much all my life. Whenever I've run companies for other people, I was always competing with my competitors that had four to five times the amount of people and half the profits. So I think if you have good people and everybody contributes, it works really well. Copyright © 1998 Starwood Media Group, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Important Terms Of Use & Conditions