Ann: Preliminary Profit Advice - Half Year Ended 31 December 2016, page-12

@MarsC,

You are probably right; this sort of analysis paralysis is not overly helpful, and it is strange that we got bogged down in it (probably my fault for starting it) because its not the way I sense either of us are wired when it come is buying stakes in businesses.

My thesis on ASW as an investment is that it is a highly scale-able business with near anally- retentive managers, and is minnow in an under-penetrated industry where it has demonstrated over several years that it is gaining market share (with quite little marketing effort, I might add).

Since its listing some 7 years ago, ASW has grown its revenues by a factor of 1.6 times (or at a CAGR of 7% pa), even if when normalise the JH2016 Revenue result to $2.5m, as opposed to the $3.08m reported figure. Over that period, the EBIT margin has risen from ~31% to ~41% (again, normalising for the JH16 apparent anomaly).

I see nothing to prevent that sort of historical performance - of organically growing revenue at a fast rate, combined with continued fractionalisation of fixed cost overheads - to continue for the next 5 or 10 years (if the business is not acquired by a larger entity before then).

While that is the essence of my investment, I still try to anticipate and decipher the milestones along the way. Which is what got me spending time on the possible composition of the December half, 2016 and June half, 2017, P&Ls.

Unless there is some major deviation from my thesis, how the financial accounts actually end up being struck for either of those periods will matter little to my investment in ASW; I just like to be able to try and understand what is happening at any point in time, as a matter of discipline (or habit, possibly).



PS. I hate to bring this up, MarsC, but the pedant in me can't help it: I actually think both your original figures, as well as your corrections highlighted in blue font, are wrong.