On following up on a broker note i checked out AHY and its perplexing me, do any posters have ideas? Their financials look good but there is something in the buyback that is worrying and i can't understand fully whats going on. Technically the graphs are disturbing as there is no observable trend.
They did an IPO in 2014 about $600m and $300M went to exit PEP and $300m for reduction of debt...rough numbers
In their April15 AGM slide 29 they were clear about 3 principles in capital mgmt - div payout, deb/equity and a statement that they would distribute excess cash unless reinvested
Then Half Year end 30/6/15 they have $26m in bank and their operating cashflow is positive $38m. The media, brokers lapping it all up but the buyback is muddying it all
So why have they gone all out in this buyback, spending $62m in period 1/10/15-18/12/15 where the purchases were 27% of volume traded during that period.
Why wouldn't they reduce the swag of debt they have; $264m?
Why not return capital to shareholders like they said only 4 months earlier?
Despite good fundamentals, the buyback isn't working to support price, which just nudged below $1,50 support. The announcement of the $100m potential buyback in the media was at the time of reporting the great result for 1H, and according to the chairman they were in a challenging environment - so why would you use up all your cash reserves?
There's more going on than the market has been informed and looking likely to slip further.
I suspect there is something about SCA Group wanting to increase their 32% majority holding by stealth? Maybe?
AHY Price at posting:
$1.49 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
