Noticed AZG 3 days ago, reading through the long wkd and now...

Noticed AZG 3 days ago, reading through the long wkd and now like it a lot, but not without reservation.

What I like:
1. Whole Mine lifecycle service strategy makes sense, should the maintenance and engineering segments truly achieve cross sales;
2. Maintenance group business model of consolidating the currently segmented sector makes sense; plus it profits from on-going operating expenses of the mining/resource companies, therefore less affected by the growth capex cycle;
3. the most attractive competitive advantage is the alliance with NFC / MCC, which clearly provides a unique low cost package plus potential financing capability; the financing capability will be particularly attractive as funding for 2nd tier mining resource companies are getting tight.

My reservations:
1. sustainability of the NFC and MCC relationship: they don't seem to have disclosed the details of the alliance agreement, and one could not help wondering how it will be, and how much NFC and MCC depend on Arccon for project introduction and local know-how. If NFC and MCC do not need AZG that much, the relationships should not be expected to be sustainable. I wish AZG can provide more details on the alliance.

2. Key person risks: the 2 key persons from Arccorn are clearly major asset in terms of project access and industry know how. they are working with AZG for at least 3 years according to the announcement around the Arccon acquisation, so hopefully this concern is unnecessary.

3. When the the mining resrouce sector are generally stressed by global downturn (even if China growth continues with SOFT landing, the commodity resources that would have be sold to Europe would not try make its way to Asia therefore squeezing austrlian margins), the mining service provider such as AZG will face a particularly difficult time, wont they? particularly when they focus on 2nd tier player who will be even more squeezed than big dogs such as BHP?

My immediate question:
The EBITDA margin on the maintenance segment seem to have jumped from around 16% (FY 2011 according to capitalIQ) to 25% (1H FY 2012 half year accounts). Am I missing something, or is this true. No specific comments in the half yearly except for the demand in the service exceeds supply.

BTW, reading the half yearly and noticed the typo of having "demand" and "supply" the wrong way round on page 7 regarding the maintenance segment, emailed Allmine yesterday and got email confirmation that the observation was correct today. consider this pretty good investor relationship management as it's not even a working day today!

I clearly love the uniqueness of AZG, and will probably get a small position hopefully under 0.145...