Thanks for the reply Cocky,
So really anything like a 6% operational return with present farm prices is pretty well only
going to happen if seasons and prices line up together....which is pretty rare
Also if your farm is a family farm, does this take into account wage at current rates
Dont get me wrong, I can see where you are coming from, what I am trying to get my head
around is is there some reason that it seems that farming in the areas that we operate is more
difficult than many other regions
From my understanding this used to be more lucerne and lamb country, now with advancements
in plant and seed technology it is now more dryland and irrigated croping country, I know it hasnt
happened overnight and the last couple of years have been wet and the few before that
were dry...but if we cant make money when its wet or dry and in fact only had one slightly
profitable year in the last 4 and had combined operational losses circa $10mil in those 4 years,
where does that leave us going forward
I do remember someone asking at last years AGM if I remember correctly, that if that $1mil profit
was as good as it gets, that question was passed to our operations mananger to answer who
said again from memory, NO, he doesnt believe it is
Meat production is making up more of our revenues, that is not a bad thing, but now we have
the threat of F and M to worry about, if this does get into Aust will this not hit all farmland prices
and not just cattle country, yes we only have conserative borrowings as a percentage of NTA
but if farm prices come off then the conservative borrowings will no longer be conservative
You also have the Executive Chairman saying in his outlook that his core focus this last year
has been to prepare the company for change and he intends to put the balance sheet to work
in expanding and diversifying our business
Well it is going to be hard to pull this off when your companies SP is trading at the discount
that it is to NTA, and borrowing costs are not that cheap anymore and only going higher for the
short to medium term anyway and also most assets are pretty well fully priced IMO...my question
is...is this the time in the cycle to be expanding and diversifying our business, I know that Ed comes
across as a glass half full kind of guy, but where are the dollars going to come from to expand, or
does diversifying mean selling some of what we already have.
I will await the answers to these questions before buying anymore, I have switched most of my
AACo holdings to DBF during the year, but did manage to sell a fair chunk over $2.25 and still
have that cash sitting on the sidelines as I see more downside at present than upside....everywhere
The Annual Report was not well recieved, the shareprice has come off a bit and now there are
only buyers for $10k or so worth of shares, if someone wants out in a hurry you might snag a bargain
cheers grant
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