Last time Codan traded at this price was back in Aug 2021.I did...

Last time Codan traded at this price was back in Aug 2021.

I did a rough table to compare the various Stats back then to now

		2021	2024
1	Sales	437	551	M
2	NPAT	97.3	81.3	M
3	EPS	54	45	CPS
4	Engineering Spending	32	57	M
5	Metal Detectors	75%	40%
6	Communications	22%	59%

Few comments from this table

1. Sales up compared to 2021, but NPAT and EPS are both down, this is because communications are less profitable than metal detector sales, hence the margin is lower. Hence despite higher sales, we are getting a lower NPAT. However, we also also note that communications is a more stable business with regular predictable revenue. So to me, higher sales and lower profit is acceptable. We should also acknowledge that the lower NPAT and EPS is because we have spent an extra 25M in research and development. If we take that out, both NPAT and EPS will be higher than 2021. So the SP in 2021 reflected a volatile optimistic outlook for CDA, while now we are expecting a stable optimistic outlook and rightly so.

2. Metal detector sales is only 40% of our total sales now, compared that to 75% in 2021. Our business is way more diversified and hence we can be more confident that the current NPAT and SP can be less volatile going into the future. Some of the winning contracts from Zetron are from Utility providers and also Government agencies. These are more stable source of revenue as compared to metal detection

3. Metal Detector sales are also doing well, this will provide surprises to the upside in the future and also to the downside. From 2021 - 2024, the slide in CDA shareprice is caused by various factors, including CEO resigning, market not longer seeing CDA as a growth company, volatile and sliding detector sales and general market sentiment. This is despite CDA only really had one bad year during 2021 - 2024, and yet the SP crashed 75%... hopefully this will not be repeated as we have a stable management team and BoD, diversified revenue stream thats less reliant on metal detector sales and all metrics growing again. As I said before, I can't really find another company on the ASX that treats the business like their own and also take calculated risks when acquiring businesses, there are tons of company on the ASX that will grow at any cost/risk just to fatten the pockets of their BoD or CEO..... Hence, this alone means CDA deserves to trade at premium to the market.

To Conclude, CDA is not longer cheap, but the company has transformed itself and proved to the market that the past acquisitions has been successful. With the current environment we are in, I think they will be able to beat the forecast as they have provided IMO a fairly conservative outlook. However, nothing is certain and one misstep or earning miss will see CDA crash 30% easily... it is not for the faint hearted.