The Value Added for 2016 is bang on what I'd hoped for!
The operating expense is indeed up. I wonder how much of that is in expanding into the US? IMF-Bentham is now at a pivotal point, as this is the last year that we can expect the Case Investment being primarily Australian.
From 2017 onwards I think IMF-Bentham will have 'crossed the Delaware' to becoming largely an American operation.
It is a clearly obvious that IMF-Bentham will have to start looking for capital sources in the USA as it does not seem to make sense, in my mind to source capital here, for expenditure, investment & expansion into the USA.
Notwithstanding, there is a caveat to the last bond issue that will limit IMF-Bentham's overall debt capacity, and too much growth will force an unwanted scrip issue? Yet the projected Funds commitment for 2017 / 2018 in today's disclosure seem to indicated that IMF-Bentham is not thinking that way...
yet.
I'm a conservative bugger, so I'd like to see the effects of US operations start morphing into the realised value add, rather than being so much still 'out there'. Encouraging stuff tho' the US seems to promise, yet US returns will only be a glitter in the boards eye, until some real moolla is actually made there. i.m.h.o.
The pull out from Europe is seemingly a disappointment. I think the JV was exposed to the Volkswagen case, which I am sure Volkswagen wants to go away as soon as it possibly can make it go away. It would be 'nice' to have had a hand out in that queue. IMF-Bentham seems to have thought otherwise, and a temporary restraint from trade there, is probably not a major disappointment, as USA expansion must surely be keeping IMF-Benthan management up at night...
I may be incorrect, but I believe the large Wivenhoe case is in a JV, rather than in case investment? Settlement there is now only likely in 2019. Sadly so many of the 2011 flood victims will be dead by then...(fact!)
Justice forever delayed, is justice forever denied.
The lost appeals of $12.9 is a further disappointment in these account. Is this the various cases against the domestic banks? I think so? In which case I should have expected this from the disclosures.
Lost appeals were the disaster for year end 2014 ($15.4) & 2015 ($28.6), and I'd not expected they'd lose this much in 2016 ($12.9)! These lost appeals bite IMF-Bentham's butt - and need be watched, as principal risks into 2017/2018 & onwards. Especially as we'll start seeing awarded USA cases, BEFORE the appeals start turning promising outcomes into nasty losses.
IF in 2015 is IMF-Bentham hadn't scored a decent unrealised foreign exchange gain, there would not have been much in the way of pickings for the year.
I don't think there are any foreign exchange 'freebees' in 2016. Revenue is down to what can be expected from interest on the large cash pile IMF-Bentham likes to sit on.
Will wait to see the Published Accounts, and then I'll drag all those figures through my spreadsheets, but tentatively these figures just look quite fine.
IMF Price at posting:
$1.70 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
