Brittany from Spheria talks of PNV "still burning cash" even...

Brittany from Spheria talks of PNV "still burning cash" even though recently reporting a "small marginal profit".

She has little understanding of PNV, if she thinks that profit was merely a blip on the graph, and PNV will continue to burn cash.

Perhaps she should focus on the Macquarie latest research, which for FY25 estimates we might do $150 million revenue, which I personally see now as a little conservative.

Given our gross margin around 95%, even with higher selling costs, Macquarie is foecasting (from memory) an EBIT around $50 million for FY25.

So really, in absence of capital expenditure, we have been cash flow positive from July, 2023, and this will now ramp up significantly, almost exponentially.

The only material capex on the horizon is the Port Melbourne plant expansion, approximately $25 million. Small amounts of that were incurred last half, but the guts will be over FY25 and FY26.

However, because PNV was cautious with the last CR, we hold a cash balance exceeding $45 million.

So, in essence, the company could probably fund the Port expansion from free cash flow but in any event holds almost double the total in cash today anyway.

Put another way, the forecast cash balance at end of FY25, assuming we fully paid for the expansion that year (we won't), might be as much as $75 million, with a monthly growth of maybe $5 million.

It's not just Brittany who doesn't get this, and I think some of the loose language about " reinvesting in the business" confuses some people. That is pretty much a 'past' concept. That reinvesting took the form of higher opex when we were making losses, but PNV have confirmed they are still expanding the sales teams and cost base, but expect to now remain profitable, given even higher growth in revenues.

I disagree with some of the talk about the dividend horizon. To me, a maiden dividend is exactly the sort of signal to eradicate some of this investment community confusion. However, I would wait until it can be franked, which means soaking up the tax losses (hopefully that won't take long, at our rate of sales growth).

In the meantime, we can expect to see the growth of a new 'silo' of PNV profit, in the form of 'interest income', as observed in the last half.