Construction is terribly competitive and notorious for it's low profit margins (there have been numerous objective reports on this and it's partially the reason why the various State Security of Payment Acts are all being revised and enacted in 2022). I've been working within both the construction and mining industry for ~20 years. It's completely normal practice for contractors to bid jobs with 3% profit margins and put stretch targets in place to try and achieve 7%. Most of these projects run for several years and the largest, like multi-billion dollar resource jobs and large infrastructure projects make money by cash flow management i.e. 1) large cash injection on mobilisation from the client to positively leverage the company 2) squeeze the supply chain to almost breaking point 3) pay the supply chain slowly so we can invest the positive cashflow into something more lucrative than construction. Our largest construction companies in Australia operate more like investment fund managers than builders most of the time.
Companies like Lendlease, Downers and CIMIC Group generally only make decent money on Alliance and PPP contracts with Government agencies when the risk profile is much more appealing. The issue is, projects with these contracting methods i.e. not lump sum, are massive and completely unattainable for minor relatively inexperienced players like Maca.
Maintenance contracts are much more lucrative and often have 20% + margins. Players like Mono's do well in this space and this is an area that I'd like to see MACA move into more.
Mining Operations is however far more lucrative that construction. Unlike construction contracts, Force Majeure and inflation risks are taken on by the Owner and not the contractor, and their are bonus payments upon raising commodity prices. Couple this with more mines coming online in the West and there are opportunities for Maca to grow further.
I personally purchased MACA based on it being a mining operations company, not a construction contractor. I'm glad they are growing this business. I do like that they have a small civil construction arm which they can leverage into supporting infrastructure expansion of their existing client base, but outside of this there is little opportunity for decent growth and returns unless their debt and capital facilities are 10 x higher than what they are now so they can compete with the bad boys.
FYI - I was working with NRW when they turned the lights off and almost went bust only 6 years ago. The take away is that although in construction you may be able to win that dream contract, the next one could just as easy send you under, the risk profile in Ops isn't nearly as extreme. Given that I also own Downer shares it's alternatively good to see them get out of mining. It wasn't their core business and given that they have BOOT, PPP and Alliance experience they can make better money building infrastructure over east in the upcoming infrastructure boom (something Maca cannot do).
I do think Maca is undervalued, but given their lack of reporting lately I'm not entirely confident in that and my confidence will only recover once I see a 4C or their half year results in a couple of weeks.
Best of luck all and good to see some life back on the MLD HC feed even if we are in the red!
SS
MLD Price at posting:
74.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
