Probably like some others on here I've been wondering what might have been the spark that lit the fire to SMN share price on Friday.
This is just conjectural, but might go some way to explaining it (only the buyers know for sure!):
First I must state this is not my discovery, this is Cdghw who brought this to our attention, so many thanks to Cdghw for his diligence. It was his post referring to AEM signing a deal with Japanese distributor Aero:
AEM Signs New Japanese Distribution Agreement with Aero Facilityhttps://www.aem-corp.com/about-us/recent-news/aem-signs-new-japanese-distribution-agreement-aero-facility
If you go to the AEM website and check out the actual commentary:
"BLOG
AEM Signs New Japanese Distribution Agreement with Aero Facility
SEP 16 2021
Following the acquisition of Eagle Audio earlier this month, AEM is now announcing that a distribution agreement has been signed with Aero Facility Co. to represent their new suite of products in the Japanese aerospace market.
The recent acquisition has introduced an opportunity for AEM to bring new audio products into previously untapped markets.
“The Eagle Audio assets fit well within AEM’s skillsets and capabilities, and we are looking forward to supporting the existing customer base while introducing the product line to our varied and diverse global customers” said Tony Weller, Director of Sales and Marketing at AEM. “Aero Facility has been an important partner for AEM in Japan and are well positioned to market and deliver our products to a variety of operator profiles and aircraft OEMs.”
The P139HD Digital Audio System has a Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB) Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the Bell 412 EP airframe, and AEM plans to pursue additional installations in Japan; this new distributor agreement will help make that possible.
Having represented AEM since 2018, Aero Facility supported the JCAB STC integration of AEM’s LSS880 Loudspeaker on the Kawasaki Heavy Industries BK117 aircraft and see this new agreement as a great opportunity for both organizations.
“We are excited to support new products from AEM Corp. We have introduced AEM’s loudspeaker and cabin speaker products in Japan so far, and their quality is highly evaluated from our Japanese customers” said Mitsuo Hattori, Managing Director at Aero Facility Co. “By this acquisition, we believe that together with AEM, we will contribute to the expansion of the Japanese aerospace market. "
I leave it to the reader to decide whether this particular statement on AEM website is the spark.
And further, this does also bring up the discussion with regards whether it should have been released to the ASX or not.
Firstly we will never know whether this information was the spark. That's important to be kept in mind.
Secondly, SMN already announced the Eagle Audio acquisition, and specifically referred to a number of key points arising from the acquisition :
"AEM now controls stable, minimum normalised EBITDA of circa-$A5.500-6.000 million per annum
• Purchase price of Audio division is barely 2x long-term, stable normalised-EBITDA
• Audio business is a simple “plug and play” proposition – AEM’s existing platform scale, efficiency and capabilities expected to materially increase top-line, and net, performance metrics with effectively zero required overhead addition
• Per AEM platform’s performance, Eagle Audio sales were stable/non-impacted through COVID
• SMS Group long-term valuation proposition and operational integrity now fully secured..."
So you can argue very strongly that the market manipulation to push the share price down by whomever in the past couple of weeks, has resulted in an opportunity for eager buyers to jump at bargain basement prices of SMN.
My view is that SMN had already announced the Eagle acquisition. AEM already had a previous signed agreement with Japanese distributor Aero (since 2018), and effectively by the Eagle Audio acquisition what the AEM Blog announcement has done is highlight to an opportunistic buyer the ramifications of the Eagle Audio product line to the Japanese market.
And that probably explains why trading volume was not out of the ordinary, at 153,000 shares.
What must be recognised is that the rest of us shareholders have failed to focus on SMN's 'second string to the bow'. After all we are all probably very focused on CVM, but actually AEM has been paying all the bills over past years, and now it's going to be earning more again through the Eagle Audio acquisition.
So my conclusion is that SMN probably has been trading at a bargain basement price for far too long, so that it will enable eager buyers to snap up shares if the price drops (as Thymus pointed out in his post).
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