At long last some stirring in ATR's loins! With the PRC mineral...

At long last some stirring in ATR's loins! With the PRC mineral sands processing and marketing business finally generating sufficient momentum to produce some actual cash we are looking at the first profitable half year for ATR since 2015.

The PRC materials business is a cracker which appears to have generated profit margins of 47% gross and 36% net on sales of A$9.3m, which has resulted in EPS of 2.7c for 1H/2021 (vs A$5.1m sales for -1.99 EPS in 1H/2020). How much more growth is there in this business? If 2H/2021 earnings match 1H (which should be easy given the current momentum) we are looking at EPS of 5.4 cps, or a P/E of x7.6 @ today’s sp of 41 cps!

It is also good to see some fresh blood on the board with the appointment of Dr Mark Elliott and Tiger Brown inheriting his father’s shareholding and taking over as MD. It might be a good opportunity for Gerald King to hang up his spurs and collect his pipe and slippers...

As a long term investor I would like to see the board concentrate on growing the PRC materials business while progressing the Donald DFS. I think they should look at selling down some or all of Niafarang to Senegalese interest while keeping control of the offtake. Finally I would like to see greater liquidity in ATR shares on the ASX, currently Tiger & Mdm Rong hold 98m shares or +80% of ATR , so they could park a couple of million on the sell side at say .45c and loan the proceeds back to the company to continue funding the project pipeline. This way when they do need to raise capital to develop Donald they will have a greater pool of shareholders to call on.