Agree totally that EBITDA is often prone to manipulation and can often be a poor reflection of underlying cash flow. However, it is actually not a bad proxy for BOL's cash flow given they are likely to be on a bit of a capex holiday for a while yet. This is best reflected by their recent capex guidance (c.$10m) being significantly below their D&A ($c$18m). Furthermore, interest expense is continuing to decline and is now at low levels and they won't pay any tax for years given large on and off balance sheet DTA's. As a result, EBITDA for BOL is probably not a terrible proxy for cash flow generation in this particular instance. The interesting thing about BOL is the D&A is arguably quite overstated given they now depreciate their assets on a 15 year useful life which is very conservative versus the 20 years used by peers. This conservatism has been driven by the accountants focus on the down part of the cycle in which they had been impairing assets for quite a few years and in true accountants fashion these assets will probably be written up again just as the cycle is about to turn over in 3+ years.
BOL Price at posting:
24.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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