the business seems to go nowhere. - revenue growth is negative and initiatives end pretty fast after initiation. can we expect anything from these initiatives or is it more something like: "we try with little money but do not expect much from it - if it works we make a lot of money, if not it's fine"? - loosing market share after loosing important customer in the USA and not being aware of it - leadership is questionable - paying out unearned dividends in part in new shares to show a "return" to shareholders and the market is odd. - lacking sound strategy and miserable execution of those aspects that would make sense on paper. - their main product - zinc oxide for mineral sunscreens is not superior to other products on the market and a commodity. switching and reformulating is not an issue. - pushing for cost cuts cannot go on forever and is short lived especially with decreasing revenue - after realizing their predictions are unreliable management went into hiding mode and limits itself to admit once a year that the results are disappointing and PRs that are required by law. - consumer behavior pushing towards the adoption of mineral sunscreen is not happening in a meaningful way and legal changes in favor of it might never happen - free cash flow generation is barely positive given the shrinking revenue, rising costs and the never ending increase in working capital (unsold inventory sitting in various warehouses globally). - ROCE has been falling because EBIT growth is negative while the company invested millions in growing capacity that is unused (and will probably be written off)
objectively, the business is more or less a mess, but why did the majority shareholder buy shares at much higher valuations over the past years? he should know the business better than anyone else and apparently got his thesis wrong... how could they loose their main customer? they always talked about increasing the number of distributors to gain new clients and all the sudden they loose their main one ...
the best managements I have seen are transparent and communicate with their shareholders. TJ Rodgers from Enovix and Enphase is a perfect role model. He communicates the positives and negatives and has a clear strategy and milestones.
Maybe ANO has nothing to say and has no way out. the fact that the stock plummeted and there is no interest in the company leads toward that conclusion. Or they work in secret and surprise us one day (I assign a probability of 1% to this scenario)
ANO Price at posting:
72.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
