Yes - I can see they might look like rediculous value at around 20 cents per share, but their chart is truly horrible, and they are very exposed to China - who may well still be trying to punish Australia for daring to ask for an inquiry into the origins and early response to COVID-19. I have been out of FLC for a long time now, and haven't been following them very much. I also removed them from my Strawman.com scorecard some time ago because I saw little reason why their SE SP trajectory was going to suddenly change and head north again. I removed PET recently for much the same reasons. A small Australian company with too much invested in China at the wrong time.
Other issues specific to FLC, in my opinion, include:
1. Most of the board and management have exposure via options rather than direct shares. Only their Chairman has a decent holding - 37.265 million shares. Their CEO/MD, Henry Charrabe, has 12.35 million options, but no shares. Two NEDs (non-executive directors) have half a million shares (currently worth only around $100K) and three directors (half of their 6-member board) hold no shares (just options), which includes Mr Charrabe.
2. The global adoption of their water-purification tech has been less than impressive.
3. There was a lot of hype in prior years, and it seems to me that the hype was entirely unjustified.
4. They are a small microcap company with a market cap of only around $130m, and they keep raising more money - so are regularly asking their shareholders to tip in more and more money, as their profitability timeline keeps getting pushed out further and further. They had less than $17m of cash at March 31, 2020.
5. Last month they said, "Despite the delay in receiving the payments from the Ivory Coast Project, the Company expects operating cashflow for Q2 2020 to converge towards cash-flow breakeven. The expected improvement in operating cash flow in Q2 2020 compares to a US$7.9 million operating cash OUTFLOW in Q1 2020, and reflects the ongoing focus on lowering overhead costs and strong cash collections." More positive spin, but little actual real progress, in my opinion.
6. I jumped on them in prior years as a momentum play, and, unfortunately, the momentum is all going the wrong way now, so I'm not interested.
7. I don't mind these sort of beaten-down stories if I trust the management based on their prior track record, and I really like the business model, and think they've got strong tailwinds both as an industry and as a business within that industry, but I'm not sure that those conditions exist here.