Forum Topics LBL LBL Acquisition

Pinned straw:

Added 9 months ago

Laserbond announced that has made an acquisition of Gateway Group in order to expand their business into WA.

The details of the acquisition are not very clear...

  • LBL will acquire an initial 40% equity interest in Gateway Group which will reach a minimum of 51% in 3 years from settlement date
  • This will be paid in part cash and part scrip
  • LBL is valuing Gateway at 4.5x EBITDA although this is the "enterprise value"
  • Gateway had EBITDA of $5.6m
  • The cash component will be funded from current cash reserves and will leave the business with $4.8m remaining
  • LBL had cash reserves of $10.2m as at 31 Dec 2023

So based on what they've provided, the cash component of the transaction will be around $5.4m with the remaining in scrip. I'm hoping management give some further clarification as to the exact details of the transaction given that this is their way of achieving their guidance of achieving $60m in revenue by FY25.

Full announcement here.

Disc: Held IRL and on Strawman.

thunderhead
Added 9 months ago

Poor disclosure. It is not hard to state the price paid for their stake, and what the mix of cash and scrip is going to be.

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BoredSaint
Added 9 months ago

I presume they are still working out the exact price that they will pay but have announced it as a slight softener to the blow that was a pretty disappointing 1H result.

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Seymourbutts
Added 9 months ago

If that's the case, that they are still working out the exact price, that would be even worse than knowing what they have paid and simply not announcing the price they have acquired it for. That would be almost blacklist material for me. I'm confident this wouldn't have been the case for management FWIW.

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BoredSaint
Added 9 months ago

Yeh I agree its not great disclosure from management... And the share price has been rightly punished as a result.

Overall for me I think the business thesis is still fairly intact but I do agree on a qualitative basis it is hanging on by a thread.

Just another in an ever growing list of poor disclosure in ASX small/micro caps.

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Slideup
Added 9 months ago

It looks like they will pay $5.4m cash for it given they have $10.2m cash on hand at the moment. They say the deal is worth 4.5xEBITDA and Gateways EBITDA was $5.6m so I think they are paying $25.2m ($5.4m cash and $19.8m worth of scrip). Definitely an unclear way to announce the purchase price.

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thunderhead
Added 9 months ago

It will also be good to know how much debt Gateway is carrying...can that be worked out given the EV and net assets?

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