A datapoint for consideration.

I am now booking 12-18 months ahead for family law assessments, and enquiries continue to come in thick and fast. They walk away when they hear the waiting time.

Given I work at the pointy end of family law (see previous straws), this suggests to me the COVID lockdown related rise in separations is making its way through the Courts and the various lawyers are approaching saturation with work.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a bumper half year in revenues with Feb earnings season. No idea what they are doing with costs, so that will be a key metric.

I don't know if the peak has hit yet but given the time from separation to divorce is 17 months, I suspect we're not there yet.

Haven't done a deep dive on this company like Noddy's analysis, but I can say that with confidence that there is more than likely to be a big earnings bump for AFL and peers over the next 2-3 years.

As per my previous straw, there's huge demand for family assessments, which are usually done only at the pointy end of family law. My wait list is now over 12 months, compared to this time 2 years ago, which was about three months. Enquiries are still coming thick and fast, and the lawyers all want them done yesterday, because they don't want the open cases on their books whilst plenty of new work is coming through the front door.

Given most work in family law (basically splitting up property and access to kids) never ends up at the pointy end of family assessment, this data point suggests there's a huge backlog of work that AFL will need to get through which will flow through to earnings for at least 2-3 years.

If they continue to acquire peers, you'll need to watch very carefully at price paid.

Disc: Not held

Very interesting straws @noddy74

I do a little bit of family law work (chapter 15 family assessments - basically divorcees fighting over the kids and working out whats in the kids' best interests), and the demand for these assessments has skyrocketed in the last few months. I used to get 1-2 enquiries in a good week pre-COVID, now I get 10+ without trying.

I have zero marketing so the increase in demand isn't because I've been spending more on advertising, and I think a genuine reflection on the amount of work being generated in this messy area of law.

The work I do is really at the pointy end of the family law spectrum, so if that is reflective of the demand, then there are a few healthy years of revenue for this company in the near future.

As for what to watch for, there aren't a whole lot of costs that can be stripped out of the back end of this kind of operation, so the sell signal will be when management start overpaying for the sake of growth. As long as they are disciplined in acquisition at cheap multiples, AFL will probably do OK.

Disc: not held.