Austco has announced a $3.8 million contract win across two hospitals in Singapore.

They have also announced this has taken their order book to $40.7 million, up from the $38.7 million announced at the AGM last month. They've been on a bit of tear this year having more than doubled the order book since February this year.

Zooming out a bit the order book has been steadily rising since late 2019, apart from some COVID and supply chain impacts through 2022 and early 2023.

Nice to see at least one of my holdings kicking ass and taking names. I still think it flies under the radar a bit considering its history of profitable, non-dilutive growth. @Strawman have we spoken with Clayton?

Austco has come out with a roadshow presentation today, with lots of funky graphs and "buy me" arguments. Not a lot new, although they did disclose sales orders were up again from last month's record high to $37.2m - so they're filling the funnel faster than they can drain it. (Ignore the 'Revenue from customers' tag - revenue it ain't).

Austco is one of my more comfortable holdings. They disclose often enough to make you feel wanted, without getting all over-promotional. When they make investments in product or people they set realistic expectations about how long it will take to get a payback from the investment. They certainly appear to be in that zone of getting a return of previous investment right now though.

If I were being hyper-critical I'd say the CEO is very well compensated for a company of this size. However, Clayton appears to be getting the job done so I'll not quibble while that remains the case. It's arguably not a screaming bargain but if they keep growing at the rate they are it will look cheap soon enough. Happy to hold.

If I have a pet hate - and I have many! - it's when a company describes an acquisition as earnings per share accretive when they're paying largely cash in the deal. As long as there are earnings how could it be anything but EPS accretive? Anyway, Austco are doing an EPS accretive deal for Melbourne-based Healthcare reseller Teknocorp.

Including likely earnouts they will pay $3.85m to purchase $9m in revenue and $1.1m in EBITDA. The EBITDA multiple of 3.5x seems reasonable even in these austere markets, although they're to some extent cannibalizing their own sales given that a significant but undisclosed proportion of Teknocorp's sales are Austco products. Also a reseller is inevitably going to have a lower quality people-based business model, relative to Austco's proprietary hardware/software model, and so should justify a lower multiple.

In addition to Austco, Teknocorp also partners with Avigalon, Gallagher, inner range and IndigoVision. The rationale would appear to be gaining a greater proportion of the reseller's sales and acquiring a direct sales capacity in Australia. Other regions in which Austco operates already have this capacity.

The deal is expected to complete in early Q1 FY24.

[Held]

Austco snuck in a price sensitive investor presentation this morning, which was an interesting decision given they released results less than two weeks ago (sans presentation). It came two days after a competitor, Hills Limited (HIL.ASX) announced they had been successful in bidding for the New Footscray Hospital tender in Melbourne. I'm not saying it was because of that. I'll leave that to others.

Largely it replicated what they they had already released with some swanky graphics added. It did give a little more detail about the growth investment being made in each region. One nice little new tidbit it shared was an increase in the order book to a record $24.7m. That's $2m higher than they had disclosed at the end of August and is probably what justified it being price sensitive.

[Held]

Not a great deal of insight provided in terms of FY22 trading or outlook. Main takeaways for me were:

• increase in open order book to $22.9m (from $20.1m at Jun 2021)
• Biggest risk being supply change shortages, particularly semi-conductors

Austco copped a first strike against their remuneration report in FY20 but this was passed comfortably this time around. The re-election of director Brett Burns was the most contentious with 22.69% voting against. Claude Walker chipped in with a question to Brett Burns to detail one opportunity and one risk to the business. To his credit he did answer it, although I wouldn't say I was left any more enlightened about Austco after doing so. Given the stage the business is at and the stated strategic direction of the business I think an acquisition in FY22 is probable.

[Held]