definitely needs to be watched.

their whole disclosures of net debt before 4 million executive compensation charges sucks.

for how long are they gonna compensate former executives with 4 million or so payouts.. and pro-forma back it out. bla bla. bla.

as they say, even company has 2, 3 sets of books and sometimes investors dont understand what they are looking at.

Its good to know that CBM has something of a chemical specialty, but this will not save them
if their management is doing stupid things at the wrong time of the cycle.

gap has to be watched so this puppy does not turn into the next distressed case.

the corporate holding constellation is very bad here with asets in operational assets and profits mainly in europe and bloated overhead in the US.. effective tax rate very high..

they do report 4.7 million in US dollar profits, but at same time their equity position continues to weaken.. so forex exposure on assets and debt continue to wreak havoc on their balance sheet through statement of comprehensive income.. 2 sets of books... contained in footnotes always.

this whole situation of having US dolalr debt, US dollar corporate overhead and mostly Euro and Krona denominated assets and operations is pretty bad stuff. earnings visibility consequently is low, and equity visibility as well.

fortunately they are standing firm now on the capex break and they should. given that capex does not translate into higher EBITDA projections the board should grind all capex to zero rather than install poison pills and reward managemetn with huge parachutes and post facto severance scenarios and retirement packages. f#k em. i would say.

I was already surprised when I saw Kloske being nominated as CEO. no chief admin officer should ever be CEO of a drug R&D exposed firm. allow me to say but the company missed a valuable opportunity to hire someone from outside teh company bench. someone willing to take a bold and fresh look at the situation. without loyalties to past and present folks around and their pocketboooks.

corporate overhead still needs to be massively reduced from current levels so that earnings actually translated into cash flow that results in clear debt reduction targets.

the risk here is that they might be caught on the wrong phase of the cycle unprepared and sell off their recently refurbished plants, the most attractive assets, at the wrong price to cope with their dollar denominated debts.

any potential buyer of assets will probably try to cherrypick if and when it happens.

for right now, ebitda seems stable, so debt service should not be issue. however debt maturities and refinancability could become an issue, 2, 3 years out if projects do not result in meaningful EBITDA above the 50 million a year level. this whole thing of targeting ebitda of 43 million is something that doesnt instill great confidence..

they ebitda capacity should be closer to 65-70 million .. thus they own capacity utilization runs at this point closer to 60-65%.. admittedly some projects, although officially completed are still in ramp up and validation phase..

so till the beneficial impact of this greenfield capex comes in, it could be a bumpy ride..

i continue to buy on the dips and exit on upswings.

this has been a great trading pig so far.. hasnt lost me any money and is volatile like hell and not correlated in the market.. today market is down and cbm is up. wonderful, other than the fact that I took my profits at 3.98.