Alloy Steel Breaks Radio Silence

Alloy Steel International (OTC BB: AYSI.OB) belatedly filed an 8-k announcing its preliminary full year sales and pre-tax profit (the company's fiscal year ended on September 30^th):

PRELIMINARY FULL YEAR PROFIT ADVICE
FOR THE YEAR ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

The Company advises that its unaudited profit before income tax expense for the financial year ended September 30, 2008 is $3,670,000. This is an increase of $1,710,000 over the profit before income tax expense achieved for the year ended September 30, 2007.

This profit has been achieved on sales of $13,500,000, which is an increase in sales of $4,800,000 over the previous year.

While these figures are still subject to final sign off by the Company's Auditors, the Directors do not believe there will be any significant changes to these figures.

The Company is very cognizant of the possible effects of the economic downturn on the world mining market but believes that, with its positioning in the market place, it will not be adversely affected by the possible change in market conditions.

The last sentence above is encouraging.

After subtracting the sales and pre-tax profits from the first three quarters of this year from these preliminary year-end numbers, we end up with 4Q sales of $3,572,000 and 4Q pre-tax earnings of $1,014,000. My estimate was too high on the profit side and a little low on the revenue side: I estimated the firm would generate about $1.3 million in profits on about $3 million in sales in the quarter. After tax profits might end up being ~$700k for the quarter, but that would still be a significant sequential increase from last quarter's profit of $230k.

I got another limit buy order for Alloy Steel filled at $0.451 yesterday; I have another GTC order open at close to that price, but given this 8-k, I doubt I'll get it filled today.

The image above, which shows how Alloy Steel's Arcoplate wear plates minimize hang up, is from the company's website.