Response from Alloy Steel International's CEO

In response to the list of questions I submitted to him last week, I got an e-mail from Alloy Steel CEO Gene Kostecki a couple of hours ago. I didn't hear back from him when I asked him if I could share the text of his e-mail on this blog (bear in mind Perth time is twelve hours ahead, so he may have signed off for the night by then), so I won't quote it here verbatim. But this is the gist of it: Gene apologized for not answering the questions by today; he noted that he's been busy drawing up plans for the new mill program, and that CFO Alan Winduss has been busy working on the reports given the recent conclusion of the company's fourth quarter and fiscal year. Gene said that the company planned to issue an interim report that would answer many of the shareholder questions I submitted to him, and that they would be happy to address any questions it didn't answer.

Update on Q&A with Alloy Steel International

I mentioned this in the comment thread of a previous post, but for those who missed it,

The list of questions ended up being fairly long. Gene [Kostecki, AYSI's CEO] wrote back to say that he and Alan [Winduss, the company's CFO] planned to try to answer all the questions by midweek next week. In light of that time frame, I am going to revise my previous comment about not placing any trades until I post their response. I am going to place additional limit buy orders today but I won't modify them if they don't fill until after I have posted AYSI's responses to the questions. The salient point remains that I won't be buying or selling AYSI based on answers received from the company before posting them here.

I put in a GTC limit order in the low 2's this morning, but obviously didn't get it filled today, given today's price action. Speaking of which: commenter J.K. (who, as far as I know, is the only reader to have invested in AYSI after reading about it here), sold his shares at around $2.70 recently, because he felt that the chart suggested the stock would pull back below $2 in the near future. I've held (and added a tiny bit more) because I don't think the stock will drop below $2 before earnings are released absent materially negative news, and I don't want to risk having the stock run away from me if additional positive news is released (e.g., a big supply deal with another multinational mining company).

Essentially, J.K. feels the stock's near-term trajectory will be driven by technical factors and I think it will continue to be driven by fundamentals. It will be interesting to see which one of us turns out to be correct over the next couple of months.

The Power of Positive News

Earlier this year, when Alloy Steel CEO Gene Kostecki complained to me via e-mail about short sellers shorting his company's stock, I noted in a post ("Run Silent, Run Deep") that the best way for a company to foil short sellers would be to release positive news. Alloy Steel International (AYSI.OB) did just that today when it issued this press release about an hour ago, announcing it landed a huge long-term contract to supply its proprietary product to BHP Billiton, "Alloy Steel International Signs Supply Agreement With BHP Billiton". From the release:

PERTH, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - 09/08/09) - Mr. Gene Kostecki, Chairman and CEO of Alloy Steel International (OTC.BB:AYSI - News), today announced that Alloy Steel Australia (Int) Pty Ltd a wholly owned subsidiary of Alloy Steel International Inc. has signed a long term strategic supply agreement with BHP Billiton to supply Arcoplate Wear Resistant Super Alloy Wearplate for iron ore mining operations in Western Australia.

The initial product taken will be for the multi-million dollar expansion of their operations in the Pilbara area of Western Australia. The first product releases issued by BHP have been for value in excess of $5 million in the past 7 weeks. It is anticipated that over the next five years the value of Wearplate could be in excess of $50 million.

Since the announcement in August 2009 of Alloy Steel's successful commissioning, the increased level of interest in the new production mill shown in Arcoplate has been outstanding, according to Mr. Kostecki. Most of the major iron ore miners in Western Australia have enquired about booking production time for their own expansion programs and maintenance programs and are expected to order the full range of Arcoplate thicknesses.

Since commissioning the new Arcoplate mill, it has been working at full capacity satisfying the demand for the new 3/4 inch or 20mm material whilst the other Arcoplate mill has been fully utilized with the ongoing demand for the thinner overlay materials.

As a result of the increased level of interest in Alloy Steel's Arcoplate product by local and international mining companies, the Directors of Alloy Steel are planning for a further two production mills with substantially increased capacity to come on line in early 2010.

News from Alloy Steel

The company (OTC BB: AYSI.OB) filed this 8-K earlier today:

Mill Commissioning

The company advises that the new ARCOPLATE manufacturing plant specifically designed to produce extra thick (up to 20/11mm) and super alloy wear plate has been commissioned and has commenced production.

The new mill is the only one in the world capable of producing a bi-metallic fused super alloy wear plate in a thickness of application of up to 20 mm (just over ¾ of an inch) in a single continuous casting operation.

The conventional method used to produce a hard surface overlay is by a welding method which can only achieve a weld surface which at best is ¼ inch or 6mm thick in a single pass and is flawed with major quality technical limitations.

The new AYSI new technology has overcome all the known technical difficulties and is capable of fusing 20mm or super wear resistant alloy onto a ½ inch or 12mm steel backing plate.

This is a significant technological breakthrough which should see this plate be specified consistently in new mining projects and become the norm for replacements in upgrades for existing mining operations.

Mr. G Kostecki C. E. O. of the company is very encouraged with the strong interest being shown by all the major producers who have seen the test samples and the technical reports and predicts a large future demand for the product.

Mr. Kostecki was responsible for the technical innovation and development of the new process and alloy formulation.

These reports have been carried out by independent laboratories.

Whether any of the demand predicted above will be apparent in the 10-Q Alloy Steel is going to file next week remains to be seen, but this is good news. More generally, the surge in Chinese steel production and the recovery of iron ore prices has been good news for Alloy Steel's mining company customers (how sustainable Chinese demand will be remains to be seen).

I picked up a few more shares of Alloy Steel at .325 on Tuesday, when the stock dipped about 20% on no news. Still keeping most of my powder dry for investing in another asset class though.

Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Alloy Steel in a comment thread on Fred Wilson's blog, in response to a comment by Mark Cuban about how he'd be more interested in investing in a Rearden Steel¹ than the next social media start-up. That was a brain cramp on my part: Even if Cuban could buy all of Alloy Steel, it wouldn't be a big enough investment to be worth his time. Plus, Cuban (wisely) likes to invest where he has an information advantage², so unless he has connections in the wear plate or mining industries, he probably wouldn't seriously consider investing in this sort of company.

¹An allusion to Hank Readen's company in Atlas Shrugged.

²Writer, entrepreneur, and angel investor Tim Ferriss seconded Cuban's point in a post last fall. Ferriss wrote that he feels more comfortable investing in tech companies where he has some inside knowledge and connections than swimming with the sharks in the stock market.

"Yes we Khan"

The other day, when the local Barnes & Noble was sold out of Rolling Stone, it happened to have Monocle as its new, featured title. I'd been curious to see an issue of Monocle since reading its editor Tyler Brûlé's semi-ridiculous Saturday columns in the Financial Times, which generally focus more on the minutia of his globetrotting than on why he's traveling in the first place.

For example, one column described his early-morning routine at a Hyatt in Seoul: ordering a Mandarin orange juice and a cappuccino from room service, before running for an hour on a treadmill, then scrubbing himself with a brush while sitting on a chair in the hotel's fancy shower/sauna, etc. Another column detailed how he ordered a lackey to fly from London to some town in Switzerland to pick up the wallet Brûlé left there, and hop on a train to Paris to get Brûlé his wallet before his scheduled flight to Tokyo.

In any case, Monocle, as it turns out, is chock full of content (an inch thick) and an interesting read. In one feature, an analyst from Jane's Defense Weekly was asked what aircraft he'd buy if he had $15 billion and were tasked with building an air force from scratch for a mid-sized G-20 country. Another article reported on the nascent commodity- and energy-driven boom in Mongolia, "Yes we Khan". The online version of the article is restricted to subscribers, unfortunately, but it offered some color on the situation in Mongolia. There seem to be a lot of opportunities for natural resources companies there, given the amount of resources in Mongolia and its proximity to China, but how much of that money will filter down to ordinary Mongolians is a question the article raises.

The article also reminded me of the joint venture Alloy Steel International (OTC BB: AYSI.OB) was negotiating with Mongolian conglomerate Geomandel last year. Last I heard about this from Alloy Steel's CEO (this was last October, well before he took the "Run Silent, Run Deep" tack toward shareholder communications), he said,

We have shelved Mongolia for at least 6 Months till this madness subsides.

Maybe when the company releases its next quarterly filing in August it will provide an update on this.

The photo above, of the outskirts of Ulan Bator, accompanied the Monocle article and was credited to Andrew Rowat.

Run Silent, Run Deep

That is, of course, the title of one of the classic submarine movies¹, but it's also a fitting description of the current investor relations tack of Alloy Steel International (OTC BB: AYSI.OB): as the company's stock price has dived, the company has refrained from releasing any information since its last 10-Q. Over the last few weeks, I tried contacting the company's CEO (who has designated himself the investor relations contact) via the company's website and then via his company e-mail address. After no luck, I trying calling him. Alloy Steel's receptionist in Malaga mentioned he was traveling overseas and, assuming he hadn't had a chance to check his company e-mail address, gave me his personal e-mail address and suggested I try him there. Again, no response. This week, after calling the company's headquarters again and learning that the CEO was again traveling overseas, I sent him the following message:

I understand from Melanie in your Malaga office that you are traveling overseas again. Given your heavy travel schedule and extensive responsibilities, I imagine you must have little time to answer questions from investors. Nevertheless, you have designated yourself as the investor relations contact for your company. Have you considered delegating this role to someone who might have the time to respond to an occasional investor e-mail or phone call?

And received the following response:

Dear Dave.
As a result of the market volatility and the short sellers that have been short selling our stock the board has decided to only release information through the normal reporting channels there will be no separate reports to any investor who we have no record of in our share register.

Kind Regards.
Gene Kostecki
CEO Alloy Steel Int.

Sent via BlackBerry® from Vodafone

This response didn't inspire a lot of confidence in the company's current situation. I can understand the reluctance to communicate with an individual shareholder on Reg FD grounds, but if Mr. Kostecki believes that the market's opinion of his company's prospects is unjustly negative, the best way to counter that would be to release information through "normal reporting channels" proving it wrong. For example, if the company picked up a major order recently, or an order in a new market, it could announce that via an 8-K (as it has done in the past). Since Alloy Steel hasn't released any such updates this year, it's rational for market participants to assume that it has no good news to report.

Judging from the CEO's e-mail above, the break-even numbers it reported last quarter, and its high inventory levels over the last two quarters, my guess is that it will post a loss for the quarter that ended on March 31^st.

I was going to end this post on a positive note, by including a link to Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neil's column in the Financial Times Thursday, in which he mentioned he had revised upward his growth estimates for China's economy this year and next. If O'Neil's estimates come to pass, that would be good news going forward for mining companies, and, by extension, for Alloy Steel. Unfortunately, after 20 minutes of trying, I was unable to find a link to O'Neil's column using the Financial Times website's search feature.

¹The all time champ of submarine movies is Das Boot, in my opinion.

E-Mail from the CEO of Alloy Steel International, Inc.

During the current market downturn, shares of Alloy Steel International, Inc. (OTC BB: AYSI.OB), have sunk recently along with the shares of other companies in the metals sector. I have had a GTC limit order in for a few days to buy a few more shares below $1, but it hasn't been filled yet. I asked the following questions of the company via e-mail early this morning:

Can you provide an update on the construction of your second mill? If memory serves, you expected to have it in operation by September.

Also, have you succeeded in hiring the sales persons you were recruiting over the summer?

Is your planned joint venture in Mongolia still on track?

I received the following response from Alloy Steel's CEO, Gene Kostecki,

Thank you for your continuing Interest in AYSI. We are about to make a press statement on the company, we were just waiting to get the accounts finished for the 3rd Quarter. I think that every one will be in for a pleasant surprise. We have shelved Mongolia for at least 6 Months till this madness subsides. The 2nd mill is a few weeks behind schedule before we start calibrating and software checking. We are continuing to steer a steady course for the company.

At its current price of $1 per share, Alloy Steel is trading at 6.62x its earnings over the trailing twelve months.