Alfacam will announce the final FY11 results on 26 March 2012. But Alfacam now already announced that sales for 2H11 finally landed at € 19.2m. EBITDA for 2H11 remains with just over € 4.7m well below expectations. We were counting for 2H11 on € 4.97m. On an annual basis, EBITDA landed at € 6.0m (KBCS € 6.2m) with a net loss of close to -€ 13.8m compared to our expected € -5.3m. Especially depreciation charges must be much higher than we anticipated. Also the high debt burden had a major impact on net income.
Alfacam claims that the high start-up costs of international expansion also weighed more than they initially planned; and this as well in Brazil, the Middle East as in India. There are difficulties to receive timely payments, which led to consultation with the banks about a moratorium on the leasing and other financial debt.
Alfacam also had to admit that the financial covenants are violated. The banks have a temporary deferment of payment granted to Alfacam. This waiver is granted for a period of 3 months ending 30 March 2012. Alfacam indicates that there are further discussions ‘in a constructive atmosphere’ to extend this for the period until 30 June, if necessary.
As a reminder, in 1H11, Alfacam received € 4m of fresh money through a direct injection of € 3.2m and a subordinated loan with warrants worth € 0.8m. The fund-raising exercise was part of a major debt rescheduling. Alfacam announced back in August 2010 that it was for a long time in negotiations with its banks to extend the duration of its loans. The debt to the four home bankers was at that time spread in time, guaranteed by Gigarant, the guarantee scheme run by the Flemish Government. The expiry date of the new loans is between 2013 and 2015.
Alfacam also indicates that 2012 will be a busy year for Alfacam with already several large projects in the backlog. These include music, sports and political-cultural productions such as Euro2012 in Ukraine and Poland, the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan and the Summer Games in London. Alfacam confirms the goal in 2012 to reconnect with a positive net result.
Conclusion
At the request of the Board of Directors, an investment bank is looking for various interested parties to strengthen the capital. We think this is only possible (in the necessary time frame) with a high dilutive effect for the current shareholders.
In the past we already hinted that one option might be a sale and leaseback operation of the buildings to lower the debt. Today we think that this alone will no longer be enough and that Alfacam will have to go for a full fletched highly dilutive capital increase. We downgrade our rating to Reduce and our target price to € 2.