ATPL DD
Let's forget the 12.50/shr dividend announcement yesterday for a second. I contend even without this dividend announcement, this stock is undervalued.
Now let's throw the $12.50 divy announcement back in, and you have a big-time big board opportunity here on 2 fronts: Share price appreciation on the anticipation of April 1st coming & the sweet dividend on that date.
I called the CFO of ATPL today. Paul Saari confirmed the float to be around 3.5 - 4 million shares.
They do plan to pay the dividend for shareholders of record on April 1, 2005.
The reason for doing so was to reward long time shareholders of record and certainly to get the market's attention to their valuation. Of course he could not comment directly on whether he felt his own stock was undervalued. I certainly stated to him I believed that it was. He said based on the press and interest now in the stock, others will be taking a closer look at the company, so the $12.50 per share dividend pr is serving it's purpose. They are a company totally focused on revenue growth and improving the bottom line.
As I stated above, as an officer of the company he can't come out and state ATPL is undervalued even minus the divy announcement. However let me try to explain why I see that it has great upside.
In big board analysis, a comparison with like companies within an industry is the best illustrator of value disscusion.
ATPL is 1 of 28 stocks comprising the Dow Jones Commodity Chemical Industry Index. The stocks are GLOBAL COMPANIES, not just a list of US chemical firms. Of course there are more than 28 chemical stocks in the world and trading on the American Exchanges, it's just this list of 28 makes up this Index. ATPL is on it.
With that, I took 2 companies from this list which have the same general revenue base. Selecting companies like DOW, DD or BAY make no sense because they do not compare in terms of size or earnings with ATPL. The last company I researched is not part of the Index, but a plastics company who's fundementals match ATPL very closely.
My contention is that ATPL's Market Cap is WAY LOW in comparison with stocks in the DJ Com Chem Index of the same size and another comparable company, ENTG.
Company.......Mkt Cap.......Annual Rev........EPS
ATPL.........$132 Mil......$348 Mil..........$1.49
DAR..........$246 Mil......$324 Mil..........$0.22
LNDC.........$177 Mil......$192 Mil..........$0.17
ENTG.........$732 Mil......$374 Mil..........$0.37
DAR's Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = .76
ATPL's Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = .38 (ATPL's eps is 7 times better)
LNDC's Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = .92
ATPL Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = .38 (ATPL's eps is 8.5 times better)
ENTG's Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = 1.95
ATPL's Mkt Cap/Revenue ratio = .38 (ATPL's eps is 4 times better)
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EVEN ABSENT THE DIVIDEND ANNOUNCEMENT I believe ATPL is greatly undervalued. Their market cap should be much higher. Their performance reflects this.
Add a $12.50 dividend and 4 million float on top of this, I believe this next week will be very interesting. Their pr was certainly effective and they now have the market's attention. Look at their historical average daily volume, then look at their volume today.
Bo
