Q3 EBITDA
By my math, excluding the Australasian business that was sold last year and restructuring charges, EBITDA was up almost 6% on a year over year basis. Revenues increased 3.6% on an apples-to-apples basis. Before anyone tells me they were down in the financials, I excluded revenue from Frisco and Reading which were both shut down and the Australasian unit. Perhaps most importantly, EBITDA-Capex was a positive $10mm versus break even last year. That's an important metric as it's a good proxy for pretax free cash flow. Given the company won't be paying taxes for a while, it's also a good proxy for free cash flow once working capital normalizes.
The company burned cash and had to draw on the DIP facility because a big % of the accounts payable became due once they filed for CH 11. That should normalize in future periods and once they exit and will provide a big boost to cash flow at that time.
So a number of positives in the past quarter and lead prices have been stable so far this quarter, so let's hope they keep making progress in boosting profits.
