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- Recent revenue misses have caused massive selling pressure.
- However, balance sheet is rock solid, with no insolvency risk.
- Investment thesis boils down to one issue: can PTE increase sales.
Who are they and what do they do ? Pioneering Technologies is based out of Mississauga, Ontario, and produces fire safety products that prevent kitchen fires. Having been listed on the TSX Venture exchange for over 10 years, their flagship product, the “Smart Burner”, allows users of traditional coil top stoves to replace the existing coils with the Smart Burner, which allows for the cooking of food, but prevents temperatures that reach combustion. Pioneering also provides other similar safety products that are cooking related, such as the SafeTSensor for microwave ovens and the Range Minder, which works with gas, ceramic, or coil top stoves. However, we will be focussing on their flag ship product, the Smart Burner, as this makes up the bulk of their sales. Our discussion is broken into four parts as follows: company activity & share price activity from 2016 to today (Part 1), whether the company is in better or worse shape today (Part 2), why the investment opportunity has upside (Part 3), and what future results and associated share price might look like (Part 4). The reader should note that all financial values are quoted in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.
Part 1: Why is this chart so ugly ?
There are two things that the above chart makes very clear. First, any investor who went long on PTE in early 2016 (or earlier) could have done very well, as shares peaked at $1.50 in February of 2017. The second thing that becomes clear is that any investor who went long in early 2017 (or later) experienced a significant loss. So, the question is: what caused the significant run up in share price, and what caused the significant decline?
If we look at the same chart, with a bit more information, we have a better picture of what happened:
The chart above shows price movement along with the timing of non-financial press releases, earnings releases, financings, and analyst research. We categorize a “non-financial press release” as any press release that imparts information outside that of typical earnings news or any significant financial change, such as a financing. For example, a press release announcing a new large customer would be categorized as “non-financial”. While the information may be interesting (it is typically bullish), it imparts information that is entirely at the discretion of the company, and is not required (or mandated) by regulation or law.
One can see that during 2016 there was a total of 11 non-financial press releases, most of which were concentrated in the period between June & October of 2016. These press releases introduced new participants to the Pioneering story, and by creating more awareness, also created more potential buyers of the shares. With this new awareness, the shares rode a wave of popularity, peaking at $1.50 in February of 2017. In March of 2017, the company undertook a private placement at $1.10, which in turn resulted in analyst coverage by the same institution. Bullish coverage followed for approximately 8 months, until Pioneering issued full year 2017 numbers which fell well short of inflated investor expectations. Similar underperforming quarters followed in March and May of 2018, causing further sell pressure, and resulting in a 52 week low (as of May 31 2018) of $0.21.
Seasoned investors will note that this is not the first time this story has played out, as analyst coverage often is overly bullish and creates expectations which are hard to meet within a short time frame. This story is no different. Investors who purchased after Q1 of 2016 saw a relatively consistent stream of positive news, which culminated in bullish institutional coverage. Once results were clearly short of expectations, selling pressure took over, and the share price has yet to recover.
For those readers that are interested, links are included to all the noted non-financial press releases (below).
This concludes Part 1 of this review of Pioneering Technologies. For those that are interested, I will be publishing Part 2 shortly. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at mark@grey-swan.com..
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pioneering-receives-largest-single-purchase-120000342.html
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