Basslink for Sale Chapter Two

 

The Basslink sale saga continues.

Since the Basslink for Sale post back in September the mooted sale to APA has been abandoned, and Basslink P/L (BL) is now under the control of Receivers and Managers (KPMG) appointed by BL’s banks.

Back in late October BL still hadn’t managed to refinance its existing bank loans as required. The sale to APA had fallen through. The final straw was when Hydro Tasmania (HT) and the State government finally ran out of patience with BL for non-payment of amounts awarded against them following legal action in the wake of 2016 interconnector outage and announced they were going to start legal action to recover amounts owed.

It was a Mexican standoff. The banks wanted their money. Creditors were getting impatient. BL’s owners didn’t want to contribute any more. BL was insolvent.

STT and the unsustainable sustainability myth

 

Tasmania’s forestry industry is world-class and sustainable “said Resources Minister Barnett when releasing the 2020/21 Annual Report for Sustainable Timbers Tasmania (STT),

There’s a useful rule when trying to assess the financial sustainability of any company: Beware if profits are only achieved with book entries.

That’s certainly the case for STT, our publicly owned forest company. It reported another small profit for the 2020/21 year, the fourth in succession. Without book entries and government grants however it would have been another loss, a pattern that has been occurring for a long time.

Another useful rule says beware if there aren’t underlying cash surpluses from operations. STT claim there are but that’s only because it doesn’t include all relevant ones. Replanting and roading costs are treated as capital outlays. For three of the past six years, including 2020/21 net operating cash including roading and regeneration costs has been negative.

As a general proposition for most businesses operating cash is usually more than book profits. Most of the difference is usually explained by book entries such as depreciation.  If the opposite is occurring, where book profits exceed operating cash as it often does with STT, alarm bells should be sounding.

VicForests heading downhill fast

 It is difficult to understand how VicForests’ can describe its latest loss of $4.7 million as ‘a sound result’.

A closer look at the VicForests’ Annual Report for 2020/21 suggests a different description may be warranted.  Forest revenue of $85 million was similar to the previous year, but after production costs of $70 million the stumpage value of harvested timber was the lowest ever at 17.9 per cent of revenue or $15.3 million, which was scarcely enough to cover roading and regeneration costs of $13.5 million, let alone employee costs of $19 million and overheads of $12 million. A lifeline of $21 million from the Government was needed for VicForests to continue as a going concern.