Moa Shareholders Will Be Happy?

Bit of a soft article this morning the NZ Herald about Moa signs deal to use Nelson brewery . Might as well have just posted the link to the post Moa has with the NZX – Moa secures capacity for growth

(the article was convenient as it just cut out the key points from the official release, so therefore saved time in reading the whole thing, thanks. I’m told journalists have to become experts 5 times a day as they write a lot on topics that are wide and varied, it must be hard work.Maybe cutting a pasting would be easier since Moa had already done the work of writing the release)

The release was put out yesterday about contract brewing, one day before the release of Moa’s Annual Results.

After reading the good news article about contract brewing at Stoke/McCashin’s Brewery (funny how things change, remember when “IT HAS A TRUE BRICKS AND MORTAR HOME“? UPDATE 31 May 14 : Moa has deleted this page so this link no longer works. Google Cached Link for now) * I read the Moa Annual Results. Maybe there will be an article tomorrow covering the following.

[UPDATE 27 May 14: d’uh I just found this – Moa widens losses, gets shareholder backing ]

I’m not a Moa shareholder but I’d possibly be thinking “that is a pretty big loss”, but the reasons for it seem pretty legit, right?  $5.8 million loss on $4.6 million revenue. The biggie though is only $4 million in cash left. Will there be enough left to buy that bigger brewery, which was I thought one of or the main reasons for the IPO?

The following couple of quotes from the Annual Results caught my attention:

“As a consequence, the planned brewery expansion has not been undertaken and the anticipated capital expenditure has not been incurred…”

 

“The company is looking at a range of financing alternatives and timing to ensure adequate capital resources are available to support the Group’s growth plans and capitalise on opportunities…”

The contract brewing at Stoke maybe good news, but it was the only option at the end of the day since they haven’t built their own bigger brewery. The tough part is going to be funding the aggressive growth plan in this highly competitive global craft market.

I must say the Moa IPO has been fascinating for me, and watching how you have to keep feeding the media positive spin, in during the not so good times. Being a small publicly listed company, in a very fast changing, dynamic market is harder work than being a private company. Moa is living in the public eye, and what they are experiencing (read all the challenges in their Annual Results) is what I was alluding to in my Craft Bubble post. Craft beer isn’t all rosy and good times, there are many challenges for all sizes of craft breweries. Don’t get me wrong, it is a lot of fun, and the challenges keep it interesting. If it was easy everyone would do it…

Maybe I should write something about the challenges I’ve experienced and have seen others have to deal with in the growing craft beer market? . I’ll sleep on that for a bit.

* This was my favourite part. Even though the water part of beer is highly under rated.
IT HAS A TRUE BRICKS AND MORTAR HOME

[*The following has been retracted: The following A craft brewery does not contract brew at different breweries around the country or allow its beer to be brewed under licence overseas. The most important and influential ingredient in beer is water and you cannot accurately replicate your water supply in a different location.]

UPDATE 31 May 14: Looks like I am going to have to do screen grabs in the future. I wasn’t expecting Moa to delete the page from their website which I linked to.