What is keeping you awake at night? Cost disciplinekha341 wrote:
Gross Margin helps a company measure the profitability / performance of its operations / manufacturing activities. In Q3-22 Largo’s Gross Margin was merely 16% meaning that the company could only retain $0.16 from each dollar of revenue generated to pay for non-operating costs such as SG&A. Sad!
Having a Gross Margin of merely 16% is a clear indication that Largo is no more a low-costs V producer. The company is no more a cash machine.
Crux Interview of Mark Smith, Sept 2019 Matthew Gordon of Crux: “What do you say is keeping you awake at night going forward
Mark Smith: “Thing that keeps me awake at night more than anything else is the same thing today that it did 6 months ago even though prices are down now. Success often breeds mediocrity, it gets people relaxed and the discipline and everything that you fought so hard for goes away very easily. All of a sudden money is available and you know let’s try this let’s try that. We have worked very hard internally, we have managed meetings consistently and regularly to keep the alignment and the discipline going on, we have to be a low-cost producer. I do not want those costs of production going up at all just because we are making money now. We need to continue to go after that lowest unit cost of production and yeah we are not going to find a dollar per pound that we can take off that unit cost anymore that we can find nickels, we can find dimes, we can find a few pennies, those are all added up. Keeping that discipline is what keeps me awake at night”