American Shared Hospital Services (AMEX:AMS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Raymond Stachowiak: Well, I can tell you that we are still very much pursuing proton beam opportunities. Without commenting too much in terms of forward-looking, I can assure you that we probably have looked at more proton beam opportunities in the last 9 months than I recall as a shareholder going back to 20 — or as a board member going back to 2009. And some of those, quite frankly, are not worth our investment because the partnership that we’re asking to become with, be partners with, there’s too much of a CapEx spend involved to support the revenue streams that would be coming in. So we’re very intelligently analyzing these opportunities. And we believe there are a few out there that meet our criteria.

Tony Kamin: Great. Well, thank you guys, very much for all these questions. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. And the next question is a follow-up from Harry with Fort Ashford.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, Gentleman. I thought I would take more time, but if no one else is in the queue. So I like to estimate really general and then gets super specific. So, I mean, I think the elephant in the room is that not only as gentlemen, I thought I’d take more time if no 1 else is in the queue. So I’d like to ask some really general and then get super specific. So I mean I think the elephant in the room is that not only is Ray is an amazing investor, but coming back to the cash on the balance sheet and that optionality. 12 to 15 months from now, our estimate is it’s going to be at least $20 million to $23 million in cash, which will be greater than the market — the current market cap of your company. And so I guess our question is, using Ray’s expertise and the expertise of Peter and Craig, and do you buy other cash flow businesses and sort of become a conglomerate like a mini Berkshire Hathaway and use those cash flows you have to diversify and that cash on the balance sheet opportunistically?

Or do you stick with your knitting and proton beam therapy? And that’s really our big question. Which of those two paths would you like to take?

Raymond Stachowiak: Yes. We’re probably not going to become the Berkshire Hathaway of radiation oncology equipment.

Unidentified Analyst: But have a lot of other interests. I was following your career, you do many more things on that.

Raymond Stachowiak: And I’d like to semi correct you on your cash projections. And yes, maybe our free cash flow at $7 million, $8 million a year level as measured by, let’s say, EBITDA. But it wouldn’t be prudent use of the cash we have, if we — we are going to have some CapEx spend in 2023 because we got upgrades occurring in Ecuador. We’ve got the new site going into Puebla. And we may not necessarily finance 100% of those purchases. We’ll probably put in some level of equity. So there’ll be some CapEx spend equity-wise in those investment opportunities. So let’s be prudent on how we use the resources we have. I will comment that I — 1 of my greatest accomplishments at Shared Imaging was buying $20 million, $25 million, $30 million worth of equipment every year, and I was 100% owner at the time I bought the company, and I never needed to dilute my equity while financing that CapEx spend.

I had developed it with banking relationships. And we feel that our banking relationship with feel Third Bank is solid. We believe Fifth Third Bank is a solid bank, and we’ll be prudent in financially engineering our growth.