So, How Is Minelab Doing?

[phrunt]

I haven't been keeping up with Minelab's progress now I'm no longer a share holder, fortunately I did get out at a good time, so this is a month or so late but interesting none the less.

I took a few tidbits from the documents which can be read in full here:

https://codan.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2512906.pdf

https://codan.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2512925.pdf

Starting with the Chief Executives introduction message.

It's surprising to see how much Communications has taken over metal detection as the better part of their business, even in R&D they're spending far more on communications now reflecting that market performance I guess.

Some bad news for dealers, they're investing more in e-commerse, we all know what they means, there will be more buying direct from Minelab and cutting out middle men smaller dealers like they've recently done in Malaysia and Indonesia with their own buy direct website - https://minelab.co.id/

You'll likely need to click on the images to see them in a readable form depending on your screen size.

It's interesting the key markets for Gold Detectors are Asia Pacific, yep that includes me 🙂, not the USA though.  The USA is in the treasure detectors category as a key market.  Latin America is a key market for the Gold Detectors though.  I guess not many Americans look for gold anymore by comparison to other countries.

The near term strategy is just to focus on marketing and selling the new Manticore and Nox 700/900, so it doesn't look like we'll see another detector out of Minelab this year, the long awaited CTX and GPZ replacements are a long way away yet, although this was also interesting.  See smaller dealers, increase E-Commerse penetration, they're wanting to do that into more markets!  It will eventually be big box stores and E-Commerse (Minelab direct sales)

They didn't consider the Equinox to be a high end machine, more of a mid range and this Manticore is considered a CTX level machine, maybe there never will be a CTX 4040.  The best coin and treasure detector on the market they say, more accurate discrimination at depth they say....... not sure I can agree with that statement.

Now lets have a look at performance.....

Not looking too crash hot, it shows that gold detectors and Africa were vital to their good figures.

Africa then.... and now  A massive drop in sales to Africa.  The USA is making up some of that slack with the treasure detectors, the Americans must be buying up Manticores and Nox's in big numbers.

Not looking good at all, no matter how it's spun.

So, I guess we won't see anymore new detectors this year, it's very unlikely, surprising the X-Terra didn't even get a mention although it's not a high profit detector, it's to remain competitive at that end of the market and won't be a big money maker regardless of sales I would think.

Engineering investment is now favouring communcations where the money is being made more so than metal detection.

Lucky for me I'm in no rush to buy any new detectors, in fact I may not buy another Minelab in quite some time, I can't see me buying their new GPZ when it comes out unless it's significantly better than my GPZ with X-coils and I have my doubts especially when I don't care about ergonomics, I'm not paying a massive amount of money for a GPZ on a diet.

I doubt I'd even buy the new CTX unless there was some dramatic improvement in performance and the Manticore which I did buy isn't really that great big jump over the Equinox, and in many ways for my needs still well behind the CTX that's a decade old.

Maybe their engineers have finally hit the wall when it comes to performance.

 

 

[GB_Amateur]

9 hours ago, phrunt said:

It's interesting the key markets for Gold Detectors are Asia Pacific, yep that includes me 🙂, not the USA though.  The USA is in the treasure detectors category as a key market.  Latin America is a key market for the Gold Detectors though.  I guess not many Americans look for gold anymore by comparison to other countries.

'Gold Prospectors' were listed on both slides (Recreation and Gold Mining).  Presumably the split has to do with amateur vs. professional use.  Have the resources that interest the pros been depleted in North America vs., for example, South America?

Thanks for the report of the report, especially for distilling it down to the key pages.  Seems their profits on the metal detecting side are down considerably comparing first half of FY23 to first half of FY22.  But will the release of the three new IB/VLF's (deep into first half of FY23 before they even started trickling in) make up for much of that deficit?  I suppose FY22 included the early sales of the GPX6000 which may be a higher profit detector (unit price and count) since it is sought by both amateurs and small-scale pros alike.  As always, "time will tell".

[Jeff McClendon]

Minelab pre-Covid released one of the best VLF metal detectors of all time with the Equinox 600/800 and quickly followed it up with the best beginner level VLF simultaneous multi frequency detector of all time with the Vanquish series. Those two detectors are still really hard to beat. 

Minelab has "improved" (not sure yet since the Equinox 600/800 and Vanquish are really great detectors) on that success with the release of the Manticore, Equinox 700/900 and X-Terra Pro this year. Next years market report will be very telling as far as whether those three are good sellers or not.

Minelab's venturing into more e-commerce..........is that more to boost sales or is it because that form of business has already proven itself to be very lucrative for Minelab.

GPX 6000 sales. I wish there was a breakout in their report for that specific detector.

I often wonder how much forums like this one actually influence sales.

[Steve Herschbach]

All gold rushes eventually end, and it looks like the metal detector driven part of the African Gold Rush has collapsed. That's normal. Easy surface finds by individual prospectors always play out quickly, and then the big boys come in and consolidate the business of mining the harder to find gold. For Minelab though this means real trouble, as it will be very hard if not impossible to generate the kind of numbers that they saw with 6000 and 7000 machines. High price detectors with huge margins. No doubt the market there is flooded with used detectors and Chinese knockoffs making it even worse.

Then add in the fact that anyone ignoring the goldfields playing out in Oz and the U.S. is just whistling past the graveyard. Add it all up and the gold prospecting juggernaut that Minelab rode for so long is now over, and no new whiz bang nugget machine is going to change that. They are instead trying hard to fill the gap with coin and relic, but $1500 detector sales will not replace $8000 sales. They face growing competition in coin and relic and so can't just name the price, but instead are pumping out low cost machines to compete.

The real answer for Codan will be to continue to diversify away from detectors into other areas. The future is not bright for growth in metal detecting, more like a hard fight for lower margin sales with stiffer competition.

There very well might not be a CTX 4040 as the ability to sell very high priced detectors may be at an end. What could another $2500 model realistically do that would get people to shell out the bucks? Will people really line up for a $8000 GPZ 8000 like they might have done in the past? I won't be in that line personally, and I'm not sure I'll be alone standing on the sidelines when the time comes. It's just too much money to dump into what I am sure will be a very marginal improvement at best. More ergonomic? Sure. Better on small gold? I doubt it. Maybe another inch on a 6 ounce nugget? Maybe. But are there really that many of those at depth that have been missed as people imagine? Not in my locations.

I'm glad I'm not in the metal detecting business anymore, and sure won't be buying Codan stock.

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The real answer for Codan will be to continue to diversify away from detectors into other areas. The future in not bright for growth in metal detecting, more like a hard fight for fewer sales with stiffer competition.

An option for Codan is to sell off Minelab.  Would we consumers be better off if that were to occur?

There seem to be a couple themes that pop up here occasionally:  1) "buy American!" and 2) "how do we save metal detecting"? 

1) In 2023 how much does it matter where a detector is designed and (separate issue) made?  Is country of origin more important than product quality and performance?  Product price?  I doubt it matters much in most of the world.  Does putting importance on that actually help a company survive/thrive in the long run?  I think most of us prefer competition.  I don't see how assigning importance to nationality helps that.  One could argue that the demise of USA detector manufacturers was partly a result of this traditional viewpoint, but that may simply be a convenient, unrelated piece of information.

2) I have multiple interests that share something in common:  'membership'/motivation are dominated by old people.  We revert to when we took up the endeavor (many of us were young then) and how much fun and excitement were part of it at that time.  We then (possibly) mistakenly think that young people today would have that same experience.  Taking off the proponent hat and standing back looking at the situation objectively, it doesn't seem as though that is the case.

The detector manufacturers have to deal with the above when trying to build/keep a profitable business.  Those who have other forms of income (parent companies Codan and First Texas being examples) sometimes seem to be out-of-sync with some of our wishes but they have different priorities and IMO it helps to understand that.

[phrunt]

5 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

'Gold Prospectors' were listed on both slides (Recreation and Gold Mining).  Presumably the split has to do with amateur vs. professional use.  Have the resources that interest the pros been depleted in North America vs., for example, South America?

The left side is their recreational detectors, Gold Monster 1000, Equinox etc, the right is the GPX and GPZ.  So they associate American prospectors with more VLF sales than high end machines. 

Steve pretty much articulated my thoughts better than I could, I entirely agree with his comment.

They were forced to focus on VLF's more with the gold machine market slowing, they even said it in their last investor report they're going to focus on "treasure" detectors more in the future, exactly what they've done.  Will there be a GPZ 8000? I honestly don't know, it doesn't seem like it in the near future and they know if they do it and want the high price they have to justify it's release, it needs to be better and a lot better for people to buy it, lighter is a given, everyone expects that but true performance improvements, and that has been made harder by X-coils with their variety of sizes and types of coils.  If part of their reason holding back coils was to leave something in the tank for the 8000 that's well and truly out of the picture now as people will compare the 8000 to the 7000 with the NF coils and the X-coils, if anything it might boost the sales of coils just like the GPX 6000 release did, people wanted more sensitivity without buying another expensive detector, solution, small coil for their GPZ.  They could just make their customers happy and release a range of Minelab coils for the GPZ, but I guess there just isn't the money in that for them but still, I think the right thing to do for people that paid so much for the detector to give it some more support especially if a GPZ 8000 is off the cards for the time being.

Where to from here for Minelab, that's the interesting question, I can't predict their future, too many unknowns.  It's clearly getting so hard to make detectors better than previous models so people really do have less reason to upgrade.  Is the Manticore worth the price difference or the upgrade for someone that has an 800? I can't hand on my heart say it is, yes it's better in many ways, but is it worth the upgrade for most people? probably not.

[jasong]

Wasn't there some statement a year back that X amount of new detectors was set to release in fiscal 2023 by Minelab? Did we already hit X or are they falling short of whatever that number was due to market declines? I wasn't counting or keeping track, but I'm curious now. I thought one was likely to be the GPZ successor, or maybe just hoping. 

[phrunt]

16 minutes ago, jasong said:

Wasn't there some statement a year back that X amount of new detectors was set to release in fiscal 2023 by Minelab? Did we already hit X or are they falling short of whatever that number was due to market declines? I wasn't counting or keeping track, but I'm curious now.

I don't recall there being a number, either way they've released a Manticore, X-Terra, Equinox 700 and Equinox 900.  That seems to be it for now.

I think the results above explain the heavy discounting on the GPX 6000 though, perhaps gone are the days of the super high priced detectors.