Zoltek Companies Inc. is an applied technology and advanced
materials company. The company has a market cap of $268 million;
its shares were traded at around $8.35 with a P/E ratio of 17.7
and P/S ratio of 1.8.
Zoltek CEO Rumy Zsolt has been continually increasing his shares
of ZOLT since August of 2008, purchasing about 200,000 shares
throughout a four-year period. Zsolt most recently purchased
45,195 shares of Zoltek at an average price of $7.80 on May 30,
2012, the purchase costing his $352,500. Since his trade, the
company's shares have increased by 7.05%.
Zsolt has served at Zoltek's chairman, CEO, CFO, and president
ever since founding the company in 1975. Prior to his work at
Zoltek, Mr. Zsolt worked as an accounts manager for General
Electric (
GE
), as well as an industrial marketing manager for Monsanto
Company (
MON
).
Previously, ZOLT was owned by GuruFocus gurus
George Soros
and
Robert Olstein
. Each of these gurus held the company for roughly a quarter
before selling out.
George Soros
sold out his shares of ZOLT during the fourth quarter of 2007,
and
Robert Olstein
sold out his shares during the third quarter of 2008.
Meanwhile, other insiders aside from CEO Rumy Zsolt have also
been steadily increasing their positions in the company. Like
Zsolt, they first began increasing their positions in the company
during August of 2008. However, throughout the course of the year
2007, insiders, including Zoltek's CEO, had been selling off
their shares of ZOLT at prices ranging from $30.72 to $42.06 per
share, as indicated by GuruFocus insider trade data (link here).
Over the last ten years, ZOLT has reported negative earnings for
all years by one (in 2008). The company has a predictability
rating of 1 star, and has a margin of safety of -29%, as
calculated by GuruFocus' DCF Calculator (link here). However, it
must been kept in mind that DCF results may not be accurate, due
to the low business predictability of ZOLT.
Looking back at ZOLT's public trading history, we see that ZOLT
once traded at prices upwards of $50 per share. This occurred at
around the third and fourth quarters of 2011. Interestingly, this
was around the same time that insiders were heavily selling off
their shares of ZOLT. In fact, Zoltek CEO Rumy Zsolt sold 250,000
shares of ZOLT on Aug. 20, 2007, just a little over two weeks
after the stock reached its all-time record high of $51.39 on
Aug. 9, 2007.
Although debt is not a pressing problem for ZOLT, as the company
had $7.76 million of long-term debt and has sufficient cash to
pay it off, it should be noted that the company's cash on hand is
steadily decreasing to cover costs of unprofitable operations. In
2007, the company issued $146 million worth of stock. The
company's $322 million worth of assets as of September 2011
consist primarily of equipment and property ownership.About
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