Great Plains Holdings is revenue diversified via a dual focus on two very different markets. On the one hand, GTPH is pursuing broad commercial real estate investment ventures in North America via their wholly-owned Ashland Holdings, LLC subsidiary, with targets spanning the apartment building sector and other dwellings like manufactured housing for retirees, as well as office space and self-storage (largely in the south/southeastern U.S. and Midwest). On the other hand, the company maintains a manufacturing and marketing business doing plastic, scaled-down versions of men’s urinals for the young male toilet-training market via their Lil Marc, Inc. subsidiary, which has been around for over a decade and a half now.
Ashland’s real estate portfolio is shaping up nicely here in 2014, with the completion several days ahead of schedule last month of renovations on the company’s HQ in Wildwood, Florida. Overhaul of the 1.4k square foot office building has helped bring down operational overhead, while also alleviating Lil Marc’s $12k annual leasing costs for requisite warehouse space. Simultaneously, the renovation puts some $18k in future annual revenues on the table, as the company is now pursuing plans to lease three office spaces inside the facility to generate additional income. This key move to reduce operating costs and increase revenues fits in nicely with the company’s goal of maintaining zero debt and speaks volumes about GTPH, which, according to the exclusive QualityStocks interview with COO, Denis Espinoza, released on May 8, is sitting on $1.4M in cash. This enviably strong cash position is further reinforced by major executives not taking any compensation and yet having considerable skin in the game, with large stock positions being held by these insiders. Since the September 2013 entry by Espinoza and CEO Kent Campbell, whose capital injections have really lit a fire under the company’s operations, several major milestones have also been reached, setting GTPH up for a strong showing in 2014.
The aforementioned renovations come just weeks after the announcement (Apr 16) of Ashland’s private placement investment in TexStar Energy Corp. Preferred Partner JV III limited partnership, which is focused on the 150-acre Engleke lease (Luling-Branyon field) in Guadalupe County, Texas. With estimated recoverable oil reserves of nearly 3M bbls according to Exploration Geologist John Sobehrad, using enhanced oil recovery techniques (roughly $310M worth), this looks to be a major play for GTPH’s real estate-focused subsidiary and one that will bring in healthy proceeds from the net revenue interest on the lease. TexStar’s analysis indicates that output per well will be significantly enhanced once new recovery techniques are implemented and these two announcements through Ashland make it a very bullish Q1 for GTPH, a quarter which has been marked by considerably rapid expansion of their real estate footprint, typified by entry into this promising Austin Chalk formation project.
Over on the LiL Marc front, the company’s aggressive marketing push is still going strong five months out from the campaign’s initial kick off and the company continues to chew through their Training Urinal inventory on strength of solid uptake by the end market. Reception of the product has been excellent with orders running through the company’s recently overhauled www.LiLMarc.com site, which has been modernized to facilitate customer ease of use and sales alike. Meanwhile, the company has been hard at work building an extensive brick-and-mortar retail client list in order to maximize market share on the nearly 2M boys born each year in the U.S. alone (2010 CDC figures). GTPH has done a great job putting this innovative solution before the consumer with their new marketing campaign and investors can expect continued success for the company in this area, especially considering the healthy organic reception of the product prior to such marketing, with people just searching the web for solutions and finding the LiL Marc potty training product for boys.
With plans to roll out a growing presence in the roughly $24B a year self-storage space in 2014, a space which is currently dominated by small handful of major players, making it a prime target for a smaller niche operator to break into, GTPH looks really hot, especially when you consider their strong cash position and lack of debt. Key commercial real estate expansions will continue to fuel the company’s bottom line and investors will want to keep a close eye on GTPH for news about their plans for the construction of a self-storage unit now that the company has come in off the road from their presentation May 13 and 14 at the widely-attended Las Vegas Money Show.
To get more info on Great Plains Holdings, please visit http://www.gtph.com
Let us hear your thoughts: Great Plains Holdings, Inc. Message Board
