Info Aqualung Financial Troubles

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So have we concluded in scubaboard expert land that Aqualung is indeed done and falling in slow motion about to make a thunderous rumble as it hits the ground?
Eric.

To give you an idea of what's going on and just as a starter. Three weeks ago on the 7th December 2023 sitting on a desk in the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher an American multinational law firm headquartered in Los Angeles California and well known for its litigation practice, in particular its strength in appellate law on a desk in the plush office lay a bunch of papers with Aqualung written on them with some words added to sign.

The firm had represented Mark Zuckerberg in a $17 billion contract dispute with a purported seed money financier. It had also represented Apple against Epic Games in a lawsuit related to Apple's practices in the App Store and the removal of Fortnite from the App Store. It had also represented CNN in its lawsuit against the then President Trump and staff members on the basis of Jim Acosta's right to a "hard pass" clearance to enter the White House.

Pursuant to this a certain subscription agreement was made and signed on the day in question between Aqualung Corporate and Barings Global Private Loans. Also with Barings European Direct Lending and Barings Segregated Loans with a new money player added named as the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company all with Aqualung Corporate agreeing to issue non convertible bonds to the tune of €25,000,000 (Twenty Five Million Euro)

Further the guarantee agreement between Aqualung Corporate as issuer and Aqualung International and the original charger as guarantors all the folk in charge guaranteed the performance of all the obligations in the Guarantee agreement.

However as we haven't yet even started to scratch what's going on here in this forum. But a €25 Million loan is going to take some effort to pay back in plastic fins. rash vests and neoprene Hot Pants for technical divers. Granted some may disagree I guess. feel free. Albeit the strong are staying silent about Aqualung (unless provoked) but as for the scuba board forum members I think they have concluded already. Iain
 
The only thing I care about is the future of the Conshelf 14 and the 1085 second stage.
If there was a way to somehow extract that division out of the rest of the mess and preserve that entity as a stand alone enterprise would be great. From some of the intel I have gathered, and if I’m wrong someone please correct me, but from what I understand the current Conshelf 14/1085 all metal second stage are made in the US in LA at an undisclosed location where it has been for years. The plant only makes that combo for the military and commercial sector.
If they were to open that up to recreational buy I’ll bet they could successfully continue production and preserve those remaining jobs.
The rest of Aqualung I could card less about. I think they turned gimmicky and I didn’t care for most of their gear line.
 
The only thing I care about is the future of the Conshelf 14 and the 1085 second stage.
If there was a way to somehow extract that division out of the rest of the mess and preserve that entity as a stand alone enterprise would be great.
Heck Eric.

We get this far on the post and some 25 million euros later then you go and bring up the XIV. :wink:

I may regret saying this in an open divers forum but I was the author of the US.Divers Conshelf XIV. Manufacturing Inspection and Test Procedures. Documents Drawings and IPP procedures prior to it being adopted by the Royal Navy for fleet use. Every nut bolt, shape contour, fit and clearance.
That division as you put it was extracted out of the rest of the mess many moons ago.
It's called in some quarters an impact statement. I guess multi coloured hot pants technical shorts also available in black, a black tee shirt, a beanie hat for a bald scalp and with almost the entire range of product being imported now out of China doesn't quite do it for you. Me too LOL. Iain.
 
As a fin only company, we have always worked with the full-line manufacturers and distributors. And Force Fin dealers of course always sold Force Fins along with their main-line brand. Force Fins are unique so only the most simple-minded think of them as competitive with any other brand of fin.
Throughout dive history, most military units around the world purchase equipment from Aqualung or ScubaPro – Rocket Fin and Jet Fin. Special Forces however have more latitude in their purchase decisions and after much testing and putting Force Fins through the paces operationally, many units requested their dive kits outfitted with Force Fins. It was the Aqualung distributors globally that complied with customer demands and sent their request for purchase on a regular basis.
We, of course, provided distributor pricing to Aqualung distributors in those countries where we did not have Force Fin distributors active. This went on for many years and amounted to a chunk of change. So, I decided to call the President, Don Rockwell and requested a meeting. Susanne and I drove down to Southern California and went into their big meeting room. We thanked him for the business and shared future Force Fin designs. I was hoping we could work together on the OPS which was developed for Jean Michael Cousteau and his Oceans Future Team.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e2yGXBhTYI It was still in its developmental stage and required some engineering to be market ready. To me, it seemed like a product good for collaboration.
I wish I had a camera to capture the looks on the Aqualung staff in the room. Guess what? That slowed down the momentum of replacing heavy, inefficient Rocket and Jet Fins, among other elite divers. There are a few independent distributors who chose servicing their customers over Aqualung Management demands, but others complied.
Now the moral of the story is we always work with others to provide the best product for the customer. Industries grow through collaboration. As they say, united we stand and divided we fall MILITARY Archives - Force Fins | Worlds Finest Fins for Swimming, Diving, Bellyboating
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So have we concluded in scubaboard expert land that Aqualung is indeed done and falling in slow motion about to make a thunderous rumble as it hits the ground?
bankrupt hemingway.png

I'm going off my 3 decades in the dive industry and a MBA...
 
Heck Cerich You nailed it. How did you knows soon? You should have said this three weeks ago.
I said it in this thread in July.. LOL. That's what I was quoting.


Since then have sometimes paid attention, mostly not as there are still a couple more acts and an intermission or two to go.
 
I didn't say a heart attack.. LOL
Everything hinges on if AL can deliver the double digit growth forecast in Horizon 2027. They are the biggest brand in diving, that makes double digit growth more difficult. Look at their forecast for 2023 that says 30% growth and yet only having Q1 and 2 growth forecast of 7.5% in dive. Hmmm, well, let's see how that pans out. Dive industry indicates recessions early and lags them in recovery has been my observation in almost 3 decades in the game. That makes growth hard even when the larger economy is roaring back. What are the current and forecasted global economic indicators now? If you paid me to do a dive industry PESTEL right now, it would be thick enough to bind.

Especially with announced SKU reduction (been there before when at Mares, it had some good calls, some really bad, mostly filled the warehouse with odds and sods inventory that needed to be moved, and was at a steep discount eventually which ate on main line sales of SKU's that had margin). Maintaining market position means owning as much shelf space in the retailers as possible, that takes SKU's unless you want to see it replaced by other brands. Sometimes the margin and/or turns of some SKU's look really bad compared to your star SKU's and seem low hanging fruit to kill off. Then the retailers replace with another brand and that opens the competitors catalogue to them, which nibbles away at all your offerings sell thru. Then there are assumptions on stuff like colours. Say you sell a fin in 6 colours, 3 of the colours outsell the others by double digit factors.. so you kill the 3 slow seller colours expecting that the buy will shift to the 3 better selling anyhow. Then it doesn't and you are not just seeing the other brands fill the void but you lost 20-30% of the sales of that product while saving maybe 10% (that would be a high savings) by efficiencies of offering less colours.

Plus, some areas are decent revenue but super low margins like rental gear. It's easy to make the argument that it's too much work for the ROI. So, those products don't just help keep your production lines busy or buying strength with suppliers (important) but also serve a vital but hard to quantify marketing value. Big money types like Barings want stuff quantified, and in the dive industry quantifying the "big" stuff is near impossible (like actual industry size) let alone that a $$ amount on what each rental set sold is worth in marketing dollars. It doesn't help that not only is rental equipment among your lowest margin item, that is tied to your brand recognition, it also has to be the highest quality to survive that use not just to keep your return/warranty cost low but also how much than can impact your brand reputation among the dive pros that will be annoyed if your rental regs need full service attention every couple years (because most places don't actually follow any service schedule and fix when the broken pile is huge and they don't have enough working stuff to ignore said big pile). If they are dealing with that pile always, your brand is "crap" and let that continue for 5 years and your brand is gonna feel impact in all areas of business, not just rental market. A bean counter will argue to not chase it for good reasons, a sales guy will want to and engineers will be all over the place depending on if they like the challenge or not so much. Shipping dept hates it, because shipping to many places where diving is popular is really annoying.
Also, don't forget that as they reduce sku's, look at what if any brands to spin away or consolidate, they have distribution contracts (not talking dealers, who often have a dealer agreement with a distributer) all over the place and the AL distributers have a fairly large buy in and stocking requirement. having been in more than a few AL distributers offices and warehouses, I can say that as corporate does SKU reduction etc, it will lag at the distributer level. Lots of friction there. If Johnson Outdoors and HEAD aren't targeting (wine, dine and bribe) the AL distributers right now, they are fools (Ok, not the bribe part, follow business laws of where you operate, or have your office in a less legal oversight jurisdiction go and bribe them without you knowing about it)
Barings is gonna place alot on the plate of the AL boss, looking at them as an industry expert in the general category of sporting goods (and the amount of people in high jobs in diving with a ski background that leverage that to run dive companies is amazing.. like seriously. I have a theory on the "why" of that that will just piss them off, but basically can be summed up as coming from a place of privledge that can afford a good university education while spending enough time skiing to get good and known enough to move into that industry after graduation. Move up in a bigger industry and hit a ceiling, make a move into the smaller dive industry in a higher position because they managed bigger #'s in ski and flop around like a poddle thrown overboard but looking really good while doing it in the new much smaller industry that has a very different mentality and broader demographic (still good) consumer base. The word dilettante may even apply... In fairness however, some of them are awesome.. so time will tell I guess. But the current C level at AL is much more likely to feel comfortable doing a sales meeting at the chalet than on a live aboard.
In the early 70's some big name investment groups bought into diving, they got indigestion and by the late 80's they had pretty much all called it a day. Air Liquid an exception because history and AL and even Johnson who loved SP let it go away until Helen took it back, because of emotion (loves the SP brand, I like thinking I played a small part when I sold a bunch of Atomic regs to her.. a year later she bought SP, the company, again and replaced the couple dozen Atomic regs with SP regs). Huish are divers and passionate, not really numbers only investors as well, not even close. EVERY numbers based investment joint avoided diving after the lesson of the 70-80's until PADI sold then AL. The industry (except PADI) is weaker than it was then when it didn't work out, how is it gonna work out this time? On the gear side, retail and wholesale prices have never been lower in inflation adjusted dollar, margins are drastically lower than back then at wholesale and retail and the volume has not really budged in 20 years even with more divers getting certified (which is why PADI is ..well PADI) .
Honestly, I think AL can limp a decade more before anything radical happens, it could turn around but nothing in Horizon 2027 (nor my take on the dive industry tells me it will) it sounds like something i would write for an assignment when I did my MBA, not something that really understand the dive industry. I can't imagine that Barings will be interested in any risk in strategic direction or disruption, and IMHO, that is gonna have to happen for a brand to to grow in diving. They are just gonna have managers doing "I am gonna have to MBA the s&it out of this" (nod to Matt Damon and Martian) until they can pass the spud to another, and the spud will have a few more sprouts and soft spots all while this occurs your mba boss. That of course is what M&A is all about. By the way, M&A is down in that that industry as well, take a gander at the latest Goldman Sachs quarterly. Given that is down, how many are gonna gamble on diving in this environment?

So.. that is my slightly longer reply to the question, I'm going to return to my sabbatical now.
gonna fix a broken link from this old post

MBA bosses save more than make money
 
Force Fins are unique so only the most simple-minded think of them as competitive with any other brand of fin.
Try sitting in a room opposite a Royal Navy desk officer with a written purchase order on it for 2000 pairs of Jet/ Rocket fins that's about to have your name written on it. All required in 4-6 weeks with your NATO NSN number and Aqualung et al or anyone else have no idea you're doing this.

That's 4000 individual blades and straps with 8000 non magnetic buckles to be attached and the whole Lot magnetically ranged. All Packed in cardboard boxes on pallets 100 at a time so big you have to climb in the box to pack them. Multiply that Royal Navy order with the same amount for The Royal Malaysian Navy. Then the Sultan of Oman and tell me again that only the simple minded think Force Fins or any other brand of fin as a competitor. You're darn right they do. Back then even ducks swimming in a pond were considered competitors. And folk wonder why I still like a duck stir fry with Hoisin sauce.
 
while the more attractive bits (Apeks, PPS, ?) are sold off.

What about them is attractive? Prior financial data showed Apeks wasn't boosting the bottom line, so unless that has dramatically changed, thats out. As for PPS, what do they have that others want, an expired transmitter patent?

Shearwater dominates the tech market and Garmin has been putting up heavy numbers lately in rec, so how can PPS compete? The PPS portfolio is nothing compared to the technology leverage of the likes of Garmin, and we haven't even touched the potential of a giant like Apple. I even worry for the future of Shearwater given the financial and technological resources of their competitors.

Once those are gone, the remainder of AL will be sold for whatever they can get.

This is spot on. I think they will attempt to recover losses, but the decline is inevitable. The company as a whole is in an unrecoverable position, where the interest payments on debt has been, or will be, outpacing their earnings.
 
What about them is attractive? Prior financial data showed Apeks wasn't boosting the bottom line, so unless that has dramatically changed, thats out. As for PPS, what do they have that others want, an expired transmitter patent?

Shearwater dominates the tech market and Garmin has been putting up heavy numbers lately in rec, so how can PPS compete? The PPS portfolio is nothing compared to the technology leverage of the likes of Garmin, and we haven't even touched the potential of a giant like Apple. I even worry for the future of Shearwater given the financial and technological resources of their competitors.



This is spot on. I think they will attempt to recover losses, but the decline is inevitable.
Well, with now almost $200,000,000 USD in debt after the latest 25 million euros, dept servicing is gonna show what parts of AL have value...sooner than later.

25 million euros and cash flow to turn it around for a company with their revenue maybe will keep the wood stove luke warm, Trying to boil water on it and keep the house warm in a Newfoundland winter will take some mad skills. We shall see if they have anyone with the chops, real vision, tenacity, imagination, and courage to make it happen.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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