Seeking Alpha: Layne Christensen Bumping Along The Bottom

Water infrastructure company Layne Christensen (NASDAQ:LAYN) has been a hurry-up-and-wait story for a while now, and while there have been some encouraging signs of life in parts of the business, there is still a lot work ahead of the company. I do believe the shares look undervalued on a long-term basis, but this company has disappointed a lot of investors over the years and the departure of the CEO, CFO, and chief accounting officer in quick succession make me nervous, as does the company's ongoing leverage to highly competitive, lower-margin businesses.

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Layne Christensen Bumping Along The Bottom

Seeking Alpha: Life In The Slow Layne

Life hasn't been easy for companies that make their living off of municipal infrastructure spending, but Layne Christensen (LAYN) has still managed to "out-struggle" the likes of Mueller Water Products (MWA) and Aegion (AEGN) when it comes to overall performance. Granted Aegion and Mueller are of limited comparative value given the differences in business mix (particularly Mueller), but the point stands that Layne is struggling to find its way to profitability in the current environment. Management continues to tell an optimistic story of future success, but it takes pretty bullish expectations about the future to make these shares look appealing today.

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Life In The Slow Layne

Seeking Alpha: Layne Christensen Still Drilling For Bottom.

Not much of major consequence has changed for Layne Christensen (LAYN) in the last three months, other than a further 20% pullback in the shares. As I wrote back in September, while this company has some interesting turnaround appeal, the timing of that turnaround is very uncertain, as is management's vision of how its primary markets are developing.

The company's Mineral Services operations continue to be of concern to me, as the market environment for mineral exploration seems to hit rock bottom only to keep digging. At the same time, the heavy civil and geoconstruction businesses remain works in progress with little clarity on their new normalized run-rate profitability.

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Layne Christensen Still Drilling For Bottom.

Seeking Alpha: Layne Christensen Still Clear As Mud

Layne Christensen (LAYN) has never been an easy stock, and a variety of problems in recent years hasn't made things any easier. This was always an unusual resources conglomerate, with operations in water, minerals, and energy, but a corruption scandal, downturns in the market, and an inefficient corporate structure have made the situation even more challenging. Though I can see a viewpoint whereby these shares may be undervalued, I think the company is looking at some challenging end market conditions and a lot of internal heavy lifting - Layne Christensen is, I believe, getting better, but it's operating environment is getting worse.

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Layne Christensen Still Clear As Mud

Seeking Alpha: Komatsu Confirms The Smoke, But Declines To Fire

For over a year, investors have been buzzing over the idea that Japanese heavy machinery giant Komatsu (KMTUY.PK) would be interested in acquiring mining equipment manufacturer Joy Global (JOY) and basically matching Caterpillar's (CAT) move to into mining equipment. While the combination would make a certain amount of sense, Komatsu would seem to have laid the rumors to rest in an interview with Bloomberg.

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Komatsu Confirms The Smoke, But Declines To Fire

Investopedia: Layne Christensen Could Be Better

Combining municipal construction operations with mineral exploration sounds like it should be something out of a Dickens novel ("It was the best of times ..."), but that's the basic story at Layne Christensen (Nasdaq:LAYN). While mineral exploration activity continues at a strong pace, municipalities are spending less on water projects. While Layne Christensen has an interesting mix of businesses and seems undervalued today, management must prove that it can consistently deliver free cash flow, if this stock is going to work.

A Disappointing Result 

Layne Christensen did not post an especially strong third quarter. Though this relatively under-followed company beat the revenue expectation and posted 9.3% top line growth, margins and earnings were disappointing.

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