Techcomp: A dragon can't fly above Europe?

(Not vested) This blog is about why I didn't move on with a possible purchase. 

I owned Techcomp shares in the 2010-11. Made some capital gain about 20% in 1 year holding period.

On and off, I did look at Techcomp. It has a good qualatative story. Distributor and manufacturer of Analytical and medical equipments, in the 2009-2011, the growth story was the expansion of manufacturing arm and the acquistion of European company for technological advances and to break into the Europe markets. The food scares in China and the ramp up in health care spending are supposed to be big catalysts for its products. 

It has never really turn around the Europe business but managed limp around ok. It's first major problem come when Sino-Japanese relations took a turn for the worse, and being a distributor for a number of Japanese products, business was affected. 

There was some renewed interest recently when there was a share placement to strategic investors, I look again, thinking sino-Japanese relations is a one off event when business is concerned. I saw the weak current ratio and stopped digging. 

Then, few days ago, Europe announced QE, so if QE works, then will Techcomp Europe ventures finally pay off. Before 2010, it did have very consistent growth in both top and bottom lines. Maybe with the flush of liquidity, the PRC company can finally swim in Europe waters and soar. This coincide with a about 30% fall in price to 25 cents ( below NAV) just days earlier, and I decided to take a third look.

 

I decided to look beyond the weak balance sheet for a possible turnaround play. I track the company acquistions pattern, rather frequent if we include the latest American company acquisition. 

I was still rather disturbed. The companies brought by the Techcomp has really diverse manufacturing capabilities. What exactly is Techcomp looking for? Also, manufacturing is making loss according to the most recent  AR, I thought Medical equipments has rather good margins, and whatever happened to the clean cabinets used in hospitals for PRC? 

I look away again, I need another drastic fall in price or catalyst to happen before I look at in again.