Mooney factory for sale

[philip_g]

Kinda seems like a hoax

[philip_g]

4 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

Thanks for sharing. If I could get another 200 lb UL and a parachute in my Ovation I would sign up today. Regardless of how we feel about it here, I think the parachute has really given the competition a huge advantage. I wouldn’t mind having and extra tool in the toolbox.

It’s not just the chute. It’s the avionics suite and stupid features like remote unlock and the ability to check fuel and o2 levels remotely. Those little modern touches appeal to their buyers 

[ZuluZulu]

1 hour ago, aviatoreb said:

Ok, ok, don't talk dollars, and cents to me.  I don't understand numbers very well.

Hey, neither does Mooney!

I guess this explains why they've been dead-silent on here after the initial pie-in-the-sky hype.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, geoffb said:

Hard to image it being worth much of anything.  I've spent the last few years musing over the sense of MAPA, or a similar entity type club, buying the TC and becoming the parts supplier.  The market for new airframes seems to be limited to the point of being irrelevant.  But with several thousand in the wild needing support, you could imagine a self-sustaining business providing parts and support.

I would think if Univair can make a buck selling Taylorcraft parts, it should be possible to make a living keeping the Mooneys flying.

While it sounds appealing, how many Mooney specific parts does the average owner really require?   
 

Clarence

[ArtVandelay]

Every Mooney built in the last 17 years is a potential lawsuit, with that kind of liability and not making enough money to pay the bills…no way it’s worth $15mil.
They need someone with deep pockets and is a visionary who is passionate about small GA planes….that’s a rare combination.

[ZuluZulu]

I can't get over the choice to include that December 2020 strategy document with their listing.  It's like they either don't know or haven't decided whether they're still trying to get investors, or if they're trying to sell the assets.  If they're still trying for investors, "here's the strategy we utterly failed to execute for the last ten months, isn't it cute how the stuff we said about 2021 hasn't even come close to happening?  So whaddya say, wanna give us $15 million now?" is one hell of a pitch.

[ArtVandelay]

While it sounds appealing, how many Mooney specific parts does the average owner really require?   
 
Clarence

Well there’s that infamous no back gear spring for 1.

[Guest]

Just now, ArtVandelay said:

Well there’s that infamous no back gear spring for 1.

OK, in an effort to save the company, we’re now buying these from Eaton and selling them for $10,000 each, or you can buy an entire new actuator for $15,000.

Clarence

[1980Mooney]

2 hours ago, Rusty Pilot said:

It looks like 25 acres at an air field with 300,000sf of warehouse for a reasonable price $50/sf.  I suspect it will sell in this hot market.  Not, sure what will be manufactured there next.  Inventory and intellectual property can be split up on sold separately by Mooney or the property owner.  I hate to see our brand end, but not sure about any realist alternative.  Like many of us I fly a vintage Mooney and it meets my mission and budget.

Only problem is that Mooney does not own the factory or warehouse at the field.  It is owned by the City of Kerrville.  They have a long term lease with Mooney.  That could be viewed as a liability rather than an asset if they want to move or shrink.  They have $2.8 million in Leasehold Improvements that they have made on the building that they don't own.  That is not worth anything to Mooney if they leave the building.  Probably the only way to break the lease it is by filing bankruptcy.

Additionally the Kerr County Central Appraisal District shows that Mooney International and Mooney Aircraft Company legal entities OWN NO LAND OR BUILDINGS IN KERRVILLE OR KERR COUNTY

Mooney International gets new airport lease | News | dailytimes.com

Kerrville-Kerr County Airport Mulls New Lease Agreements | Aviation Pros

[ZuluZulu]

Eagerly awaiting updates on the all-new composite Ovation and Acclaim that will start manufacturing next year, then the all-new, clean-sheet composite turboprop starting manufacturing in 2023, followed by the all-new VTOL for passenger and cargo use in 2024!  Such ambitious timelines, why, they must be close to certification by now!

[INA201]

It’s like keeping track of aviation expenses and calculating your hourly cost to fly.  It is almost a futile effort of unnecessary knowledge.  Buying the Mooney factory may be the same thing. You buy it because you love it and it would be a really really expensive hobby.  There may even be tax advantages of all the losses you are going to incur.  It would be cool to own. 

[A64Pilot]

43 minutes ago, ArtVandelay said:

Every Mooney built in the last 17 years is a potential lawsuit, with that kind of liability and not making enough money to pay the bills…no way it’s worth $15mil.
They need someone with deep pockets and is a visionary who is passionate about small GA planes….that’s a rare combination.

It’s very easy to buy a company and not buy the liability of the previous owner.

[1980Mooney]

26 minutes ago, ArtVandelay said:

Every Mooney built in the last 17 years is a potential lawsuit, with that kind of liability and not making enough money to pay the bills…no way it’s worth $15mil.
They need someone with deep pockets and is a visionary who is passionate about small GA planes….that’s a rare combination.

Interesting point.  But every Mooney ever built is a potential lawsuit.  The 2004 bankruptcy only swept away lawsuits that existed at the time.  It does not stop future product liability from planes built before 2004.  Nor will a bankruptcy filing in 2021.

The Art of the (Bad) Deal: Successor Liability in M&A Transactions | Insights | Ballard Spahr

courts have also imposed liability in certain other circumstances that include the following:

• the buyer continues the same product line of the seller

The recent Bravo crash that killed the doctors highlights the problem.  Everyone agrees that the wings folded up (not arguing what put the forces on the wings but they did fold to everyone's surprise).  It is a 1992 model. One person on Beechtalk says that he has parted out many Mooney's and has seen numerous cases of intergranular corrosion on the spar cap doublers.  He suspects "defective heat treatment process (during manufacturing)."  You know the lawyers will be all over this.  And if the FAA finds it to be true then there will be a wing AD and game over for Mooney.   There is a lot of "potential" liability that won't be resolved for a year or two.  What buyer wants that exposure?

 

[EricJ]

4 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

There is a lot of "potential" liability that won't be resolved for a year or two.  What buyer wants that exposure?

Usually potential liability gets balanced against assets and potential ROI, for generated income or IP value or whatever.    In this case they haven't been able to demonstrate that the IP has any value to generate much income for quite a few years, so I suspect this is the end of it.

The most likely path to continued operation would be if a savior shows up like M. Stuart Millar did for Piper.    Piper had much greater prospects at the time than Mooney does now, and he still lost his shirt on it.   Kudos to him for trying, but the Chinese already took a crack at Mooney and failed, and whoever tried to resurrect it after them seems to not be too sanguine about it, either.   I don't think there's really any wind left in this sail.

[ZuluZulu]

At this point LASAR and Maxwell (+ other MSCs?) should form a holding company, negotiate a fair price for the type certificate, tooling, inventory, and any other assets worth a darn, and convert whatever is left of Mooney to a parts support/mods business.  Liquidate everything else.  I wish Mooney could stick around and pump out new planes but it just doesn't look like it's gonna happen.

[1980Mooney]

8 hours ago, toto said:

They mentioned a four-place turbine, but did they also mention a pressurized four place?

It kind of sounded like they were talking about selling a Meridian for the price of a Matrix (but losing two seats and a pressure vessel).

I actually think there’s probably a market for this sort of thing. Many of the SETP owners fly solo or with a single passenger, given the limited useful load of some of these planes. Losing two seats might bring the insurance down a hair.

The icon they used for the four-place turbine gap actually looks like a PC-12 to me, which is *not* an aircraft that suffers from limited useful load

Page 26 specs "Project Phoenix" to "Cruise 30K feet" in 2023.....how do you do that without a pressure vessel?

[1980Mooney]

21 minutes ago, Matt Ward said:

Pretty interesting, thanks for sharing!  Interesting too there is no mention of what they consider their customer and TAM to be.  It seems like Diamond was pretty successful with a barbell strategy, going after the training market with the DA20 while also reaching into the high-end market with the DA50 and such.

The "Mooney Future" Powerpoint Dec 2020 seems clear to me:

• Page 11 - US Financial acquires "A MAJORITY STAKE" - As I suspected all along the CHINESE STILL OWN PART OF MOONEY
• Page 10 - "The Kerrville Factory sits on over 25 acres" - But what it doesn't say is that the FACTORY BUILDINGS AND LAND ARE OWNED BY THE CITY OF KERRVILLE
  • They are in a 20 year lease which is more of a liability than an asset.  The leasehold improvements are only of value if Mooney stays there- it is not like something that they own and can move.  Mooney International gets new airport lease | News | dailytimes.com
• Page 12 - Mooney part sales in 2020 were projected to be $1.0 million....ONLY $1 MILLION PER YEAR.  Even at 50% or 70% margin on the parts that doesn't even cover overhead for that plant in a year.  Now you know why Mooney has to mark everything up about 3 times more than you would pay elsewhere.
• Page 17 - They point out that the problem is that they have stuck with aluminum and steel too long - "Slow to adopt new materials"....Or as they said to Benjamin in the Graduate - "One word: Plastics" (Actually Jonny Pollack says it in Slide 19)
  • Too much vertical integration, making too much themselves, too much employee turnover in an manhour intensive build process
• Page 20 - They think by widening cabin, increasing load, adding CAPS/BRS and Autoland and more speed they will "crush" the competition
  • But in reality that is just playing "Catch-Up"
• Page 21 - They propose to ditch what we consider to be a Mooney and go All Composite.... and later slides with a turboprop or turbine
• Page 24 - It seems to signal that they consider the market for current legacy aluminum Mooney's to be: $1 million 4 seat planes for millionaires.
  • They see a gap in the market for $1.5-2 million 4 seat planes (jets and turboprops) for multi-millionaires
  •  They see the market for 6+ seat jets and turboprops for the uber-rich to be already addressed by others.
• Page 26 - A Carbon empennage being manufactured next year (2022) for Ovation and Acclaim - sounds like they are ditching the hallmark articulating tail and probably going with a solid tail.

So the strategy is to go way upscale but way cheaper than others have been able to deliver. They are going to go "me too" into plastics....composites....just later than the others.  "Me too" in wider cabin, CAPS/BRS.  And "Me Too" with Piper Meridian in small pressurized turboprops.   Like Eclipse was supposed to be to small jets, Mooney will be to small turboprops.  A better Piper Meridian M500 minus 2 seats - $500k cheaper, 50 knots faster, and 500 lbs more payload full fuel.  Mooney will do what Cirrus, Diamond, Pipistrel and Piper can't do - and quicker and cheaper.  A "poor mulit-millionaire's" smaller EPIC E1000.  And a product in 2023.  Pressurization knowhow from the 1964-70 M22 Mustang?...structural composite knowhow from the 2014-2017 failed M10T?....right.

[chriscalandro]

I said it last time and I'll say it again.  The best way to move forward is to throw everything out and start again from a clean slate.

 

There is nothing left here.  It's done.

[toto]

20 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

Pressurization knowhow from the 1964-70 M22 Mustang?

They talked about a turbine, but I didn’t see anything about pressurization. I assumed they were putting a PT6 on a non-inflatable bird. 

[toto]

2 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

Well there’s that infamous no back gear spring for 1.

That spring isn’t manufactured by Mooney though, is it? (Serious question - I thought that Mooney just bought the springs from a fabricator.)

[toto]

11 hours ago, gdwinc said:

The listing includes a "Mooney overview" presentation that provides just a bit of information about the possible gross weight increase, building all carbon Ovations and Acclaims, as well as future development of a 300 knot turbine (Project Phoenix) and VTOL passenger and cargo drones (Project Mache).

It’s hard to imagine that this slide deck was ever intended to be public. It’s actually a perfectly fine pitch deck for investors, where you’re on a road show and execs are available to talk through the game plan. But it’s just brutal to have this document on MS where we can tear it apart. 

I wonder how much investment they were seeking.

[1980Mooney]

22 minutes ago, toto said:

They talked about a turbine, but I didn’t see anything about pressurization. I assumed they were putting a PT6 on a non-inflatable bird. 

You may have missed my reply above - Buried in page 26 they Spec out "Project Phoenix" to "Cruise 30K feet".  I didn't think that the FAA would certify a GA plane to fly passengers above 25,000 ft without pressurization.  I assumed it had to be pressurized to cruise at 30K ft. because you are unconscious in less than a minute.  Maybe I am wrong.

[toto]

1 minute ago, 1980Mooney said:

You may have missed my reply above - Buried in page 26 they Spec out "Project Phoenix" to "Cruise 30K feet".  I didn't think that the FAA would certify a GA plane to fly passengers above 25,000 ft without pressurization.  I assumed it had to be pressurized to cruise at 30K ft. because you are unconscious in less than a minute.  Maybe I am wrong.

No doubt you’re right. They can’t be talking about an unpressurized bird. 

The market for Everest climbers just isn’t big enough

[LANCECASPER]

On 10/18/2021 at 7:40 PM, toto said:

They talked about a turbine, but I didn’t see anything about pressurization. I assumed they were putting a PT6 on a non-inflatable bird. 

You're not going to 30,000 with a mask on. It would have to be pressurized to get FAA approved. If you ran out of oxygen at 30,000 feet  . . . not good.

They wouldn't be starting from scratch. From what I understand one of the Chino projects was a single engine pressurized turboprop. How far they got on it before the plug was pulled, who knows?

[carusoam]

5 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

Its times like this I wish I were stupid filthy rich.

 

Its like who was that guy?  I liked this shaver so much I bought the company!

That guy was Victor Kayam…

He liked his razor so much he bought the company… Remington Razors…

Then he bought Schaefer Stadium (named for the beer) in Foxboro…. Making it Shaver Stadium…

You might recognize Shaver Stadium… as it has become Gillette Stadium…. Owned by some guy named Bob Kraft…

During that time there was a lesser known football team hanging out in that ancient facility…. They hired some lesser known players…. Like Tony Eason, Drew Bledsoe, and that last guy that wasn’t expect to stay very long… Tom Brady…

You might not remember him since he left the Boston area… but,  you might remember who his wife is though… Giselle Bundchen…. Yeah… that Giselle…

I think that guy may have went on to win another game or two… last known to win a SuperBowl the following year… in a place called Tampa…

 

You all remember Tampa don’t you…?  The home of Raymond James Stadium and Mooney Summit!

 

Proof that you can cut a company into small pieces… a reminder that… the individuals that make a company great, the factory, the intellectual property… all have value…

Like the Phoenix that Mooney has always been… it will rise from these ashes as well…

 

Have no fear… if you haven’t lived through this before…  there have been many scarier times in the History of Mooney…

The Mooney is a great plane, flown by great people, serviced by great establishments… designed and built in a great factory by wonderful people…

Wait til you see how things unfold next year!

PP thoughts only, if I could see the future… I would have taken Forrest Gump’s advice, and bought stock in a fruit company…  

That would have set me up with the ability to purchase some really cool machine companies… right about now… 

Go Mooney!  The Forever-Phoenix…

Schaefer anyone?

Best regards,

-a-