Bison Building Materials and its related units incurred a net loss of $436,595 during September, the No. 14 dealer on the ProSales 100 reported to a federal bankruptcy judge. That pushes the Houston-based company's net losses to more than $1.8 million since it entered Chapter 11 protection from creditors in late June.
Only three of Bison's eight legal units reported any activity in court filings last week, and of those only Bison Building Materials itself had anything above a few thousand dollars' worth of activity. That unit posted $10.2 million in revenues and $10.3 million in disbursements during September, plus another $93,755 in payments to insiders and to professionals assisting it during its Chapter 11 reorganization. Bison Building Materials recorded a gross profit of $2.9 million during the month, but all of that was eaten up by general and administrative expenses.
As before, roughly 10% of the company's accounts receivable are more than 91 days past due.
Bison---America's 14th-biggest LBM operation, according to the 2009 ProSales 100--filed for Chapter 11 protection on June 28. It recorded a loss of $16.1 million in $214 million in revenue during the fiscal year ended last April 30, and it forecasts it will accumulate a negative net cash flow through Halloween reaching $2.2 million.
In court filings, Bison said its problems came after it began to expand along the Interstate 35 corridor in 2005 and then into Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Ohio and New Mexico. "However, when the housing downturn occurred, the Debtors instituted a downsizing program and retrenched to its core Texas business" in metro Houston, one motion states. But even after it left the other markets, it still had to make lease payments on the locations that it closed.
In August, a federal bankruptcy judge freed Bison from 11 property leases that it said had contributed to its financial problems.
