value and opportunity

A friendly reader has sent me a recent research report from KBC about Belgian holding companies, including “sum of parts” valuations for both holdings I looked at, Cie Bois Sauvage and Ackermans & Van Haaren. Just for fun, I wanted to compare my valuations with those valuation:

Cie Bois Sauvage

Here is the comparison table:

	Prt	Value	Comment	KBC Valuation
Neuhaus Chocolate	100,00%	300,0	PE 25	265,0
Behrenberg	12,00%	54,0	at 1.5 times book	63,0
Umicore	1,56%	60,5	At market	59,0
Recticel	28,89%	53,4	at market	51,0
Noel Group	29,37%	4,6	PE 10	12,8
Other		20,0	as disclosed	26,7
Codic Real Estate	23,81%	24,5	at book	23,1
other reals estate		60,0	as disclosed	66,8
cash etc.		20,0		11,5
Sum		597,1		578,9
Net debt		-80,0		-61
NAV		517,1		517,9
shares our		1,6		1,6
NAV per share		323,2		323,7

Strangely enoungh, the final valuation per share differs only marginally, despite some divergences, most notably did they value Neuhaus 40 mn lower than I did. Interestingly they have a target price of “only” 235 EUR and consider it as a “hold” position.

Ackermans & Van Haaren

	Value	Method	KBC
DEME	550	Implicit val. Takeover	995
Van Laere	26	0.75 book	44
rent-a-port	5	at book	9
Maatschappi	20	At book	28
Sipef	130	market cap 482	137
Delen	522	1.5 book	970
van Breda	336	1.2 book	470
Extensa	80	0.8 book	187	Extensa + Leasinnv
Leaseinvest	108	Traded	0
Financiere duval	40	at book	45
AnimaCare	40	2x book	21
MAx Green	70	10x Earnings	10
Telemanod	30	10x Earnings	9
Sofinim	255	75% of NAV minus cash	362
GIB			41
Other			39	Belfimas
Net cash holding	148	Q3	-93
Total	2360		3274

Here we can see that they came out clearly much higher than I did. Especially the private banks were valued much more richly at 1.44 bn vs my 850 mn. I think that this could be a little bit aggressive. The other big difference is DEME/CFE. Where I used the initial valuation before the merger, they use the current market value, which is clearly better. This is partly off set by the lower cash balance where I used the balance before the transaction.

Interestingly again, they apply a discount to the NAV, however in Ackerman’s case only -20% vs the -30% at Cie Bois Sauvage. Their target price is 86 EUR and they rate the stock surprisingly as a buy despite an upside of less than 10%.

Overall it is interesting to see their valuation, but honestly I am not overly impressed and it does not change anything in my conclusions.