IGE + XAO SA (ISIN FR0000030827) – another hidden French champion ?
DISCLAIMER: The stock discussed in the following post is a very illiquid French small cap. The author might own the stock. Please do your own research. Do not blindly follow recommendations neither on this blog nor anywhere else.
Sometimes investment ideas are created from quite random events. I was looking into my database for interesting French stocks (as always). Out of interest, I thought that I want to tackle a French software stock next.
Among the few software stocks I just picked randomly the company called “IGE + XAO SA” because of its strange name. And guess what ? This company is creating CAD software for electrical installations with Gerard Perrier, my last stock pick as one of the major clients.
So despite the rather expensive valuation numbers, I decided to dig a little bit deeper.
“Tradition” Valuation metrics:
P/E Trailing 14.2
P/B 2,9
P/S 2.6
EV/EBITDA 5.1
Dividend yield 1.8%
Market cap EUR 61 mn
Not so exciting at first. However, when I ran IGE through my checklist, it scored very high (20 out of 27), at par for instance with Vetropack and AS Creation mostly due to the following facts:
– great free cashflow generation (FCF on average 1.2x Earnings !!!)
– rock solid balance sheet with ~15 EUR net cash per share
– Management owns 20%+ of company, CEO & founder still on board
– company started to significantly repurchase shares again in 2012 (Sharecount decreased by 20% since 2008)
If I would take into account net cash and the share repurchases, IGE would even met my P/E and dividend criteria, scoring 22 out of 27, equal with Tonnelerie.
So the result from the checklist is clear: Dig deeper !!!!
Business model / “Scuttlebutt”:
The company is mainly a Software company which, according to their Webpage offers the following products:
The Electrical CAD Software Specialist and you….
For over 26 years, the IGE+XAO Group has been a software publisher designing, producing, selling and ensuring the maintenance of a range of Computer Aided Design software (called “CAD”). These CAD software products have been designed to help manufacturers in the design and maintenance of the electrical part of production processes. This type of CAD is called “Electrical CAD”. IGE+XAO has built a range of Electrical CAD software designed for all the manufacturers, which functions either with an independent computer or with a company network.
So this is a very specialized “niche”. If I search for the German “Elektro CAD” in Google, it is already clear that IGE is not the only one offering this kind of Software.
The first question I would ask myself: “General” CAD Software is used everywhere, so can’t just the general CAD packages take over this job ? Well, according to this site ( a competitor) , this doesn’t seem to be so easy.
There seems to be also some competing products, for instance I found this German discussion board where different E-CAD or CAE systems are discussed. One of their main products, CADdy seems to be based on a old German DOS program and has been developed further by IGE.
Overall, I think that with specialised software like this, one should see quite significant network effects, i.e. if one product gains dominance, than this will be self-sustaining as there is little incentive to use different programs of that complexity for instance when you switch firms. I browsed a little bit in CAD forums and this has been confirmed quite often, for instance here. So once a program in this area is used and people are educated on this program, they will want to use it further on. What I found interesting is the fact that in this forum, A German IGE +XAO employee actively moderates everything which has to do with their products.
I think this is also the reason why they have 70% market share in France according to their 2011/2012 investor presentation. Which, of course, makes gaining market shares in other countries quite difficult.
This 70% market share might also explain the nice margins the company is enjoying. 20.9% Operating margin and 18.4% net margin are clearly not something one finds easily, not even with software companies.
ROE looks OK with 20%, however we should not forget, that basically all the equity is basically net cash and only a small part of that is really needed.
Those margins are on par or even better as heavyweight software champions like SAP or Dassault or CAD expert Nemetschek. Teh only difference is that those companies are much more expensive
As it looks for now, their business isn’t subject to the overall slow down in the French economy. In their latest half year report from the beginning of April, they still show solid growth rates of 5%. Net income didn’t grow due to higher tax expenses, but that should be a one time effect.
Net profit margin development
One thing that puzzled me, was the development of net margins. We can see that with one exception (a jump in 2008), Net margins increased steadily from 7.4% in 2002 to a fantastic 18.4% in 2012.
| NI margin | |
|---|---|
| 31.12.2002 | 7.4% |
| 31.12.2003 | 7.6% |
| 31.12.2004 | 8.3% |
| 30.12.2005 | 8.5% |
| 29.12.2006 | 10.4% |
| 31.12.2007 | 11.8% |
| 31.12.2008 | 15.3% |
| 31.12.2009 | 12.6% |
| 31.12.2010 | 14.1% |
| 30.12.2011 | 16.2% |
| 31.12.2012 | 18.4% |
In my opinion, this creates a series of questions:
– how did they achieve this ?
– are those margins stable ?
– do we have to expect reversion to the mean at some point in time ?
– what would be the “Mean” for margins ?
In order to understand better the increase in margins, I compared 2002 with 2007 and 2012 in the following table:
| 2012 | in % of sales | 2007 | in % of sales | 2002 | in % of sales | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total sales | 24.2 | 20.7 | 15.7 | |||
| external costs | -5.4 | -22.1% | -5.5 | -26.5% | -5.4 | -34.6% |
| salaries | -12.3 | -51.0% | -10.7 | -51.7% | -7.1 | -45.4% |
| other cost | -0.6 | -2.6% | -0.5 | -2.4% | -0.5 | -3.1% |
| Depr. | -0.5 | -2.1% | -0.7 | -3.5% | -0.8 | -5.1% |
| Operating result | 5.4 | 22.2% | 3.3 | 15.8% | 1.9 | 11.8% |
| Net interest reslt | 0.3 | 1.4% | 0.3 | 1.4% | 0.0 | 0.2% |
| EBT | 5.7 | 23.7% | 3.6 | 17.3% | 1.9 | 12.0% |
| Tax | -1.5 | -6.1% | -1.2 | -5.7% | -0.7 | -4.5% |
| Net result | 4.3 | 17.6% | 2.4 | 11.6% | 1.2 | 7.5% |
The interesting thing here is that the improvement in the margin can almost be fully attributed to the decrease in percentage points to the decrease of external purchases / services. To me this looks like the typical “economies of scale” at a software companies. Once you have written the code, selling additional licenses increases the margin.
Competition
I found an interesting interview in French from 2009 where the CEO has been asked the question. His answer was (my translation):
– in everything related to aerospace etc., there are only Japanese and American competitors which do not seem to cross borders
– for industrial installations, there seem to be local competitors in each country
– in everything which is related to buildings, Autodesk is considered the main competitor
I think there competitive position is quite good. Their current niche is still to small to really interest a large player to enter on a “green field approach”.
Stock price
Looking at the stock price alone makes me ask myself why I didn’t discover the stock already last year when it was really really cheap. On the other hand, the more important point will be: What is the intrinsic value now ? Is there still enough upside ?
Management
As a hobby investor, I do not have access to management, However i watched on Youtube some interviews with the CEO (for instance here. The general impression was quite good. The only thing that I noticed is that the CEO is also active as the head of the local commercial chamber as well as some function at the local airport. This might lead to additional business contacts on one side but maybe distract him from the companies at other times.
Picture of the CEO:
Renumeration for the CEO was 250 k in total for 2012, that is quite OK for such a succesful year. Compared to the value of his shares (~7 mn EUR), I think the interest is quite well aligned with shareholders.
Shareholder structure:
A few words here because for a small French company, the shareholder structure is rather unusual. There is no majority shareholder.
The 2 top shareholders
Irdi Midi Partners 14.1%
Odysee Ventures 12.3%
are French private equity companies which ahve reduced their stakes lately. On the other hand, Amiral, the well known French value investment firm has recently increased their stake from ~3% to 9%.
That means howver that in theory the company would be “available” for a competitor to buy. Maybe this explains the quite shareholder friendly policy of the company which is ussual for France.
Edit: Longer term shareholders seem have double votes, so the Management plus IRDI might still have the majority, but how long ?
Valuation
Comparables: Just for fun, lets look at some other Software companies. I picked out 5 others:
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| Name | Rev – 1 Yr Gr | OPM | EBITDA Mrgn | 3Yr Avg ROE | R&D/Net Sales:Y | EV/EBITDA T12M | EV/T12M EBIT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IGE + XAO | 4.8% | 22.9% | 23.9% | 18.2% | 25.0% | 6.8 | 7.1 |
| PSI AG | 6.7% | 6.3% | 8.6% | 11.4% | 9.6% | 14.0 | 18.7 |
| NEMETSCHEK AG | 6.8% | 16.8% | 23.0% | 20.2% | 25.1% | 10.0 | 14.3 |
| DASSAULT SYSTEMES SA | 13.8% | 24.7% | 29.3% | 14.6% | 18.1% | 16.8 | 20.0 |
| AUTODESK INC | 4.4% | 15.1% | 20.7% | 14.2% | 25.9% | 14.7 | 20.0 |
| SAP AG | 14.0% | 25.5% | 30.8% | 23.8% | 13.9% | 16.7 | 20.5 |
Although its maybe not really fair to compare them, people pay for the same kind of profitablity aroound twice or three time as much for the larger companies.
This could be clearly also a function of better growth prospects, on the other hand it could also indicate what a potential buyer could be willing to pay.
Risks
As a French company, IGE is clearly subject to a worsening of the situation in France. With 73% of sales in France, there will be clearly problems if France goes into a real deep depression.
Another risk as with all cash rich companies could be that they use their cash for expensive acquisitions. So far, they haven’t done it but one never knows.
Summary
Overall, I think IGE + XAO makes a compelling investment case:
+ high margins and return on capital, rock solid balance sheet
+ capital light software company with good local competitive postion
+ for a French company surprisingly share holder friendly
+ potential target for buy out or take over
The major risk is of course the overall developement of the French economy. Nevertheless this is also the reason why one can buy this excellent company at a very attractive price.
I will therefore add IGE & XAO to my portfolio. I assume that I could have purchaes ~300 k EUR of shares over the last 6 weeks since I follow the company at ~42.50 EUR per share, making it a 2% position in my virtual portfolio.
Final remark on sizing /portfolio risk
The 2% portfolio weight might look a little bit small compared to the enthusiasm of my review. On the other side, my total French exposure now has hit 20% gross (~18.5% net of hedge). This is of course a quite conncentrated bet on France not going down the drain. So I try to limit my exposure within this concentrated bet on France by having a kind of “basket” approach and spread to different companies. Let’s see how this one works out…
value and opportunity 
I sold my IGE & XAO in the last few days at an average of 138 EUR.
Maybe I will miss out on something but I don’t understandwhy tehy trade above the offer price.
HI. Schneider has only 70% of capital and some funds are above 5%. Don’t you think that Schneider might offer a better price to take IGE+XAO off the market ? Regards
Good point. Frankly, I do not know. I am not an expert in French minority buy out regulations. From other cases however I know that if someone wants to play dirty with minorities, there are many ways to screw minorities in France. I think Stalergenes was such a case.
Damn !!
Schneider wants to take over IGE & XAO for 132 EUR/share. I would have loved to hold the shares another 6 years…..
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/08/schneider-electric-to-acquire-ige-xao-for-eur188-4-million.html
Nice one! very well done here.
Thanks. However in this case the big mistake was not to buy more….
I am sure you have enough experience and read enough books to avoid expressing “hindsight regret”…
Patience pays off – but we have been lucky with a long and uninterrupted bull run. Let’s see how your (and my) portfolio will fare out when the long-awaited cyclical adjustment comes through.
well, as I bought my first stocks in September 1987, I have experienced different times , too…..
1987! That makes you quite old.
Shouldn’t you be spending your money at this stage instead of accumulating more?
he he he, good point. However I was VERY young when I bought my first stocks 😉
Schneider Electric?
It’s a pity about IGE + XAO’s good balance sheet, which is rarely found in their industry today.
Ennismore Fund Management also likes IGE-XIO: http://www.ennismorefunds.com/documents/OEIC/Newsletters/2016/NL%20OEIC%20Sep%2016.pdf
Even if their analyses shows obvious flaws: “In fact, we’ve never seen a research note on it.”
Did they never ever find your blog?
I think they meant “sell side research”….
Während sich IGEs Umsatzwachstum und R&D-Quote im Rahme des Branchenüblichen bewegten, stiegen die op. Margen deutlich, wobei diese nun viel höher sind als die anderer Nischenanbieter wie Altium (Elektonik – eigentlich keine echte Nische), Delcam (Formteile, Werkzeuge, Schuhe, Juwelen, Münzen, Zahnersatz und orthop. Einlagen) und Lectra (Textilien und Leder). Nemetschek (für Architekten und Bauindustrie mit Schwerpunkt in Dtld. und Frankr.) steht bei teilweise kapitalisierten Entwicklungskosten etwas weniger gut da und allein AVEVA (Öl und Gas) ist mir mit höheren EBIT-Margen bekannt. Was genau sind die Gründe für die Margenverbesserung bei IGE + XAO?
3D-Software wie die zur Kabelverlegung war schon in den 90ern üblich und ich habe mir dies damals am Bildschirm auch angesehen. Neuerungen mag es hier weiterhin geben, doch scheint das Verbesserungspotential eher begrenzt zu sein, d. h. für der Wettbewerb könnten künftig die Anschaffungs- und Betriebskosten entscheidender sein, weshalb wohl vieles in die Cloud wandern wird.
Die von Martin erwähnte RIB Software ist seit dem IPO krass überkapitalisiert. Die 2012er Übernahmen dienten der Internationalisierung, was offenbar geringere Margen zur Folge hatte. Noch riskanter wäre allerdings eine Expansion jenseits der Kernkompetenzen.
Deltek, ein anderer Anbieter von Project Management Software, wurde 2012 von Thoma Bravo (Private Equity) übernommen. Damals mit goodwill-lastiger Bilanz, wenig EK und auch sonst wenig erfreulichem Zahlenwerk. Die großen ERP-Anbieter haben alle eigene vertikale Softwareangebote in dem Bereich, die nach und nach ausgebaut werden. Lediglich dort, wo die Margen zu gering sind, wird langfristig primär auf Partner wie RIB gesetzt. Vor deren IPO war hier aber immerhin Plattner mit seinem VC-Fond beteiligt.
Anders als bei IGE ist bei RIB einiges in Sachen SaaS zu hören, wenngleich der Wechsel geraume Zeit auf die Margen drücken dürfte.
Ich glaube die Margen von IGE sind v.a.auf den hohen Marktanteil in Frankreich zurückzuführen.In F gab es zudem eine regelung,dass ab 2008 glaube ich, Elektroinstallation in Gebäuden grundsätzlich elektronisch dokumentiert werden musste.
Das führte dazu dass IGE ohne großmehr zu entwickelnmehr Lizenzen verkaufte. Soweit mein Verständnis.
MMI
Da sie nun verstärkt ins Ausland drängen, dürften – bei dort geringem Marktanteil – die Margen entsprechend niedriger ausfallen. Angesichts jener Renditen wäre eigentlich zu erwarten, dass Siemens PLM (ein Partner), Dassault und andere hier stärker investieren.
Das größte Fragezeichen würde ich jedoch hinter SaaS setzen, wozu ich, wie schon gesagt, bei IGE nichts fand.
John erwähnte die Kommunikation zwischen allen am Projekt Beteiligten und die damit für den Platzhirsch verbundenen Netzwerkvorteile. Auf der anderen Seite könnte gerade so eine Software in der Cloud Kommunikation und Kooperation erheblich erleichtern.
Nemetschek (mit ähnlichen Problemen) will via Web-Plattform allen Beteiligten eines Projekts alle relevanten Informationen aktuell und nach Bedarf strukturiert zur Verfügung stellen. Dank offener Plattform können zudem Dienstleistungsangebote externer Partner eingebunden werden. Autodesk schrieb im 10-K: “Just as the transition from mainframes to personal computers transformed the industry thirty years ago, we believe our industry is undergoing a similar transition from the personal computer to cloud, social, and mobile computing.”
Leider konnte ich auch keine Aufschlüsselung der Umsätze finden. Mich würde interessieren, ob bei Lizenzverkäufen jüngst noch Zuwächse erreicht wurden. In F+E wird immerhin noch passabel investiert.
Blöde Frage: Was ist SaaS ?
Ende der 90er war noch von “ASP” (Application Service Provider) und “hosted” die Rede, später auch von “on-demand” (als Gegenstück zu on-premise bzw. on-site).
Der neuere Name SaaS (Software as a Service) rührt daher, dass hier eine andere Architektur verwendet wird. Bei ASPs war für jeden Kunden eigene eigene Instanz des Systems nötig. SaaS hingegen ist mandantenfähig (multitenant), d. h. dieselbe Software kann auf demselben System – bei strikter Separierung der Kundendaren – von einer Vielzahl von Nutzern verwendet werden. Hier muss nur ein System gewartet und aktualisiert werden. Mandantenübergreifende Daten brauchen nur einmal gespeichert zu werden.
“Cloud” ist in jenem Kontext ebenfalls ein vergleichsweise junger Terminus. SaaS-Applikationen bilden die Spitze der Cloud-Pyramide.
Thanks. Well, a few French suppliers deserve your attention, because their valuations are low (Montupet but also Faurecia), and because figures are very likely (Montupet) or likely (Faurecia) to improve quarter after quarter. Montupet’s general meeting will take place on June 25th. If Management confirms what I think, the share price won’t stay at present levels for a long time…
just a stuoid question:Why is it so sure that Montupet will improve over time on the background of for intance the problems at Peugeot, Opel etc ?
Hello. No question is stupid. Montupet has 2 major customers : Ford and Renault. Both have better prospects than Peugeot or Opel. Ford thanks to markets outside Europe, and Renault thanks to the Dacia brand. Let me add also that Montupet produces more and more outside France, where costs are lower (esp. Northern Ireland and Bulgaria).
in my experience, auto suppliers hardly earn cost of capital unless they are producing “special” stuff which is hard to replicate. Do those companies produce anything “special” ?
Producing in low cost countries is in my opinion only a temporary competitive advantage.
Montupet produces cylinder heads. Usually car manufacturers produce their own heads. There are only 2 independent producers : Montupet and a Mexican company. As present times are rather hard, car manufacturers no longer wish to invest in their own capacities. Hence the recent contrats and the better future I forecast for MON. But this is only a forecast, of course…
Hello, if you are interested in “attractively priced value stocks, you may find it useful to have a look at MONTUPET, a French component supplier, whose P/E’s are very low. I discuss the stock on my blog : http://boursenow.blogspot.fr/
nice blog !!! Although I am not a big fan of auto suppliers…..
Looks like Dassault Systems already found a similar product in 2011 (Elsys): http://www.plmmarketplace.com/blog/2011/10/27/ElsysNowPartOfDassaultSyst%C3%A8mes.aspx
In any case, thanks for your detailed and factual analysis of companies.
The main question I would have is the compettion for key accounts from integrated products like Catia : http://www.3ds.com/products/catia/solutions/catia-engineering/electrical-design/ .
honestly, I do not know. The “catia” demo seems to be focused on cars. If you look at IGE’s hompepage they do not have modules specifically for cars. Maybe because cars are too competitive anyway ?
Interestingly, IGE propered despite Dassault being a French company. Maybe Dassault would be a logicalcompany to purchase iGE at some point in time ? For Dassault, the 30 mn EUR sales of IGE are tiny.
mmi
Do you also have an opinion about the german rib software? I think it’s cheap with good balance sheet. IGE + XAO SA looks really interesting.
no, haven’t looked at rip software.
Hi MMI,
Großes Kompliment und vielen Dank!
Das sind die Artikel die man lesen will.
danke für das Kompliment. Aber solche Perlen kann man auch nicht jeden Tag ausgraben.
Das Fundament dazu muss man aber mit dem “handwerkszeug” lesen….
You may also find Allocate Software interesting: same idea but yielding 15% on NOPAT/TEV basis (or PE of 5x).
Hi MMI,
Nice write up. This is a company I’m familiar with (I owned its shares about ten years ago). To me, niche b2b software is a little like branded consumer goods: the hard part is getting past the initial market acceptance stage and, if/once that is achieved, the attractive economics of the industry takes over. There are a few other French stocks that are similar to IGE+XAO, like Cegedim, Lectra, Cegid and others.
hi red,
thanks for the comment. Yes, there are a couple of interesting French software companies. However IGE + XAO was at least for me the easiest on to understand.
mmi
Well I checked the data. The offered EV in 2011 was ~€300 mil. and EBIT 10 mil. In 2010, last public data I could find, the growth rate was 15 % with good prospects.
Tekla, a small growing Finnish CAD/BIM software company, was sold two or so years ago with seemingly HUGE premium to Iges current valuation. If I remember correctly P/E was howering around 20-30. Might help with the intrinsic value estimate if, if you still can find the material…
This CAD business seems good as the programs are extremely complex, so engineers don’t change them volenteerly. Also the network effects, at least in the building business are material, as the programs must communicate with each party within the projects (contractor, architects, structural designers, aircondtioning designers etc etc.).
Thx for the idea, must dig it deeper later (if it reports in english).
John,
thanks for the comment. Reports are in French, however they do some IR presentations in English.
mmi