Search Results for: kabel deutschland

Short cuts: Kabel Deutschland, Rhoen Klinikum, Greek GDP linker, Royal Imtech

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Kabel Deutschland

Man, this looks like I got it really wrong. According to some press articles, now Liberty wants to buy Kabel as well for 85 EUR a share. So there seems to be a bidding war before even the first official bid has been announced.

The interesting point of this “red-hot” news is that Liberty has already once tried to buy the former Telekom Cable network in 2002 but this was not approved by the German Kartellamt.

How realistic is this ? I am not sure. Just in February, the German Kartellamt blocked the takeover of the smaller rival Telecolumbus by Kabel Deutschland itself because even the combination of KAbel Deutschland and the smaller rival was a problem for them.

So what is going on here ? I have no idea, but to a certain extent it looks like one of the best “stock promotions” ever. What kind of M&A process is this when everything “leaks” to the market ?

For some market participants, this doesn’t matter anyway. My “favourite bad research provider” Makor (yes, those guys who use the wrong formula to calculate fair prices after right issues) has the following recommendation viea Bloomberg:

We recommend initiating positions in Kabel shares, as we consider the shares trading about fair value in the context of a possible offer. However, given the strategic interests for the potential buyers (Vodafone, Liberty Media), a premium is probably justified and notwithstanding regulatory issues, a price above Eur 90/sh could easily be justified.

Wow, sometimes the stock market is so simple.

Rhoen Klinikum

Unfortunately, the “Rhoen surprise” did not last very long. Some more details were emerging . It looks like that the boss of the supervisory board (and the guy who wants to sell to Fresenius) decided, that the 5% votes of one of the blocking shareholders were not valid. The result will most likely be a court battle over up to 18 months. So lets wait and see what happens.

Greek GDP linkers

The most recent jump in the GDP linker seems to come from a “research piece” of Deutsche bank which several readers forwarded to me (thank you guys !!!).

Let’s look how the look at the nominal hurdle:

Based on the latest IMF forecasts, the 2011 level of GDP is expected to be re-attained in 2017. By fixing this point, we can then solve for the nominal growth rate required in order to exceed the nominal GDP threshold in a given year. We find that in order to exceed the threshold in 2022 (for warrant payment in 2023) would require a YoY nominal growth rate of 5.0%. A growth rate of 3.6% would be required to meet the threshold in 2024. If recovery to the 2011 level is achieved a year earlier than expected (in 2016) then the required growth rate for the first payment to be in 2023 falls to 4.2%, or rises to 6.3% assuming a year delay. These sensitivities are illustrated in the chart to the right.
Although it is far from certain, it seems reasonable to assume 2023 to be the year when payments commence on the warrants.

Ok, so the basic assumption is that the new IMF forecast from 2012 is now correct, after the initial forecast was completely wrong. Hmm, one might call this “positive thinking” if one wants to be nice.

Their final conclusion (after some “nonsense funky doodle” modeling) is as follows:

The combination of more stable macro-economic assumptions, and reduced default probability now mean that we find the current valuation of the warrants as being broadly justified (relative to the GGBs). Considering our constructive view, the additional beta of the warrants and also the additional ‘yield’, we now find the GDP warrants to be more attractive than the GGBs themselves as a means to take exposure to an eventual Greek recovery. We caveat that such a recovery remains uncertain and will likely be lengthy; implying that any anticipated outperformance of the warrants should be seen as a medium to long-term expectation.

So this conforms my view, that the GDP linker is more like a short-term “beta” play than an intrinsic value” investment as the Deutsche Bank “analysts” only take the IMF projection as fundamental basis and do not add anything new here.

Royal Imtech

Royal Imtech has released a quite bad Q1 report. It looks more and more that larger parts of the company are in real trouble and that the fraud might have been just the “top of the iceberg”. Time to take them of the “rights issue watch list”. As I am not a “fraud-turn around” investor, this seems to be the not the situations I am looking for.

Kabel Deutschland & Vodafone reloaded

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One of my two remaining short position gets “smoked” today. Kabel Deutschland is up ~7% to a new ATH:

The reason is once again the (now somehow confirmed) rumour that Vodafone wants again to take over KAbel Deutschland:

It started (again with the “rumour” as last time:

(Reuters) – Vodafone Group Plc has made an informal takeover bid within the past week for Germany’s biggest cable company, Kabel Deutschland Holding AG, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

In the meantime, to my surprise, Vodafone confirmed the talks:

LONDON—Vodafone Group PLC said it has approached Germany’s biggest cable operator Kabel Deutschland Holding AG about a possible takeover, a move that would mark the U.K. mobile-phone company’s largest acquisition in Europe in more than a decade and add more customers to its triple-play offering of TV, mobile and broadband.

“There is no certainty that any offer will ultimately be made, nor as to the terms on which any such offer might be made,” Vodafone said in a brief statement Wednesday.

Kabel Deutschland confirmed it has received a preliminary approach from Vodafone, but also said there is no certainty an offer will be made.

So this is clearly against my expectations when I made the short. I have to admit that I don’t understand Vodafone. Why would they start such talks again with the danger of a leak again when the exact same thing happened a few months ago.

My only explanation is that they are either extremely desperate or extremely stupid. Or both.

Vodafone shareholders didn’t seem to be too enthusiastic either. So lets wait and see what happens. One first lesson is clear: Never underestimate the stupidity of others. Vodafone has done already one horrible overpriced German acquisition (Mannesmann) in the past. However, most likely most of those people who did this back then were already fired and now they make the same mistake again.

Clearly I also made a mistake here. It is definitely much more risky to short stocks with no majority shareholder in an industry which is famous for overpaying for M&A transactions.

EDIT: Real time comment for a quite “famous” Vodafone investor:

Vittorio Colao the urbane but seemingly incompetent CEO of Vodafone is the new Sir Fred Goodwin.

Operating Cash Flow and interest expenses – (ThyssenKrupp vs. Kabel Deutschland, IFRS vs. US GAAP)

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In my recent post to Kabel Deutschland, I made the following remark:

Interestingly, the “operating cashflow” does not include interest charges. In my opinion, interest charges are operating, as they have to be paid regularly and there is no discretion like dividends. So in my view Kabel Deutschland currently runs free cashflow negative and dividends are paid out from the increase in debt.

After some discussions, I was less sure about this myself so I thought it might be a good thing to look at this more closely.

Before jumping into “definitions” of how to calculate and report different cash flow definitions, one should take one step back and ask oneself:

What is “free Cash Flow” supposed to mean anyway ?

The current mantra for most “sophisticated” investors is that you should more or less forget earnings and concentrate on “free Cash flow” as this is the most important metric for determining the value of any (non financial) company.

“Free Cash Flow” in plain English should quantify the amount of money which is generated by a company over a certain period of time (usually 1 year) which can be used in a discretionary fashion to either grow the company, pay dividends, buy back shares etc.

In order to calculate this number, you normally start with operating cash flow, which in theory should contain all cashflows to operate the business on a going concern basis and then deduct cash out for normal Capex, i.e. investments required to ensure the “status quo” of the company.

Further one has to distinguish between two perspectives when deciding how to calculate Free Cash flow:

Free Cash flow to the firm vs. Free cashflow to equity

The single most difference between Firm/equity perspective is that in the “firm perspective” one assumes that the financing structure is discretionary. One wants to evaluate the whole value of the firm based on the firm wide discretionary cashflow.

However, with free cash flow to equity, I have to take the current financing structure as given and one has to calculate how much of discretionary cash flow is left for the shareholder. This of course implies, that interest charges are not discretionary for a shareholder but have to be subtracted from Free cash flow to equity.

This is especially important for highly leveraged companies where interest expenses can “eat away” a lot of discretionary cashflow.

The problem:

So far so good, where is the problem ? The problem is that different companies report cashflow differently.

Let’s look at Thyssenkrupp for instance:

thyssenkrupp opcf

They start with Net income and adjust for depreciation etc. but not for interest expense. Interest expense ist therefore shown within Operating Cashflow (net finance expense was 168mn, maybe they didn’t bother with -1.3 bn operating cashflow.

Now let’s look at the 9M Kabel Deutschland Cashflow report:

kabel op cf

We can see that other than Thyssen Krupp, Kabel Deutschland adds back interest expense to Operating CF.

Later on, we can see interest expense under Financing Cashflow:

kabel financing cf

Accounting view

Under US GAAP it is clear: Interest expense belongs to the Operating cashflow statement. Under IFRS however a company can can choose between Operating and Investing Cashflow (see here, 7.15)

So we can see, there is nothing explictly wrong with Kabel Deutschland from a reporting point of view, they just have chosen to report interest expenses under Financing cashflow.

There is an interesting paper to be found here which makes the following observations:

We find that firms with greater likelihood of financial distress and a greater probability of default make OCF-increasing classification choices. We further show that firms accessing equity markets more frequently and those with greater contracting concerns are also more likely to make OCF-increasing classification choices. Firms with negative OCF are less likely to make OCF-increasing classification choices.

So that is no surprise that a PE “boot strapped” company like Kabel wants to show higher OCF and FCF and opts for Financing Cashflow.

What to do & Summary?

In my opinion, you have to make sure first that you compare apples to apples if you look at two different companies and compare free cashflows. Make sure that you treat this consistently. I am not sure if all the US investors which hold the largest stakes in Kabel know about this small but important reporting difference.

Secondly, I personally think that interest expenses always should be deducted from Operating Expenses and therefore Free Cash Flow in any equity valuation exercise.

Imagine for instance a company which rents its building against a company which takes out a loan to buy the exact same building. In the first building, you would subtract the rent clearly from operating profit, so why would you not subtract the interest on the mortgage for the second company ?

Kabel Deutschland (DE000KD88880) – Short again !!

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Kabel Deutschland is a stock which I have written about quite often. I was short the stock but closed out with a quite significant loss (-53% to be exact).

I am still following the stock out of interest because I think it is a prime example of a modern day high quality “stock promotion”.

Clearly, the performance of the stock since its IPO is outstanding. Without many setbacks, the stock has tripled since its MArch 2010 IPO, making it one of the most succesful German stocks in that time period:

Also the advantages of Kabel Deutschlands business model are clear:

– the business seems to be a “natural moat” business. Effectively, Kabel Deutschland makes contracts with the administers of multi family homes, so all those people become automatically clients of Kabel Deutschland and have to pay a base fee via their monthly rent bill. With this guaranteed inflow, Kabel Deutschland is then able to sell aggressively phone services, internet etc. to those clients

As a result, Kabel Deutschland is supposed to be a free cash flow machine with still significant growth potential, the rare exception in the European TelCo market. So it doesn’t matter that Kabel Deutschland has negative equity and the debt is mostly covered by goodwill and intangible assets.

Markets are clearly paying a premium for that. With a trailing EV/EBITDA of 11.4, Kabel Deutschland is ~30% more expensive than even the comparable cable operators in Europe and the US.

Recent developements

Telecolumbus acquisition

Kable Deutschland was on track to take over Telecolumbus, another regional cable operator. Taking over other regional cable operators is of course a no brainer for any aspiring cable company. Economics of scale is what counts in cable. However 3 days ago, the german antitrust office finally rejected the request from Kabel Deutschland due to anti trust concerns.

So this significantly reduces growth opportunities for Kabel Deutschland. Yes, they might be able to sell more internet etc. to existing clients but I am not sure if this really warrants the extra price paid for Kabel Deutschland

9m results

The official release came out with an encouraging dividend increase from 1.50 EUR to 2.50 EUR per share. Also all their self defined funky KPIs look fantastic.

However if you really look into the cash flow statement, one can see that 9 months free cashflow is only ~50 mn EUR, to significantly increased investments. The company even announced an “accelerated network investment” plan:

In order to enable accelerated growth, the Company intends to pull forward network investments of €300 million to be spent over the course of the next two fiscal years in addition to the Company’s existing investment plans.

Interestingly, the “operating cashflow” does not include interest charges. In my opinion, interest charges are operating, as they have to be paid regularly and there is no discretion like dividends. So in my view Kabel Deutschland currently runs free cashflow negative and dividends are paid out from the increase in debt.

All in all, one might think that those two issues might lead to a decrease of the valuation premium for Kabel Deutschland. Fat chance, because just by pure coincidence, the following story appeared in the Newspapers last week (before the other two events mentioned bacame public):

According to “insiders”, Vodafone is contemplating to take over Kabel Deutschland.

The reason seems logical: Vodafone needs to offer “quad play” services (Televison, Internet, fix line phone, mobile phones) and has already purchased in a similar fashion Cable and Wireless UK fixed line operations in 2012. So a clear no brainer.

Kabel Deutschland directly jumped more than 20% and the following bad news (Telecolumbus, 9 months earnings) were mostly ignored.

Vodafone Cable and Wireless UK acquisition

It is absolutely correct, that Vodafone acquired Cable and Wireless UK operations last year. However, what many “analysts” did not mention was the fact that Vodafone was very disciplined here.

When Cable and wireless split in two companies in 2011, there was always the rumour that Vodafone would be interested. However the waited a long time until the price was right before they came out with an announcement in April last year.

According to Bloomberg, Vodafone finally paid the following multiples:

P/S 0.3
EV/EBITDA 2.5
EV/EBIT 6.7

So Vodafone actually bought here at “rock bottom prices”. In my opinion, the days are over when Vodafone would move in and pay any price for Cable Deutschland.

In my opinion, there are also no other natural buyers for Kabel Deutschland. Liberty has already bought Kabel BW and will not be allowed to buy Kabel Deutschland. The big Telcos have enough problems already and for a PE buyer, Kabel Deutschland is already too “bootstrapped” to be interesting.

I am pretty sure that Vodafone knows that and will not rush into a Kabel Deutschland deal, if at all.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the “Vodafone Insider story” was a prime example of stock promotion, making the stock jump with a somehow plausible story and making people forget about the rather sobering underlying picture.

I am therefore once again, going to establish a short position in Kabel Deutschland, betting against a take over by Vodafone at a premium. As always with shorts, I will start with a 1% position.

At current prcies, I believe the risk/return ratio is quite good, as I don’t believe that Vodafone will buy at current prices (or even pay a premium) and there is a good chance that Kabel Deutschland’s valuation will approach average levels at some point in time.

Edit:
In my “home forum” benny_m posted a interesting link regarding potential cable regulation in Germany:

http://www.teltarif.de/kabelnetz-regulierung-bundesnetzagentur-homann/news/49249.html

That might be a game changer…….

Kabel Deutschland – How relevant is negative net equity combined with a lot of debt for a “wide moat” business ?

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Background: Kabel Deutschland is one of the short positions of the portfolio and currently the only one which didn’t work out yet…

In one of the blog posts, reader Stairway commented with an interesting analysis.

I hope it is fair to summarize the argument as follows:
Read more

Kabel Deutschland Aktienplatzierung & Goldman Sachs

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Tja, was für ein Zufall aber auch. Im Dezember nimmt Goldmann Sachs Kabel Deutschland auf seine Conviction Buy Liste.

Ende Februar erhöht man das Kursziel dann nochmal ein wenig. Mit 57,10 EUR Kursziel liegt man einsam an der Spitze aller 20 bei Bloomberg verfügbaren Analystenschätzungen.

Als Belohnung darf jetzt Goldman 20 Mio Aktien oder knapp 800 Mio EUR der “Heuschrecke” platzieren.

Das Ganze natürlich lt. Pressebericht aus ausschliesslich altruistischen Motiven:

With that placement, more than 70 million shares representing approximately 78% of the Company’s total 90 million shares are in the free float, increasing liquidity in the stock and strengthening the Company’s MDAX ranking.

Da Goldman in der Regel 2-3% Fee für so einen Deal nimmt, sind das mal schlanke 15-20 Mio. EUR Gewinn für die Goldies. Wer sich jetzt wundert, warum der Markt so an den 38 EUR klebt

Für die Fees müssen die Goldies natürlich ein wenig den Markt stabilisieren, damit die armen Fondsmanager die die Aktien gekauft haben nicht gleich ganz blöd aus der Wäsche schauen. So wie man Goldman kennt, nutzen sie dazu wahrscheinlich auch noch Kundengelder.

Zusätzlich hat man natürlich bei der “Heuschrecke” einen Fuss für weitere Kabeldeals in der Tür. Schon clever die Jungs, das hätte wohl selbst “Stock Operator” Jesse Livermore nicht besser gekonnt.

Ausserdem auch ein guter Hinweis mit welchen Beweggründen solche bullischen Analysen geschrieben werden.

Nochmal Kabel Deutschland

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Wir sind zufälligerweise über folgenden Blogbeitrag in einem Deutschen Börsenblog gestolpert. Darin wir u.a. so argumentiert:

Am heutigen Handelstag wurden zwei neue Analystenkommentare veröffentlicht, die widersprüchlicher nicht sein könnten. So stuften die Analysten bei UniCredit Research das Wertpapier der Kabel Deutschland Holding AG mit „buy“ ein und bestätigten das Kursziel von 44,00 Euro, währenddessen die WestLB der Kabel Deutschland Holding AG ein Kursziel von 32,00 Euro einräumt und den Wert auf „reduce“ setzt. Die WestLB sieht das niedrige Kursziel auf Grund der abnehmenden Abonnentenzahlen, die ein positives Kurspotenzial mangels Impulse nahezu unmöglich machen.

Die UniCredit Research sieht die Wachstumschancen ungebrochen, da sich die Entwicklung der Abonnentenzahl noch im Rahmen der Markterwartung befände. Ferner gibt UniCredit Research an, dass sich die Anleger ihre Kaufentscheidungen auf das EBITA begründen und nicht auf die derzeitigen Abonnentenzahl.

Aha, interessant, die neue Kennzahl EBITA als Kaufargument….das wäre uns jetzt neu, wir kennen eigentlich nur EV/EBITDA, KGV oder so altmodische Kennzahlen.

Weiter wird im Blog dann so argumentiert:

Fakt ist, dass sich der Aktienwert der Kabel Deutschland Holding AG seit August in einer starken Aufwärtsbewegung befindet. Nach einer kurzfristigen Korrektur konnte sich ein neues Hoch festsetzen. Kommt es nun zu einem weiteren Rücksetzer, dürfte sich eine erneute Kaufwelle bei 37,20 Euro durchsetzen, welche das Potenzial bis 48,00 Euro ausschöpfen könnte.

Also in eigenen Worten: Der Wert ist gestiegen, deshalb wird er auch weiter steigen. Das nennt man wohl auch “Momentumstrategie”. Wir wollen jetzt diesen Beitrag nicht werten, aber das zeigt schon deutlich wie sich unserer Ansatz von einigen anderen Ansätzen unterscheidet. Wirklich fundamentale Gründe für das Kabel Deutschland Kursniveau scheint es aber keine zu geben.

Kabel Deutschland – Aktuelle Zahlen

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Kabel Deutschland meldete heute Zahlen. Die Originalmeldung beginnt mit folgendem Absatz:

Kabel Deutschland mit einem Zuwachs beim EBITDA von +12.6% auf Euro 185 Millionen im dritten Quartal auf gutem Weg zur Erreichung der Jahresziele

Also Top Zahlen, oder ?

Die Wirtschaftspresse macht daraus “ein solides 3 Quartal”

Wachsende Kundenzahlen, was will man mehr ?

Liest man ein bischen weiter, versteckt sich folgender Absatz:

The Company posted a net loss of €43.9 million for the nine months ended December 31, 2010 (€22.3 million net loss in the same period last fiscal year), negatively affected by the €47 million one-time fees and costs related to the refinancing of the Company’s 2014 Senior Notes.

Aha, also steigender Umsatz, steigende Kundenzahlen und steigender Verlust ? Natürlich ist das ein Einmaleffekt…

In der Pressemitteilung wird ferner davon gesprochen, dass man erfolgreich die Schulden abgebaut hätte. Schaut man aber mal in den 9 Monatsbericht, sieht man dass die Finanzschulden zwar in den letzetn 6 Monaten insgesamt um ca. 160 Mio zuürckgegangen sind, der Cashbestand dafür aber gelich um 210 Mio.

In der Cashflowrechnung sieht man auch deutlich, dass jeder eingenommen Euro in die Schuldentilgung gesteckt werden muss. Interssanterweise reagiert der Markt relativ schwach auf die Nachricht:

Ob das am schwachen Gesamtmarkt liegt ? Das wird sich zeigen, wir fühlen uns trotz Buchverlusten nicht wirklich unwohl mit der Shortposition.

Wacc at its best: Kabel Deutschland

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Nach unserer ersten Kabel Deutschland-Analyse – Ein kleiner Gedankengang für Zwischendurch:

Wir möchsten einen Plausibilitätscheck anhand einer bullischen Analyse der LBBW vornehmen. Wir haben die Freecashflow-Reihe des Analysten übernommen und passen das System an unsere Risikoeinschätzung an. Unserer Meinung nach sind die Annahmen der Analyse “ambitioniert”. Siehe DCF-Modell Seite 5.

Risikofreier Zins: 2,3%
EK-Kosten: 9,1%
FK-Zins: 3,7%

Den optimistischen FreeCashflow-Schätzungen verpassen wir unsere eigenen EK-Anforderungen:

Kabel Deutschland zahlt für seinen den gelisteten Bond: 10,75% Zinsen. Der Bond notiert soweit erkennbar bei 103,58 was einer Rendite von ~9,5% entspricht. (Wie kommt die LBBW-Analyse auf den FK-Zins von 3,7%? – eine Differenz von rund 6%) Erhöht man die EK-Anforderungen von 9,1% um genau diese 6% auf 15% erhält man einen “Fairen Wert” von rund 18,50 Euro.

Wir erachten ein EK-Zins von 15% für ein solch krass verschuldetes Unternehmen nicht als besonders hoch. Grobe Fair Values bei verschiedenen EK-Zinsen:
EK-Zins: 10% = 33€
EK-Zins: 12,5% = 26€
EK-Zins: 15% = 18,5€
EK-Zins: 20% = 8,8€

Wie bei allen DCF-Modellen gilt aber “Shit in – Shit out” – daher sollte man diese sehr vereinfacht gehaltenen Berechnungen nicht für zu genau halten.

Ein weiteres Leckerli, was man sich mal genauer anschauen müsste ist die Refinanzierungsstruktur von Kabel Deutschland. Selbst wenn der vollständige FreeCashflow der LBBW-Schätzung in die Tilgung gesteckt würde, könnten die aktuell 3.000 Mio. Euro Schulden nicht vollständig getilgt werden.

Die Darlehen sind darüber hinaus mit saftigen Konditionen und Covenants versehen.

So hat insbesondere das PIK-Darlehen echt heftige Konditionen. Im Geschäftsbericht werden die Konditionen des 700 Mio. PIK-Loans (thesaurierendens Darlehen das vollständig inkl. Zins und Zinseszins 2014 fällig wird) mit Euribor +7% p.a. angegeben. Der Einfluss einer Zinssteigerung um 100 Basispunkte wird mit rund 25 Mio Euro angegeben. Bei 90 Mio Aktien hat eine Zinssteigerung um 100 Basispunkte also einen negativen Effekt von rund 30 Cent pro Aktie. Immerhin 30% des von der LBBW “geplanten” Gewinns für 2012.

<So richtig können wir also nicht erkennen, warum Kabel Deutschland nun 36 Euro oder in Summe 3,2 Mrd. Euro wert sein soll.

Opportunistic Short: Kabel Deutschland AG

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Kabel Deutschland war einer der erfolgreichsten IPOs 2010: Emittiert zu 22 EUR im März 2010, Jahresendkurs 38,875 EUR macht stolze 58.5% Performance oder rund 30% besser als der MDAX im gleichen Zeitraum.

Chart 1 Jahr

13 von 18 Analysten die den Wert covern haben ein „Buy“ Rating, der Zielkurs wird ständig nachgezogen. Recht schnell wurde der Wert auch in den MDAX aufgenommen. Im Dezember meldet Fidelity, dass sie mit einem 5% Paket dabei sind.

Auf der Homepage sieht man unter „Fakten für Investoren“ für das letzte Geschäftsjahr

(Fakten) zunächst mal eindrucksvolle Zahlen: Umsatz steigt, Betriebsergebnis auch, auch das Jahresergebnis hat sich deutlich verbessert , man konnte den Verlust deutlich senken.

Aha, aber dennoch : Es wird kein Gewinn gemacht sondern Verlust

Gleich darunter Wird der „EBITDA“ mit 659 Mio. angegeben, mit einer kleinen Fussnote. Die wiederum sagt (sehr viel schlechter leserlich): „(1) EBITDA consists of profit from ordinary activities before depreciation and amortization. We calculate Adjusted EBITDA as profit from ordinary activities before depreciation, amortization, non-cash compensation, which consists primarily of expenses related to our MEP programs, and restructuring expenses. Adjusted EBITDA is a measure used by management to measure our operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA is not a recognized accounting term or measure in accordance with IFRS, does not purport to be an alternative to profit from ordinary activities or cash flows from operating activities and should not be used as a measure of liquidity.“
Springt man mal in den Geschäftsbericht des entsprechenden Jahres (Geschäftsbericht ) direkt auf Seite 70, fällt einem folgendes auf:

Irgendwie sind die konsolidierten Assets (trotz 750 Mio. Euro Immateriellen Vermögenswerten) deutlich kleiner als die Verbindlichkeiten. Ergebnis sind -1,6 Mrd NEGATIVES Eigenkapital. Das gab es zuletzt bei General Motors.

Dazu noch ein Verlust von 45 Mio. EUR aufgrund hoher Zinsbelastung. Dem negativen Eigenkapital stehen zusätzlich noch gut 3.1 Mrd. Finanzverbindlichkeiten gegenüber.

Warum diese Bilanzstruktur so gewählt ist, wird wirklich nirgends erklärt – aber was solls.

Springen wir noch mal zum aktuellen Quartalsbericht:

Es wird nach wie vor Verlust gemacht, aber etwas weniger als im Jahr zuvor. (Der betriebliche Cashflow ist relativ gut, wird aber durch Investitionen und Zinsen weitgehend aufgefressen, es konnten nur 60 Mio Verschuldung getilgt werden. Immerhin ist das Eigenkapital annähernd konstant, weil man irgendwie die Bilanzierung geändert hatte.

Soweit so gut, wir haben ein Unternehmen, dass an der Börse mit 3 Mrd EUR bewertet wird mit negativem Eigenkapital i.H. von -1,6 Mrd (inkl 700 Mio immateriellen Vermögenswerten). Warum sollte der Kurs gerade jetzt fallen ?

– die Bewertung ist mit „offiziell“ 7.4 x EV/EBITDA selbst für diesen Sektor recht ambitioniert (Comcast aus USA ist bei 6,3 und die diversen Liberties auch bei 6,4)
– der Chart sieht „angeschlagen“ aus
– der ursprüngliche PE Investor Provdence unterliegt keinem lock up mehr (lief im September 2010 aus) und wird sicherlich mal seine restlichen 40+% versilbern wollen, gut 17% hat man gleich nach Ablauf platziert

Hauptrisikofaktor von der Shortseite ist natürlich die Gefahr, dass irgendeiner auch zu diesem Preis noch Kabel Deutschland übernehmen will. Gerade in dieser Branche (siehe AOL / Time Warner) ist immer alles möglich.

Dennoch ist das Unternehmen aus fundamentaler Sicht ein klarer Short und wird mit 1% des Portfolios leer verkauft.

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