Category Archives: Value Stocks

UK Banking – A look at IPO Aldermore Plc (ISIN GB00BQQMCJ47)

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Within my Handelsbanken mini series (part 1, part 2, part 3), I have identified their UK business as one of the potential value drivers. So it was a luck and coincidence that a few days ago, Aldermore PLc, a “start-up” UK Bank went public.

Aldermore itself was founded only in 2009 by a then out-of-job former Barclay’s Banker called Philip Monks. They tried to go public already last year but had to pull the IPO in October.

As I have mentioned a couple of times, an IPO prospectus is always a good opportunity to learn about business models in general and about competitors and the specific sector as well.

There are some interesting parts from the prospectus on the UK banking market:

A high number of mergers and acquisitions in the sector has resulted in sector consolidation (Lloyds’acquisition of HBOS being the largest as well as a number of smaller building society takeovers such as Santander’s acquisition of Alliance & Leicester and Nationwide’s acquisitions of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Dunfermline Building Societies). This has resulted in the UK banking sector becoming one of the most concentrated and least competitive in Europe according to a Treasury Select Committee report published in 2011.

The report concluded that the top five UK banks controlled 75 per cent. of total gross new lending in total mortgages, 85 per cent. of the personal current account market and 62 per cent. of the savings account market.

For a potential shareholder in a UK banking business stock, “most concentrated and least competitive” sound not that bad as it implies some pricing power.

Handelsbanken is mentioned as one of the few foreign players:

Although there are exceptions (e.g. Handelsbanken), more generally, foreign banks have exited or reduced their presence in the UK market. For example, ING exited their mortgages and savings business and stopped writing new business in Asset Finance towards the end of 2012 and the UK business banking subsidiaries of Irish banks have restricted lending.
Furthermore, UK banks have been forced to carry out major cost-cutting exercises, including centralising credit selection functions; in some cases, ring-fencing retail operations; and spending significant amounts to improve the performance and security of their IT platforms.
UK banks have also been significantly impacted by legacy issues arising from, for example, the mis-selling of PPI and swaps and from legacy and underinvested infrastructure. Since 2011, the total bill for litigation,fines and customer redress has been £28.5 billion, equivalent to two-thirds of the cumulative profits of the top five banks over this period
 Customer dissatisfaction in the UK banking sector has also risen. One effect of this, as discussed in a recent Oliver Wyman report, is an increased propensity of customers to review and switch banking provider

Similar to my argument for Handelsbanken, UK customers seem to be fed up with UK banks and are open for new entrants like Handelsbanken and Aldermore.

As a result of these factors, there have been a number of new entrants to the UK banking market. They have adopted a variety of models targeting different credit segments (i.e. retail, SME, corporate) and adopted different distribution models (i.e. branches, intermediary, direct). These include retail-focused branch-based banks such as Metro Bank and Virgin Money and required disposals under State Aid such as Williams & Glyn (currently part of RBS) and TSB (majority owned by Lloyds Banking Group). In addition, these are specialist lenders such as Close Brothers, Shawbrook, Bibby and Paragon, challenging the share of the UK banking market controlled by the incumbents in targeted lending segments.

Aldermore however has a complete different set up than Handelsbanken. They don’t run any branches:

Aldermore does not have a traditional branch network and as such does not have the significant costs associated with running such a branch network.

Instead they run Online/Broker/intermediary based business model, claim to avoid unnecessary costs for branches.

The Directors believe that Aldermore’s branch-free distribution model is better suited to the digital era,with the regional offices representing the physical footprint that Aldermore requires to service its SME customers. The absence of a large, under-utilised branch network enables Aldermore to distribute products and service customers more cost effectively

Interestingly, their actual cost income ratio 2014 is  60% vs. 53% at Handelsbanken. This might have to do with size (Handelbanken is 2-3 times bigger). So it is clearly not a “no brainer” to run an online bank only.

What I didn’t like about Aldermore:

– Intermediary model is not that easy. They don’t have direct client contact, clients are “owned” by brokers
– How do they cope in a downturn test if work outs are necessary and they don’t have client contact ?
– large potential bonuses for management
– targets for management are only EPS and Share price

They do state an explicit ROE ambition:

The Directors are targeting a return on equity of approximately 20 per cent. by the end of the financial year ending 31 December 2016.

Targeting is great, but having it included in compensation would be even better.

Could Aldermore be the same story like Admiral 10-15 years ago ?

I think that Aldermore differs in a very important way from Admiraml: It is not structured at as capital-light model, Aldermore keeps the risk on its balance sheet and will at some point in time need additional capital if they grow like this, which then will dilute shareholders.

Additionally, they are not active in the comparison space. I do think that in the long run will bite into their profitability as the comparison siteswill be able to charge them significant comissions for referals. In the insurance space, referral fees in many cases are already as expensive as sales commissions for agents.

A good reminder that not every new and online based financial company is “the next Admiral” is for instance Vardia, the Norwegian direct insurance newcomer. After explosive growth, out of the blue they had to announce a recapitalization recently. The stock price of course got hammered.

Summary:

Aldermore is clearly riding the wave of disgruntled UK bank clients, but I would not invest there. I don’t see a real competitive advantage,at least not for now.
Valuation wise, the company trades at around 2,5x book value and 15 times earnings which is OK but not cheap. The biggest risk in my opinion is that with their aggressive growth, the might attract a lot of bad risks. Their long-term underwriting abilities will be tested in the next down turn for sure. Anyway, the Aldermore IPO clearly shows that there is room for smaller players in the UK and that there is a good chance for Handelsbanken to grow for quite some time.

Additionally i would argue that the UK banking sector still looks attractive compared to other countries. In Germany for instance retail and commercial banking is dominated by Government backed banks (Sparkassen) which have a built-in advantage of extremely low funding cost. The local UK market in comparison looks much better, especially as interest rates are still positive…..

Short cuts: AS Creation, Fortum, KAS Bank annual report

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AS Creation

As Creation is a stock I owned in the past. Last November I had quickly updated the case and written the following:

In any case, I don’t think AS Creation is interesting at the current level of 30 EUR. At a 2014 P/E of 15-20 (before any extra write-offs on Russia) there seems to be quite some turn around fantasy being priced in.

Just a few days ago, AS Creation came out with an anouncement. There will be no dividend and the loss for the year 2014 is 9,3 mn EUR, at the upper end of the communicated range. In parallel, the CFO left the company. The loss seems triggered by a 10 mn EUR FX loss and a 5 mn EUR fine in France. They did not give further details but one can assume that the German business wasn’t that great either.

In any case a good reminder that despite cheap fundamentals, not every “value stock” is good value.

Fortum

Fortum is also a stock which I owned in the past. I sold them in autumn 2012 because I was not really convinced by the idea anymore.

Looking at the chart, we can see that Fortum has done OK since then, especially compared to like German utilities like RWE, which looked a lot cheaper back then:

Again a reminder that cheap doesn’t mean good. The even more interesting aspect is that a few days ago, Fortum finalised the sale of the Swedish power distribution grid to a consortium of pension plans and insurers for 4.4 bn EUR.

According to Reuters, the multiples were quite “Juicy” for the seller:

The deal values the network at around 16.6 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), the same as for Fortum’s Finnish grid sale in 2013.

16,6 times EBITDA for a business which is quite comparable to my portfolio stock Electrica is an interesting price point. Clearly, you need to take some kind of discount for a recently privatized Romanian company, but I think it clearly shows what kind of prices especially pension and insurance companies are ready to pay. This makes me feel even better about the prospects of Electrica than before.

KAS Bank annual report

When I looked first at KAS Bank 2 and a half years ago, i was drawn in mostly by a very low valuation and the solid business model with a good “mean reversion” potential. that’s what I wrote back then:

Summary:

KAS Bank for me looks like a very interesting opportunity within the banking sector due to the following reasons:

+ attractive specialist business model (custodian)
+ cheap valuation even based on current “bottom of the cycle” earnings
+ valuation depressed because of overall hostility against banks
+ low or no analyst coverage
+ reversion to the mean speculation a lot less risky than with normal banks as virtually no risk of dilution (even Basel III standards are met by a wide margin)
+ potential upside ~100% over the next 3-5 years plus dividends+ low correlation / beta good portfolio diversifier

The upside has realized much quicker than i thought. As of now, including dividends, the stock return +75%. So good analysis, great return ? Well not really. Actually, if I am honest, this was mostly luck as I made a big mistake or omission when i analyzed the stock: I did not look at the pension liability. And this despite the fact that I have written and warned quite often about pensions.

In Kas Bank’s case I have ignored that because the plan was funded. That was a mistake and I will show you why.

Looking into the 2014 annual report of KAS Bank, we can see that they made a nice 24 mn EUR profit this year, which includes the one time effect of the canceled German JV. However, total equity DEcreased from 213 to 194 mn EUR. As the 2014 dividend is around 10 mn EUR, the question is clearly: Where did the other 35 mn EUR equity go ?

The solution to this question can be found on page 52, in the Comprehensive Income statement: KAS Bank lost 52,6 mn EUR pre tax) because of the increase in its pension liability. 2014 has been a brutal year for pensions. The discount rate has been reduced significantly. In 2013 I didn’t pay attention, but KAS Bank used 3,9% which was on the very high-end of permitted rates for EUR. In 2014 they had to slash this to 2,2% (page 80). It gets even crazier if we look at the gross numbers on page 81. The gross DBO increase 105 mn EUR from 182 mn to 287 mn. Luckily, some of that increase could be countered by asset increases. From an overfunding of 40 mn EUR, the plan went to break even. What really surprised me is the duration of the plan with around 22 years. The problem for me is the following: Despite the current funded status, there is a significant amount of risk in the plan. The gross size of the plan is 1,5 times the equity of KAS Bank. The run a significant equity allocation (85 mn EUR or ~ 45% of KAS Banks Equity). So in a scenario with a stock market crash with continuing low-interest rates, KAS Bank would pretty quickly be forced to do a capital increase.

Additionally, the current environment is clearly not helping KAS Bank in its core business. A custody bank is always deposit rich which is a problem now. Another second level problem is mentioned on page 18:

Treasury income, mainly securities lending, decreased by 20% to EUR 11.4 million (2013: EUR 14.3 million). The lower income from securities lending was primarily due to a market wide liquidity surplus which decreased
the prices for securities lending services.

This decrease happened even before the ECB started pumping liquidity into the markets.

So overall, I have been very lucky so far. I didn’t take into account the pension liability in my first analysis and fundamentals got worse for the business itself. Nevertheless I made good money because i bought cheap enough. Optically, the stock still looks priced oK at P/B 1, trailing P/E of 7 and 5,6% dividend yield, but fundamentally, especially looking at ultra low interest rates for quite some time, KAS Bank is in my view now at fair value.

However, I didn’t want to stretch my luck too far and therefore I sold the whole position at around 11,50 EUR per share.

Handelsbanken (part 3) – where is the upside & valuation

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As this turned out to be again a pretty long post, a quick “management summary” in the beginning:

1. I do think that Handelsbanken’s UK business represents a significant opportunity for long-term growth
2. Additionally, I think that well run banks are a good opportunity as banks are in general disliked and overall risks in banking have been greatly reduced
3. However, at current valuation levels, Handelsbanken is too expensive. I would be a buyer at around 350 SEK per share or ~-15% below current prices

After trying to “kill” the Handelsbanken investment case last week, now in my third post I will look at the potential upside.

From my side, there are 2 potential “catalysts” which COULD imply future upside, which are:

1. Significant growth potential in UK and Netherlands
2. (Relative) revaluation of the banking sector in the medium term

1. Significant growth potential in UK and Netherlands

If you read the Handelsbanken annual reports over the last few years, it is not exactly a secret that they have great success in the UK. This is a table I compiled from the annual reports which shows the development of the UK branches:

Branches Operating profit Total OP UK/total
2009 62 177 13727 1.29%
2010 83 417 14770 2.82%
2011 104 639 16563 3.86%
2012 133 1006 17108 5.88%
2013 161 1173 18088 6.48%
2014 178 1652 19212 8.60%

Since the end of the financial crisis in 200, Handelsbanken managed to increase operating profit in the UK 10 times and the UK business reached almost 9% of total operating profits in 2014.

Despite a higher cost/income ratio in the UK (~55%) vs the home market in Sweden (~33%), profitability as measured by ROE is already at the same level. Opening bank branches is clearly a cost factor, so one should expect cost income ratios to even go down in the UK over time.

Gross margins in the UK are clearly higher than in Sweden. In my opinion, this has two possible explanations: First, overall interest rates are higher in the UK which makes it easier to charge more. Secondly, most of the competitors (Barclay’s, HSBC, Lloyd’s, TSB) have large legacy portfolios and need to earn margins on new business.

The big question is: can Handelsbanken continue to grow and how big could this become ? One clear driver of the growth is that UK customers are fed up with their local banks. Most of them needed bail outs (RBS, Lloyds, TSB), damaged their reputation by aggressively selling questionable products and/or tax evasion etc. (HSBC’s Gulliver with his Swiss bank account as a last example).

Handelsbanken’s market share in UK so far is tiny. I tried to collect some numbers. In this 2011 report for instance, Handelsbanken didn’t even show up. This is how market shares for instance looked for personal account:

Normally, as in many industries, size does have advantages also in retail banking. Advertising for instance are expenses which scale well. In the UK however banks with large market shares face strong headwinds as outlined in this article. Interestingly, Lloyd’s with its leading market share has a cost-income-ratio of currently around 67% and this number has improved a lot over the last year. So it’s quite interesting to see that the “dwarf” Handelsbanken is already much more efficient than the big guys.

Overall, without having examined the UK market in more detail, I do think there is room for Handelsbanken to expand and reinvest capital at attractive rates for some time.

Personally, I like the organic growth of Handelsbanken a lot. In general I find that especially in the early stages, organic growth is often undervalued. Stock investors prefer often fast growth via acquisitions. You can book a lot of accounting special effects etc. and increase EPS per share much quicker. As we have seen often however, the risk of M&A deals is a lot higher and more often than not, those deals backfire and sometimes even sink the acquirer.

In the UK for instance, recently spun-off TSB has already been approached by Spanish Bank Sabadell for a potential take over a few days ago. This is of course a quick way to add a lot of branches but also a much more risky one.

Netherlands:

Netherlands for Handelsbanken is a comparable small market. with currently 20 branches (up from 18 in 2013), the business grew by ~17%. In principle, I think the situation could be similar to the UK. a lot of the dutch banks have big legacy issues and need to earn margins. However at the moment I would look at the Netherlands as an option and not as something to actually take into account when valuing Handelsbanken.

2. (Relative) revaluation of the banking sector in the medium term

I have quickly touched this topic in the two other posts already. Banks are generally considered as “bad investments” by most participants in the stock market. This is clearly justified if we look back the last 10 years or even longer. Whereas a company like Nestle is considered a safe and promising investment at a P/E of around 23, banks are considered a pure gamble even when the trade at fractions of those multiples.

For me, this is both, a lesson in how to look at historical data and a potentially big structural investment opportunity. Let me explain why.

The main arguments against banks is that they are highly leveraged and too risky. The risk is both individual and systemic (Lehman scenario). In my opinion, the systemic risk component has been greatly reduced by what happened since the financial crisis. A lot of mechanisms have been created to prevent a second event like the run that happened in 2008/2009. For me the most important are:

– collateralization of derivatives
– bank resolution systems both national (e.g. SOFFIN) and on international level
– clear commitment and mandates of central banks
– significant increase in capital requirements internationally

For current shareholders of large legacy banks, this is not very funny at the moment. Whereas most non-banks pay dividends and buy back shares like crazy, banks have to raise capital and postpone dividends in order to shore up their capital. And clearly, in many of the mega-banks, there is plenty of toxic waste on the balance sheet to justify low valuations.

On the other hand, this creates in my opinion great opportunities for players like Handelsbanken which have little toxic waste on their balance sheet and are run efficiently. The systemic risk for those players has become a lot smaller as a potential bankruptcy of one of the old mega-banks will most likely have only little effects on other banks in the future.

The individual risk of a classic and disciplined lending bank in my opinion is relatively limited if it is run by the right people. I do not think that a conservatively run bank is riskier than any other business. I know this is a somehow controversial standpoint but to me, a standard banking business model looks a lot less complex than for instance a multi national branded consumer goods company. For me this kind of blind distrust in the banking business model creates a very interesting opportunity.

Yes, banking in general will be much more dull in the future, but als a lot safer.

The second issue I want to touch quickly is the issue of historical data. Yes, historically, banks look like terrible investments because many of them have been wiped out in the financial crisis. I cannot prove it statistically, but I think banks are also the reason why suddenly low P/E and low P/B strategies seemed to have stopped working. The now favored metric by many “data miners”, the EV has the advantage that it automatically filters out any financial company. But looking into the rear view mirror is not always the best way to make investment decisions. If you would have been a stock investor after WW II, you might not have ever invested into German or Japanese shares because they have been wiped out. But a World War luckily does not happen every 5-10 years and neither does a full-blown financial crisis.

I think that there is a good chance that due to the pressure of capital markets, in the future, returns for banks could be relatively a lot better than they have in the past, assuming that the basic banking model is here to stay. The market will squeeze banks so much that those who remain will earn good ROEs again at some point in the future. And good banks will earn very good ROEs.

Valuation exercise

There are many ways to evaluate companies. I prefer simple ones. For banks, I consider ROE and P/B as the most important factors which drive long-term returns, so a valuation model should focus on those metrics.

To have a starting point, I make the following assumptions:

– ROE will improve to 15% over 5 years (from currently 12,4%) and will stay there (15 year average is 16,5%)
– P/B will remain constant at 2,1 (15 year average is 1,7)
– Divdend payout will be 25% and handelsbanken will be able to reinvest at the above assumed ROEs

The following table translates this into a simple IRR calculation:

Current Price book 2,1                    
ROE 15%                    
                       
ROI 7,1%                    
                       
                       
                       
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Book Value 200 218,8 240,1 264,4 292,1 323,9 360,4 400,9 446,0 496,2 552,0
ROE 12,5% 13% 13,50% 14% 14,50% 15% 15% 15% 15% 15% 15%
EPS 25 28,44 32,41 37,01 42,36 48,59 54,05 60,13 66,90 74,43 82,80
Implicit P/E 16,8 16,2 15,6 15,0 14,5 14,0 14,0 14,0 14,0 14,0 14,0
Retention ratio 75% 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75 0,75
Dividend   7,1 8,1 9,3 10,6 12,1 13,5 15,0 16,7 18,6 20,7
Target Price   459,4 504,2 555,2 613,5 680,2 756,8 841,9 936,6 1.042,0 1.159,2
                       
NPV CFs -409 7,1 8,1 9,3 10,6 12,1 13,5 15,0 16,7 18,6 1.179,9
                       
IRR 12,9%                  

Under those assumptions, Handelsbanken would be trading at 1.160 in 10 years time and returning me 12,9% p.a.

Now comes the interesting part: If I would want to see my 15% p.a. which I normally require, I would need to change assumptions. First I could move the purchase price down from 409 SEK. In my model, I could pay 342 SEks per share and get my 15% annual return. I could also increase my P/B multiple to 2,6 to get my 15% or I could increase the ROE to 21% after year 6 to get 15%. To be honest, both, the multiple expansion and the ROE increase seem much to aggressive to me.

So the question clearly is: Is 12,9% potential return enough or should I insist on 15% ? With the 10 year government rate in Sweden at 1%, the 12,9% would indicate a potential equity premium of 11,9% which is far more than one would normally expect from the market. On the other hand, no one knows what long-term interest rates will be in 10 years time, so betting fully on today’s low rates is also not the best solution.

This return is also driven by the assumption that Handelsbanken can continue to reinvest 75% of their profits at attractive ROEs. In Handelsbanken’s case, I don’t think that this is unrealistic. However if they could for instance only reinvest 60% and pay out the rest in dividends, then the expected return would drop to 10,7% p.a.

Anyway, for now, I would not feel comfortable investing at the current stock price level.

Summary:

At the end of this mini-series, it has become relatively clear to me that Svenska Handelsbanken is really a great company, a true “Outsider” in regard to its business model and culture. Additionally, I do think that they have good growth opportunities in UK, which allows them to reinvest capital for some time to come attractive ROE’s.

In general, I believe than well run banks are one of the few potential bargains left in the market as investors hate them and do not see the greatly improved fundamentals of the financial “plumbing”.

Nevertheless, I do think that Handelsbanken does not fulfill my return requirements as the current price seems to have priced in some of this growth already. Unfortunately i was very slow in discovering Handelsbanken., as I could have bought them at an attractive only a few months ago. Nevertheless, I will keep them as my prime candidate on my watch list. I would love to add this “Outsider company” to my long-term value portfolio.

But again, patience is important. another positive aspect of this exercise is that I know now much better than before what I am looking for when I analyze a bank.

Tesco Plc (ISIN GB0008847096) – Potential value investment or turnaround gamble ?

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For a very long time, Tesco, the UK supermarekt chain could do no wrong. They grew nicely year after year and margins, returns on capital etc. were in a league on its own compared to other supermarket chains.

In the 20 years leading up to 2007 for instance, the Tesco share price increased 15 fold, resulting in an annual gain of ~ 16,3% vs. ~7,0% for the FTSE 100.

In the last few years however, Tesco’s star faded. Profit warning was followed by profit warning. In 2013, after exiting the US business and the China venture, many thought that the worst was behind them. But now in 2014, the problems seem to have just begun with further sales declines in the UK markets and lately with an accounting scandal forcing the Chairman stepping down

Over the last few years I looked from time to time into Tesco. I usually don’t like retailers that much, but with Tesco the simple reason was always “Buffett is owning it”. I have to admit that for me the fact that Buffett is owning something creates an urgent need to look at those companies.

Anyway,
Warren Buffett admitted defeat and sold out a few weeks ago, after buying a large stake as late as in 2012, calling the whole episode as a “great mistake”.

Nevertheless, such a rapidly falling stock price of a “blue chip” company still lures many value investors. Among others, Vitaly Katsenelson came out with a “pro Tesco” article just a few days ago.

I would summarize his arguments as follows:

It is a good time to buy Tesco NOW because:
– the news is all negative
– there is an natural upper limit of discounter market share in the UK close to the level where it is today in the UK (~7%)
– Tesco is still twice as large as the nearest competitor and 10 times bigger as Aldi and Lidl
– US grocers have countered Walmart in the US succesfully, so will Tesco in the UK
– Tesco sits on a lot of prime real estate
– Tesco has a 50% market share in online groceries in UK
– the discovered accounting issue is not so bad, as part of if happened in past years
– there is a lot of hidden value in Tesco’s real estate
– Tesco has subsidiaries (loyalty cards, Asia) which are valuable, it could be a sum of parts play
– the 7,5 bn GBP debt load is not an issue because the company is “asset rich”
– at an assumed “fair”operating margin of 5%, Tesco would be a “steal” at 6x P/E

Overall, the pitch is well written and seems to be quite convincing.

However at a second look, the Tesco story seems less convincing. Regarding Katsenelson himself, I wonder why he didn’t explictly mention his article from 1 year ago, where he recommended to buy Tesco right back then, at a price of around 3,60 GBP with virtually the same arguments. Since then, the stock lost a -54% if you followed his advice.

But let’s look at some of his arguments:

There is an natural upper limit of discounter market share

Katsenelson claims that the current discounter market share of around 7% is a “natural limit”. He doesn’t link to any proof and only mentions the limited success some US chains to support this. However if you look at the “Motherland” of hard discounting, Germany, you can see that this argument is pure nonsense. Although German shoppers might be a little special, a market share of 44% for diacounters in 2014 clearly shows that there is a lot of room for discounters in the UK, even if the never get to German levels.

Tesco is still twice as large as the nearest competitor and 10 times bigger as Aldi and Lidl

Well, that’s true for the UK but not for the Europe. Lidl had total sales of 75 bn EUR in Europe, only slightly less than Tesco’s total sales. Aldi doesn’t issue consolidated sales figures but is only slightly smaller than Lidl. What Kastenelson however completely misses is the following: Aldi and Lidl offer only a very limited choice, usually several hundred products compared to 10.000 or more in a large supermarket. So you don’t have the choice of 10 different sorts of orange juice, there is only one and the same goes for other categories-

The result of this limited choice is a a massive scale effect. Even with less total sales, sales per single product at Aldi & Lidl might be already higher in the UK than at Tesco. And sales per single products are essential because this gives negotiation power with the suplier.

There is a lot of value in Tesco’s real estate

This is the same argument one hears all the time for struggling retail companies. They just need to sell their precious reals estate and everything will be OK. The problem with this kind of approach is that real estate for a retailer is not some kind of “extra asset” which comes on top, but real estate is an essential production factor. Selling real estate for a retailer normally means a “sale-and-lease” back and is nothing more than taking on more debt.

I have written about one case, Praktiker in Germany, where the sale-and-.lease-back finally killed the company, the same happened with Karstadt/Arcandor. Tesco by the way, seems to have been quite active in more or less intransparent sale-and-lease back transactions in the past, as this FT Alphaville article outlines. There is also a pretty good post at Motley Fool with regard to the assumed “real estate treasure” and the following quote nails it down:

The supermarkets’ race-for-space is over. Forget the news that Tesco is planning to build houses on some of its now unneeded landbank — that’s it’s a sideshow in the grand scheme of things.

The real story to focus on is those aircraft-hangar-like Extra stores that Tesco is currently padding out with Giraffe restaurants, gyms, children’s play areas and suchlike. This seems little more than a holding strategy, while the company decides what to do with the stores in the new consumer-is-the-destination world, where ‘destination stores’ already seem so last decade.

Analysts at Cazenove have painted a grim — but I think realistic — picture of the way Tesco’s UK property valuation is heading:

“The gap between the performance of large out-of-town stores and convenience stores continues to widen … This has direct and strong implications for the property valuation of the Extra stores (45% of the UK space). The company says that its UK real estate is worth £20bn based on the extrapolation of past sale and lease-back transactions to the entire estate. We believe it is likely worth less than half that value — the book value of UK land and buildings is £9.3bn and the alternative use value towards which several out of town stores are converging is a fraction of the book value”.

Whatever the final outcome will be, but buying a highly indebted retailer because of the assumed value of the real estate has never really worked. If Tesco doesn’t earn enough on the real estate they occupy, who else will do this ? From my experience, when a retailer’s main attraction is the value of its real estate, then you should better run.

US grocers have countered Walmart in the US succesfully, so will Tesco in the UK

Again, Katsenelson looks at the US and compares Aldi & Lidl to Walmart in the US. I think this is a big mistake. If we look again to Germany, one can see that traditional grocers and supermarkets NEVER recovered fully from the attack of the discounters. Just a few weeks ago, one of the German supermarket pioneers, Tengelmann, sold its remaining “classical” super markets to rival Edeka. Operating margins for normal supermarkets, even for the really big ones are more in the 2-3% area maybe half of that what UK supermarkets like Tesco still achieve. Aldi and Lidl are privately owned long term players who clearly are prepared to sacrifice profit for a long time in order to gain market share.

Summary:

It could easily be that we see a mighty rebound in Tesco, maybe even after I post this and I will look like an idiot. However in the medium and long term, I think many of the popular arguments for Tesco as a value investment (real estate etc.) are pretty useless and some of the arguments (i.e. “natural maximum market share” of discounters) are just plain wrong.

If you define a value investment as an investment where the probability of a loss is very small, than clearly Tesco with its highly leveraged balance sheet is not a value investment. On balance debt, off balance debt, a big pension deficit adds to Tesco’s pretty weak balance sheet. Just recently, Tesco was downgraded to BBB- from S&P. Below this level, refinancing will be difficult and much more expensive and subjct to capital market problems.

As an investor you will only make money with Tesco in the long run if they manage a real turn-around. How likely is that ? I have no idea and so I will better stay away from Tesco. In my opinion this is much more a turn-around gamble than a potential value investment.

ITE PLC (ISIN GB0002520509) – Super profitable market leader in Russia at a bargain price ?

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After a “Near death” experience with Sistema, I am nevertheless still interested in companies with significant Russian exposure as a “counter-cyclical” EM play, however preferably with less “Oligarch” risk. A very interesting company with a significant Russia exposure is ITE Plc, the UK-based company. According to Bloomberg

ITE Group Plc is an international organizer of exhibitions and conferences. The Company provides
its services to customers in a variety of commercial and industrial sectors, including travel and
tourism, construction, motor, oil and gas, food, security, transport, telecommunications, and
sports and leisure.

The good thing with UK companies is that usually some blogger has covered the stock already. WIth ITE, this is the case as well. Among others, there is a very good Seeking Alpha post, from the Portfolio 14 blog and als the Interactive Investor covers the stock.

I agree with all posts. Organizing exhibitions is good business:

+ you don’t need a lot of capital (negative working capital due to prepayments)
+ once an exhibition is established, it creates a network effect which is relatively difficult to duplicate
+ although the business fluctuates with the cycle, costs are to a certain extent variable
+ it’s a nice b2b business, connecting a large number of exhibitors of with a large number of interested visitors
+ despite or because of e-commerce, personal contact in the form of trade fairs etc. seems to become even more important
+ the company has no debt

The “catch” is of course that most of their exhibitions take place in Russia and the former GUS. Clearly, not the easiest part of the world to be at the moment.Looking at the past 16 years since their “reverse IPO” in 1999, we can see that the business has suffered in downturns such as the Russian default but always recovered. However, mostly due to the weak ruble, comprehensive income in the last few years was mostly lower than stated income:

Year EPS Compr. Income In% of EPS
29.12.2000 0,03    
31.12.2001 -0,13    
31.12.2002 -0,01    
31.12.2003 0,03    
31.12.2004 0,04    
30.12.2005 0,07    
29.12.2006 0,07 0,07 99%
31.12.2007 0,09 #N/A N/A #WERT!
31.12.2008 0,09 0,09 97%
31.12.2009 0,13 0,11 86%
31.12.2010 0,10 0,12 121%
30.12.2011 0,13 0,10 82%
31.12.2012 0,13 0,13 98%
31.12.2013 0,14 0,09 64%

The valuation looks quite cheap, especially the EV/EBIT and EV/EBITDA ratios for such a business with high (historical) growth rates:

P/E ~9
EV/EBITDA 5,9
EV/EBIT 7,0
P/B 4,4
Div. Yield 5,0%

After reading some of the reports, I found a couple of things I didn’t like:

– focus on “headline” profits, excluding amortizations and “restructuring charges”
– Management fully incentiviced on “Headline profits”, not ROIC or ROE etc..
– Falling knife Stock chart
– one of the biggest “rainmakers”, Edward Strachan retired a few months ago.
– trade fares and exhibitions often have a time lag of 6-12 months to the general economy. So the worst in Russia for ITE might come only in the next few quarters.

Peer Group

There aren’t that many “pure play” trade fare /exhibition companies listed but I tried to compile a list to the best of my knowledge. Two of the companies listed below (Kingsmen & Pico) are actually more supliers to exhibitions than promoters/organizers:

Name Mkt Cap (GBP) EV/EBITDA EV/EBIT P/E P/S
ITE GROUP PLC 434,5 5,3 7,0 9,9 2,2
TARSUS GROUP PLC 198,7 7,7 12,0 16,4 2,6
UBM PLC 1267,5 9,6 14,4 9,9 1,7
MCH GROUP AG 237,8 7,2 13,9 11,9 0,8
FIERA MILANO SPA 182,0 156,0 #N/A N/A #N/A N/A 0,9
KINGSMEN CREATIVE LTD 87,1 5,9 6,4 10,9 0,6
PICO FAR EAST HOLDINGS LTD. 182,6 6,7 9,6 11,2 0,7

If we look at P/Es, most of the companies trade relativelly cheap at around 9-11 times earnings, but long term ROE and margins at ITE are clearly a class of its own. The big question is: Can they sustain those margins in the long run ? Many of the listed peers as well as the unlisted ones like Deutsche Messe tried (at least before the crisis) to get into the Russian market.

The problem could easily be that ITE is too profitable. Past average net margins of 20%-25% are far higher than any of the competitors. Deutsche Messe for instance, which aggressively expands into EM earned a net margin of 3% in 2013. Clearly, It is not so easy to kick out ITE, but if the difference in margins is so big, at some point in time competition will begin to bite. although it’s not easy to establish a succesful trade fair or exhibition, it is relatively easy to start one. So yes, there is a network effect but the barriers to entry are still relatively low. A good example for this can be seen currently at TESCO in the UK. For quite some time it looked that they are protected by their dominant position and had margins 2 or 3 times higher than their continental peers. But once the competitors like Aldi and Lidl, who could only dream of such margins in other markets, were big enough, margins for the leader deteriorated pretty quickly.

Valuation

Based on what I described above, I would make the following assumptions:

– going forward, net margins will be lower than in the past. In the past they achieved margins of 20-25%, I will calculate with 18% (thats what they made in 2012 and 2013)
– in order to reflect the additional risk in Russia, I will require more return. My normal requirement would be 15%, here i need 5% more or 20% p.a.

So if I assume that in 3 years time, ITE will again do the same amount of sales as in the FY 2013, this would be 0,80 GBP per share. At 18% Net margin, they would then earn around 14,4 pence per share. A “fair” P/E for such a company could be around 15. So the 3 year target price would be 14,4*15= 2,16 GBP.

However, in order to earn my 20% p.a. , I need to discount my target: 2,16/ (1,2)^3 = 1,25 GBP. This is however a lot lower than the current price of 1,70 GBP

So for me, under those assumptions, LTE is not a buy, I would buy once the price is at or below 1,25 GBP per share.

Summary:

It really took me some time with ITE Plc. I really like the business model of trade fair /exhibitions. Although cyclical, it seems to be good business with a certain protection. For ITE however, I fear the worst is yet to come. With the oil price plunging and the “Russian situation” unchanged, including more potential trade sanctions etc., the next year will be even harder than the last for ITE.

I would stil buy them if they are cheap enough, which, at the moment they are not. They would need to drop a further 30% in my opinion to make them really intersting and compensate me for the additional risk. I will however try to look at some other similar companies going forward. Especially Pico Far East and Kingsmen looked interesting at first sight.

It could easily be that I am too cautious due to my losses with Sistema (“Recency bias” ?), but at the moment I rather make the mistake of being too conservative.

Short cuts: KAS Bank & Van Lanschot

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Both Dutch Banks in my Portfolio, Van Lanschot and KAS Bank reported 6 month numbers last week.

Van Lanschot

Van Lanschot’s 6 month numbers were relatively solid in my opinion. 6 months EPS were 1,14 EUR per share, however this includes certain one-offs from asset sales. The underlying wealth manangement business seems to have stabilized. Net interest income is slightly going down but this is the result of shrinking their loan portfolios and was expected. The stock price reacted quite positively on those numbers:

What I didn’t like at all was the fact that within the comprehensive income, they burried a large increase in their pension reserves of around -82 mn before tax. This is around 10% of gross pension liabilities and wiped out all the profit of Van Lanschot in the first 6 months (comprehensive income was actually negative). Unfortunately, there is no explanation given. I Have sent an Email to IR in order to understadn this better.

KAS Bank

Similar to Van Lanschot, KAS Bank presented very solid 6M numbers including a big one time effect. They received 20 mn EUR as compensation for letting German dwpbank out of an outsourcing contract. Underlying profit without this one off increased nicely, although mostly due to cost savings than higher revenues.

Compared to Van Lanschot, the stock price did very little:

Maybe this has to to with a somehow muted outlook and the decission to fully reinvest the dwpbank payment. Nevrteheless, for me KAS Bank seems to be on a very good way and is rather a buy on weak days. I still think that KAS Bank should trade at least at book value which is around 14,50 EUR per share.

KAS Bank in my opinion is also a very good and cheap interest rate hedge. If short term rates rise, this will directly benefit KAS Bank’s result within a very short time frame. I do not have an active opinion on interest rates, but it is a nice “add on” to the investment case.

Short cuts: Installux, Gronlandsbanken, Admiral

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Installux

Compared to Poujoulat and other French company, Installux released almost sensationally good 6M results. Sales went up +3% which is quite impressive for a domestic, France focused company and net result went up almost +14%.

According to the half year report, cash is now around ~86 EUR per share. Only with the 15,80 EUR 6M Earnings per share, Installux would trade at a single digit p/E ex cash even if they make no profit at all in the second 6 months. With a realistic 25-30 EUR per share for the whole year, we are at an cash adjusted P/E of somewhere between 5-6. In my opinion, despite the illiquidity, Installux still offers a great return/risk profile.

Gronlandsbanken

Grondlandsbanken delivered very strong 6 month numbers. 6 month profits of 30 DKK per share were almost 20% higher than in 2013, althhough there were significant positive one time effects included (valuation and disposal gains). Nevertheless, operating results also increased yoy despite overall still muted economic activity. What I found most interesting in the report was this statement from the outlook:

After a weak socio-economic growth and negative GDP in 2012 and 2013, no or a weak growth in the Greenland economy is expected in 2014, however, still with much uncertainty. In the expectation that the prices and
quantities of fish hold steady, that no raw material projects are initiated, but that large construction activities will start in the second half of 2014, the bank expects an increase in activity in 2014. It is, however, si gnificant that the activity in Nuuk remains low, while there is in creased activity in a number of coastal towns. A noticeable activity increase is thus essentially not expected until 2015.

So it seems to be that finally the big projects will be realized with a delay. As Gronlandsbanken has shown that they can increase earnings even without economic growth, I think the stock is “worth” to be upgraded to a “half position”. I will therefore increase the position from 1,9% to around 2,5% at current prices.

Admiral

Already a few days ago, Admiral released H1 2014 numbers. Looking at the stock price, many investors seem to have been dissapointed:

Analysts have mostly lowered their ratings and/or price targets:

Firm Analyst Recommendation Tgt Px Date↑ 1 Yr Rtn BARR Rank
Credit Suisse Chris Esson neutral 1350 08/18/14
Canaccord Genuity Corp Ben Cohen sell 1220 08/15/14 4th
Berenberg Sami Taipalus sell 1168 08/14/14
Nomura Fahad Changazi buy 1493 08/14/14 10.64% 4th 5th
Exane BNP Paribas Andy Hughes underperform 1070 08/14/14
Deutsche Bank Oliver Steel hold 1260 08/13/14 2nd
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Greig N Paterson market perform 1227 08/13/14
Oriel Securities Ltd Marcus Barnard sell 900 08/13/14 6th
Numis Securities Ltd Nicholas Johnson add 1720 08/12/14 10.97% 3rd
Barclays Andrew Broadfield equalweight 1428 08/12/14 3rd

Tha analyst “consensus” rating in Blommberg is 2,57 which is pretty bad and one of the worst for all European insurers.

Actually, Admiral posted higher profits than the comparable 6 months in 2013, however the released above average reserves. On the other hand, they still invest a lot, especially in US price comparison and the international business. For me, the results were pretty inline with what management has been saying all along. UK car insurance is in a tough spot and will remain so for some time. Interestingly, the all important “auxiliary” income remained constant despite lower premiums which in my opinion is a very good sign.

International premium has increased by 10%, however the loss has increased as well. Allthough I usually don’t like investor presentations that much, but the Admiral presentation is extremely good. There is also a lot to learn about insurance in general, such as the claim inflation example on page 20 or the detailed reinsurance terms on page 48. Also their view on the US market is quite interesting, especially slide 35 with the acquisition cost per insurance contract. For me, this is showing that the Admiral guys know what they are doing which is unfortunately not the general rule in insurance.

The only disappointing part in my opinion is the Italian subsidiary. Admiral says that they didn’t undwrite more as prices were un attractive. Other than that the international business seems to expand nicely.

Reader Musti forwarded me a link why Morgan Stanley sold out Admiral in one of their funds.

The team became more wary of Admiral (LSE:ADM) after the 2011 turbulence in the stock price, after a scare about the potential for large personal injury claims. While the 2011 claims ratio eventually turned out to be fine, it caused a revision in our view of the quality of the name. The combination of the stock’s recovery, and long-term concerns about the effect of autonomous driving on the motor insurance industry, caused us to reduce and then exit the position.

I think this is quite interesting and revealing. They became nervous because the stock price was volatile and that caused a revision of the “qualitiy of the name”. Self driving cars is definitely something to look at but I think no one can say now how quickly this will come and what impact this will have. A self driving car will still need insurance, so much should be clear.

Overall, for me nothing has changed with regard to Admiral. If you want to see smoothly increasing earnings then you have to go somewhere else. If you want a truly great business at a fair price then you should hold or buy more which I might do if the price falls further. I plan to make this a “full” position until the end of the year.

Bouvet ASA (NO0010360266) – 40%+ ROE micro cap from Norway

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DISCLAIMER: The stock which is discussed in this post is an illiquid micro cap stock. The author will most certainly have bought it before writing the post and will not necessarily tell you when he sells. This is not an investment advice. Please do your own research and never rely on stock tips without carefully scrutinizing th motivation and assumptions behind them.

The company

Bouvet ASA is a small Norwegian IT consulting company operating almost exclusively in Norway.

The company is the result of a merger of several smaller Norwegian IT consulting companies and, after a management buyout went public in 2007 on the Oslo stock exchange. Current market cap is around 850 mn NOKs or ~ 100 mn EUR, so it is really small.

Valuation wise, the traditional metrics are OK but not spectacular (at 83 NOks):

P/E: 11,8
P/B: 4,8
P/S: 0,7
Dividend yield 7,2%
EV/EBIT: 8,1
EV/EBITDA: 7,3

No debt, the company has net cash of ~15 NOK per share.

Clearly the dividend yield looks attractive but P/B for instance looks quite expensive, so it’s definitely not a Graham cigar butt.


The business

Consulting business itself is a relatively straight forward business. You hire bright young motivated people and “sell them” on a daily basis to companies at a higher price. In between you have to train and motivate them. This business requires very little capital, mostly it is the receivables from clients and some office supply in a small company office. You don’t need big offices anyway as the consultants are usually at the client’s site.

In my opinion, barriers to entry and therefore competitive advantages in consulting can be achieved via:

1) “Brand name”

The brand name is important for two purposes:

a) For clients: Hiring a “famous” consultant is more expensive but also lowers the “reputational risk” for a project sponsor. If “xyz consulting” is screwing up a project, then the project sponsor has a problem because he hired and unknown consultant. If McKinsey screws up, than it’s not his fault. Achieving a brand is not that easy, so entering the market on the “High end” is not that easy either. It needs time to build up the reputation, although in IT consulting the brand name is a little less relevant than in typical management consulting.

b) For employees: In order to get the best employees, you must have a good reputation with Students, MBAs etc. Without good people you cannot charge high prices, so this is a self-reinforcing cycle once you are on the list of the “High potentials”. High potentials these days have many options, consulting companies, start-ups, investment banks, Google, brand companies etc.

2) Existing client list

It is always easier to pitch “from the inside” than from the outside. Once you are inside a company as consultant, you have access to decision makers which is essential to sell new projects. If you do a good job, many managers will think twice to go through an official bidding process and give the follow-up work to the consultant who is already there. Even for projects with a competitive bidding, it is always better to have some “Inside” knowledge, especially about the client company culture etc. The bigger the client company, the better the chances to get additional projects. Large companies have a surprisingly large “thirst” for consultants.

3) Network effect of “old” consultants with important function

Consulting is not a job to get old. Most young employees will switch to a “normal” job at some point in time. If you treat your employees well, they will be proud of having worked there. Often consultants switch to relatively senior jobs or get hired straight way by clients. If they then search for consultants, they will often give the first shot to their former colleagues (and friends…). This is even more important in management consulting but also important for IT consultants. Good consulting companies “groom” their network of ex colleagues via regular “off site” meetings in nice location.

So how does Bouvet score on these 3 categories ? From my armchair perspective, it is clearly difficult to judge. With regard to attractiveness to employees; Bouvet seems to do some things right, as they are regularily among the “top places to work” both in Norway and Europe. Employee reviews are generally good, although I found one comment that the atmosphere might be a little bit “too relaxed”.

I cannot judge how good their network is, but at least the “Brand” seems to be good in Norway. The client list seems to be as good as it gets in Norway, with Statoil being a big client as well as the Norwegian Government.

Additionally to their consulting (or as a result of it), they also seem to develop some specializes software, for instance this one which measures electricity consumption of trains.

Financial track record

The easiest way to look how Bouvet is doing is of course to look at their financials

EPS ROE NI margin Div Payout ratio
2006 3,04 53,6% 7,7%    
2007 3,96 39,3% 8,3% 3,70 121,8%
2008 5,51 42,3% 9,8% 4,00 100,9%
2009 4,21 34,3% 7,2% 3,75 68,0%
2010 4,78 40,1% 6,8% 4,10 97,3%
2011 6,13 50,0% 7,0% 5,00 104,6%
2012 5,41 40,2% 5,4% 5,00 81,6%
2013 6,75 46,2% 6,2% 5,00 92,4%
2014       6,00 88,9%
           
CAGR/avg 10,5% 43,2% 7,3%   99,4%

Them most remarkable part is clearly that they managed to grow EPS by 10,5% p.a. and distribute 100% of their profit as dividend. This shows that consulting can be really good business if done right and Bouvet at least in the past seems to have done a lot of things right.

Let’s look at a quick peer group comparison:

EPS Growth NI margin ROE Payout ratio EV/EBIT
Accenture 14,3% 7,5% 64,4% 146,0% 12,0
Cap Gemini 3,0% 3,9% 8,8% 103,0% 8,8
Atos 5,6% 1,7% 5,7% 109,0% 9,3
Bechtle 10,2% 2,8% 13,6% 100,0% 12,1
Reply 16,2% 5,4% 16,4% 100,0% 8,8
Tieto -3,6% 3,90% 12,3% 89,0% 17,0
           
Bouvet 10,5% 7,3% 43,2% 99,3% 8,1

Interestingly, payout ratios are in all cases around 100%. However margins and especially return on equity are very different. Clearly US behemoth Accenture shows outstanding ratios in any category, but the stock is also priced a lot higher than the competitors. The comparison in my opinion shows that Bouvet is cheap compared to how good the business look. Bouvet has at least double the profit margins and multiple time ROE compared to those peers and still trades as the cheapest stock in this group.

Other considerations

Management / compensation

This is CEO Sverre Hurum, who owns 4,9% of the Bouvet SA:

He earned around 330k EUR total comp in 2013. This is actually slightly less than what he earned as dividend on his ~5% stake. So at first sight, comp seems to be reasonable and aligned with shareholders. One has to mention that he seems to have sold 1,4% some years ago, he used to own 6,3%.

Other than for instance the Akka CEO, he is not into motor racing but seems to enjoy cross-country skiing. The CFO Erik Stuboe owns another 2,35% in the company.

Analyst coverage /shareholders

Only 2 analysts are covering the stock according to Bloomberg and only one analysis is actually from 2014 (ABG, price target 110 NOK).

Other shareholders:

No dominating shareholders, mostly Nordic pension funds and asset managers. The biggest shareholder is Varner Kapital, the investment arm of a rich Norwegian textile family, followed by Stenshagen, another Norwegian investor with 8%, Interestingly, none of the big international investment companies is invested, this seems to be a “Local” stock.

Stock price & performance

Shareholders who bought Bouvet at the IPO and held the stock, will be very happy. They made 21,9% p.a. or 320% in total compared to only 3,9% p.a. for the Norwegian Stock index.

Despite the stock price increase, the valuation of Bouvet stayed mostly in the 11-13 P/E range as profits rose proportionally to the stock price. The stock has a very low beta to the stock market (0,38). That is not terribly important but good for my nerves especially in volatile markets….

“Flying under the radar” or why is the stock cheap ?

Bouvet is a micro cap stock. Most of the stock is held by pension funds etc, so although free float is theoretically there, trading volume is very low, around 60k EUR per day. So for many small cap funds, this is not interesting as they want to be able to move in and out of a stock relatively quickly. On the other side, this is also a potential “double upside” for investors who are able to invest “under the radar screen”. If the company continues to grow, at some point in time the market cap, free float and trading volume get so big that smaller funds become interested. In such a case, multiple expansion is often very likely. So as an investor, investing in a small, unknown grwoth stock the upside is much better than compared to an “established” stock with a relatively big free float


Negatives:

– expansion outside Norway difficult. Norway is a high cost country, exporting Norwegian consultants to other countries will most likely not work that well
– CEO is 57, how long will he continue ?
– cost structure most likely not as flexible as in an US style company
– consulting is to a certain extent personalized business. If employees are unhappy they can leave the firm but keep the client

Valuation / return expectation

Instead of coming up with a valuation, this time I make an even simpler case. I want to earn 15% on this investment p.a. With the 7,2% dividend yield, I am almost half way there. In order to earn another 8% p.a. over 3-5 years I need either:

– a multiple expansion. Based on the current cash adjusted multiple of ~10xP/E, it is not unreasonable to expect a 12-13 multiple at some point in the future
– or, based on the same multiple ~7% p.a. which is slightly below the CAGR since IPO (around 8% pa.a.)

I am willing to “bet” that it ois likely that one of those 2 scenarios will happen. If both happen, then my upside would be much higher.

Summary:

Bouvet in my opinion is the perfect “boring” small cap company I am looking for. Although it is neither terribly cheap nor having a big moat, it is a very good business at a reasonable price. It is pretty much neglected from analysts and the shareholders seem to be “strong hands”. The company is very shareholder friendly and has good growth potential in a normal environment. There is no “catalyst” event around the corner, but I still think that it is a very good complimentary position to my current portfolio, adding some Norwegian exposure along my mostly continental Europe /UK stocks.

I will therefore establish a “half position” (2,5%) at current prices of ~85 NOK per share. My target would be a 50-75% gain within 3-5 years including dividends.

Lancashire Group (ISIN BMG5361W1047) – The UK equivalent of Buffett’s National Indemnity ?

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While I was writing this post which I do normally over 1-2 weeks, the excellent WertArt Capital blog has released a very good post on Lancashire a few days ago. I higly recommend to read the post as it contains a lot of usefull information.

This saves me a lot of time and I only need to summarize the highlights:

– Lancashire is a specialist insurance company which insures mostly short tail “Excess loss” type of risks. It was founded by Richard Brindle, an experienced underwriter

– Since founding & IPO in 2009, the company has shown an amazing track record. No loss year, 59% average combined ratio and 19,5% ROE is simply fantastic.
– the company has a very disciplined underwriting focused business model, investment returns are negligible
– focus in on capital allocation and efficiency. If rates are not good, Lancashire returns capital to shareholders
– good alignment of management and shareholders (majority of bonus depends if ROE hurdle of 13% + risk free is hit)
– The company looks cheap at ~8,5x P/E and 1,3 x P/B

For non-insurance experts a few quick explanations of insurance terms:

“Short tail” insurance business:

“Short tail” means that one is only insuring stuff where you pretty quickly see if there is a loss or not. For instance a “plane crash” insurance will be good for 1 year and if a plane crashes, the insurer will pay. After that 1 year there are no obligations for the insurer.

“Long tail” in contrast is an insurance policy which again covers a calendar year but where the damage can come up much later. A good example is D&O (director and officers) insurance. Often, when a big company goes bankrupt, some fraud etc. was involved at management level. Until a jury finally makes a verdict, many years can pass by but still the insurance company which has underwritten the policy remains liable. A good example is for instance the recent Deutsch Bank /Kirch trial where insurers will have to pay 500 mn EUR for something that happened 12 years ago.

Long tail has the advantage that the “float” can be invested long-term and illiquid, on the other hand the risk if a significant miss-pricing is much higher.

Excess Loss contracts

Excess loss contracts are contracts where the insurer only pays above a normally quite high threshold. This means that in normal cases, one does not need to pay but as a result premiums are lower than with normal contracts or “lower attachment points”. These kind of contracts are also often called “catastrophe risk” or “Cat Risk”. If such an event hits, then the hit will be big. Lancashire initially expected to make a loss 1 out of 5 years but up to now they had no loosing year. A company which has many excess loss contracts will report very good results in some years but very very bad in others.

What is the connection to Warren Buffett ?

Lancashire and Co. are relatively similar to Buffet’s National Indemnity Insurance, maybe the most overlooked part of his insurance empire after GEICO and Berkshire/General Re. Buffet has commented several times on National Indemnity and the competitive advantages of this company. The major competitive advantage of this business according to him was the ability NOT to write business if premiums are too low. The problem with this approach is of course that if you write less business, cost will be higher and the all important “Combined Ratio” (costs+claims divided by premium) will go up and investors will get nervous.

I wrote down this quote from last’s year Berkshire AGM from Buffett:

“I prefer the underwriters playing golf all day instead of underwriting risks at the wrong price. I don’t care of combined ratios grow well above 100% in such years.” For normal Insurance companies this is almost impossible to achieve as investors want to see increasing sales and profits any year and so most Insurance companies will underwrite no matter what the price is just to maintain the premium.

On the web I found similar quotes from him on the National Indemnity (NICO) which the bought in the 80ties:

Nevertheless, for almost all of the past 38 years, NICO has been a star performer. Indeed, had we not made this acquisition, Berkshire would be lucky to be worth half of what it is today.

What we’ve had going for us is a managerial mindset that most insurers find impossible to replicate.

and:

Most American businesses harbor an “institutional imperative” that rejects extended decreases in volume. What CEO wants to report to his shareholders that not only did business contract last year but that it will continue to drop? In insurance, the urge to keep writing business is also intensified because the consequences of foolishly-priced policies may not become apparent for some time. If an insurer is optimistic in its reserving, reported earnings will be overstated, and years may pass before true loss costs are revealed (a form of self-deception that nearly destroyed GEICO in the early 1970s).

Additionally, Buffett is already participating in the London/Lloyd’s market via another structure. Last year, he underwrote a socalled “side car” deal with Aon. The deal is still controversial but indicates a change of how things are being done at Lloyds. Funnily enough, Lancashire CEO Richard Brindle called the Buffet/Aon deal “foolish” in an interview last year.

Why is the company cheap ?

1. In general, all the socalled “London market” insurers are cheap. Let’s look at the “London” peer group:

Name Est Price/Book Current Yr P/E P/E FY1 Current Div. Yld (%)
         
LANCASHIRE HOLDINGS LTD 1,24 8,76 8,77 8,26
HISCOX LTD 1,62 10,47 13,48 8,21
BRIT PLC 1,23 #N/A N/A 8,59 #N/A N/A
BEAZLEY PLC 1,55 8,11 9,55 10,00
AMLIN PLC 1,36 7,94 11,13 6,07

Compared to those London players, all European P&C Insurance peers trade on average at~ 2,2 x book and 12 x earnings. So why are the London insurers so cheap ? In my opinion, the answer lies in the cyclicality of the business similar to Admiral. The “London market” is even more cyclical as it is primarily an institutional price driven market. The London market specialises in large and complex risks with “natural catastrophe” exposure. Despite the headline news, in the last years there were very few NatCat events which really led to large insured losses. In those times, profit margin increase and there is big pressure to lower premium. As companies accumulate capital, the appetite for risk increases, which further lowers premiums. This works as long as either a large NatCat event happens or capital markets crash and the insurers then have to raise premiums in order to restore their capital levels.

2. Management and strategy change

Lancashire so far has shown excellent underwriting discipline and outstanding an outstanding ability to allocate capital. However in the last few months a couple of things have changed:

a) The founder & CEO has “retired” in April at an age of 54. I haven’t found out why. Since 2005 I would guess that he has earned 50+ mn GBP, maybe he thought that this is enough ? At least he got an extra 10 mn package according to this article. He has been selling shares before his retirement.

b) In a change of strategy, Lancashire bought at the end of 2013 a Lloyd’s syndicate called Cathedral for ~200 mn GBP. Although the Lloyd’s business is not necessarily bad business, it is clearly a change. Lloyd’s underwriting is often reinsurance in contrast to Lancashire’s direct insurance. In their previous reports they claimed that their strategy of insuring directly was a competitive advantage. The Lloyd’s market on the other side is mostly reinsurance and more vulnerable.

c) Finally, after having been invested in short-term no-risk bonds since their IPO, they suddenly disclosed beginning at year-end 2013 that they now invest also into stocks and “Low volatility” hedge funds. Most likely not a good idea at this point.

For me, the cyclicality of the business itself would be no problem. But the combination of Management change and strategy change is very hard to swallow. I would happily invest if there would be EITHER a management change OR a strategy change but not both.

Summary:

To quote Donald Rumsfeld, those two changes lead Lancashire into the “unknown unknowns” territory. Sure, the new CEO is at Lancashire since 2007 and an underwriter, but overall I am not sure if the superior capabilities of the forme CEO have been “institutionalized” in the 8+ years of company history. Having three platforms instead of one sounds great, but it can also mean a loss of focus. So at the moment, Lancashire for me is not a “buy” as I do not have a clear idea how and if they can replicate their past results. T

However in general, the business model is attractive and the “London Insurers” could become interesting, especially if the market softens further so I will try to look into the others at some point in time.

Edit: I have just seen via the “Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax” board a link to an “Insurance Insider” article which states that the former CEO has completely sold out and is expected to launch a new company. A reason more not to rely on past results as this business is very dependent on the persons and the old CEO wil be a pretty tough competitor if he starts over again.

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