value and opportunity

Profitlich & Schmidlin (“P&S”) had a post a week ago (in German) on how they view the current situation at Alstom.

A short refresher: Both, General Electric and Siemens wanted to take over Alstom and/or parts of it. At the end, GE prevailed, however they failed to take over Alstom completely. Instead, they purchase the Grid, Renewables and Power businesses, leaving the Transport business at Alstom.

In order to make it more “interesting” and to please the French Government, GE and Alstom will form 3 Joint Ventures of which Alstom will buy a 50% share each. Plus Alstom will buy a transport related business from GE for 600 mn EUR. Additionally, Alstom seems to have a put option for these JV back to General Electric with a floor of 2,5 bn EUR.

So in theory, one could now use the information given for instance in the GE press release and calculate a prospective “sum of the parts” valuation for Alstom after the deal and this is how P&S have done it:

No op Assets
Net cash	4.122
London Metro loan	364
Transmash	700
Pension, others	-620
Total	4.566
Per share	14,78

On top of those ~15 EUR per share “extra assets” they add the 2,5 bn EUR for the JVs, which results in around 22,87 EUR per share for all those non-transport assets. With a “fair value” of the transport business of ~11 EUR per share they come up with their target value of 34 EUR per share, which would mean a nice +30% upside potential based on the current share price of 26 EUR.

My 5 cents on this

First of all I find it great that P&S share their investment case via their blog. This is definitely a good thing. And clearly, as with everything, it is their opinion and not everyone will agree with this. My opinion differs from theirs, but that does not mean that they are wrong or vice versa.

Before jumping into the details, I would just want to refer back to some earlier stuff I have written about holding companies. The question is: will investors really apply a “full valuation” to the operating business plus all the “extra assets” or will they discount the extra assets, especially the JVs and the other non-consolidated assets. I think it is more prudent to apply a discount to the extra assets. Unless there is clear evidence that those assets get liquidated, I think it is too optimistic to assign full value to those assets.

A second big issue is that at the moment no one knows exactly how much of the liabilities will get transferred to GE. Especially with regard to operating leases (nominal ~830 mn EUR), litigation liabilities (528 mn EUR) and pension liabilites (gross 5,2 bn) there is no definitive answer how much will be transferred to GE and what remains at Alstom. In a sum of part calculation, any of those remaining liabilities will have to be deducted from the extra assets as they are economically equivalent to debt.

Net cash position

Let’s start with that one. In their annual report, Alstom provides us with EUR -3.041 as net cash at March 31st 2014. GE stated that the whole transaction will generate a 7,3 bn net cash outflow for them which is an equivalent inflow for Alstom.

So theoretically we could calculate -3.041 + 7.300 = 4259 mn EUR net cash for Alstom. However there are several caveats to this:

– transaction costs: A transaction like this easily swallows up a large amount of costs for lawyers, consultants bankers etc. I would assume between 100-300 mn cash costs for Alstom before closing, with an expected value of -200
– mark to market debt: Although any financial assets under IFRS are marked-to-market, debt is still accounted for at cost. If Alstom would really want to buy back their bonds to shorten the balance sheet, they would have to pay market value which is ~350 mn higher than book value. So net debt has to be adjusted for this.

So for my calculation, net cash would be 4.259-200-350 = 3.709 mn net cash after closing of the deal

Transmashholding

Transmashholding is a 25% stake alstom holds in a Russian transport equipment manufacturer. P&S value this company 10x average 2012/2013 earnings at 700 mn EUR which is around 90% higher than book value. I would value this asset significantly lower because

– according to Bloomberg, the majority of the profit is “extraordinary profit”
– if we value them based on operating income (EBIT) with the same averaging, we would get on average 2800 mn Rubels EBIT p.a. (which is around 60 mn EUR p.a.) and assuming 10 times EV/EBIT we get 600 mn EUR EV. Minus ~10 bn RUB or 200 mn debt, the equity would be worth 400 mn, 25% of Alstom then would be 100 mn EUR.

Other liabilities

As I said before, we how much of the liabilities go to GE. My own assumption would be that all the critical ones (Litigation, Pension deficit, operating leases) are divided proportionally to the total amount of liabilities for the transport segment. According to the segment report in the annual report, transport had ~28% of all liabilities of Alstom. My default assumption therefore is that 28% of all “debt like” liabilities remain at Alstom as part of the transport business

Discount to extra assets

Finally, I would argue that especially as this complicated deal will only close in mid 2015, it would be quite optimistic to assume zero discount on the future cash inflow, JV assets etc etc. So I would actually discount those assets to be on the safe side with between 10-20% at the current status, as a compromise I will use 15% both, for net cash and the JVs. Just as a reminder: I am not sure if anyone remembers the planned GE – Honeywell merger in 2001. This looked like a done deal for a long time before the deal actually fell through. The deal might be very likely but there is always the risk of a deal stopper and one has to adjust for this in my opinion.

Bringing it all together & Summary:

So this would be my version of the “extra asset” calculation:

	MMI
Net cash 03/2014	-3.041
+ Cash proceeds GE	7.300
– mtm bonds	-350
– deal cost	-200
Net cash adj	3.709
+ London Metro	364
+ Transmash	100
+ JVs	2.500
Total “extra assets”	6.673
– 15% discount JV&Cash	-931
Discounted extra assets	5.742
– “pension others” from P&S	-620
– 28% of Litigation liab	-148
– 28% of operating leases	-210
– 28% of pension underfunding	-217
Adjusted “extra” assets	4.547
per share	14,71

With my rather cautious approach, i would value the potential extra assets after the deal ~ 8 EUR per share lower as P&S. Together with their valuation of the Transport business od ~11-12 EUR, the current Alstom price at 26 EUR looks fair with no big upside.

Clearly, any of my assumptions could (and should) be challenged as well. Transmash could be worth a lot more and maybe all the liabilities go to GE. On the other hand, one should not forget that the deal is not done yet. I am for instance not sure how happy the potential clients are and if I read correctly, they need approval of 32 national regulators for this deal. Plus, the French Government will be heavily involved in Alstom going forward which might lower the prospects of aggressive share repurchases and increase the risk for “strategic” acquisitions.

Alstom has proposed more detailed information in November before an extraordinary shareholder meeting. For me, at the moment Alstom is not a buy. This might change especially if most of the liabilities would be assumed by GE, then the Alstom “stub” could be really interesting. In the mean time, the stock however is “watch only”.