Energy / Resources

I was on the Sky Business Channel’s Your Money Your Call a couple of weeks ago. The next day Phil let me know how disappointed he was on my Facebook page – his email wasn’t featured on the show and he couldn’t get through on the phone. I should let you know that until I am hosting a program (don’t get any ideas!), I don’t have a say in which calls are taken and what emails are featured. I did however promise to share my observations on Ausenco with the disclaimer that they are didactic.

Up until 2008 Ausenco (AAX) was a darling of the market – indeed it had reason to be. It had a track record of being an A1 business and in 2007 was generating a profit $41.5m on only $56m of equity – a stellar 95% return. A 2007 estimate of AAX’s intrinsic value would be something like $15.07.

But with the share price now trading around $2.33 and my current valuation at $1.54, something has changed. Why has Ausenco fallen on such tough times?

In 2007-8 Ausenco went on somewhat of a buying binge. To diversify away from the operations of mining and minerals processing, PSI, Vector and Sandwell were added to Ausenco’s business. Looking at the share price today, compared to two years ago it appears Ausenco paid a very high price for this strategy.

At the end of 2007 a significant portion of Ausenco’s $56m of equity was cash. The business had only $7m of debt. Up until that time shareholders had grown the business by simply investing $11.5m of their own equity and retaining a cumulative $45.7m in profits. A nice position and in my opinion, very attractive. Ausenco was a small, highly profitable, organically-grown and well-run business.

By the end of 2008 growth was turbocharged. The combination of substantial acquisitions however saw an additional $106.6m of equity raised and debt jumped to $66. In other words, shareholders equity ballooned by 325%, to $182m, compared to the previous year.

With this aggressive growth came a host of challenges. Running a focused small business is a much easier task than steering a larger ship that has diversified into a ‘pit to port’ engineering business.

And by 2009 the numbers agreed. A profit of $20.3m was reported, but $260m was needed to produce it. So the profit was lower than 2007, but significantly more money had been contributed.

Ausenco was far more valuable as a small business than it is as a larger one, as anyone holding the shares through this period can attest.

As an investor, you should ask questions when a small, highly focused and highly profitable business becomes enamoured with the idea that bigger is better. Some may argue that the GFC is partly to blame. My response is to take a look at another business in the same sector, Monadelphous – one of my A1s and a business that has never attempted to grow beyond what Buffett refers to as its circle of competence.

Unlike Monadelphous, Ausenco has slipped from an A1 to an A4. Yes its still high quality (A), but with a performance rating of 4 (5 being the lowest), its predictability is not something to be excited about.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 18 June 2010

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Serendibite is arguably the rarest gem on earth. Three known samples exist, amounting to just a few carats. When traded at more than $14,000 per carat, the price is equivalent to more than $2 million per ounce. But that’s serendibite, not coal.

Coal is neither a gem nor rare. It is in fact one of the most abundant fuels on earth and according to the World Coal Institute, at present rates of production supply is secure for more than 130 years.

The way coal companies are trading at present however, you have to conclude that either coal is rare and prices need to be much higher, or there’s a bubble-like mania in the coal sector and prices for coal companies must eventually collapse.

The price suitors are willing to pay for Macarthur Coal and Gloucester Coal cannot be economically justified. Near term projections for revenue, profits or returns on equity cannot explain the prices currently being paid.

To be fair, a bubble guaranteed to burst is debt fuelled asset inflation; buyers debt fund most or all of the purchase price of an asset whose cash flows are unable to support the interest and debt obligations. Equity speculation alone is different to a bubble that an investor can short sell with high confidence of making money.

The bubbles to short are those where monthly repayments have to be made. While this is NOT the case in the acquisitions and sales being made in the coal space right now, it IS the case in the macroeconomic environment that is the justification for the  purchases in the coal space.

China.

If you are not already aware, China runs its economy a little differently to us. They set themselves a GDP target – say 8% or 9%, and then they determine to reach it and as proved last week, exceed it. They do it with a range of incentives and central or command planning of infrastructure spending.

Fixed asset investment (infrastructure) amounts to more than 55% of GDP in China and is projected to hit 60%. Compare this to the spending in developed economies, which typically amounts to circa 15%. The money is going into roads, shopping malls and even entire towns. Check out the city of Ordos in Mongolia – an entire town or suburb has been constructed, fully complete down to the last detail. But it’s empty. Not a single person lives there. And this is not an isolated example. Skyscrapers and shopping malls lie idle and roads have been built for journeys that nobody takes.

The ‘world’s economic growth engine’ has been putting our resources into projects for which a rational economic argument cannot be made.

Historically, one is able to observe two phases of growth in a country’s development.  The first phase is the early growth and command economies such as China have been very good at this – arguably better than western economies, simply because they are able to marshal resources perhaps using techniques that democracies are loath to employ. China’s employment of capital, its education and migration policies reflect this early phase growth. This early phase of growth is characterised by expansion of inputs. The next stage however only occurs when people start to work smarter and innovate, becoming more productive. Think Germany or Japan. This is growth fuelled by outputs and China has not yet reached this stage.

China’s economic growth is thus based on the expansion of inputs rather than the growth of outputs, and as Paul Krugman wrote in his 1994 essay ‘The Myth of Asia’s Miracle’, such growth is subject to diminishing returns.

So how sustainable is it? The short answer; it is not.

Overlay the input-driven economic growth of China with a debt-fuelled property mania, and you have sown the seeds of a correction in the resource stocks of the West that the earnings per share projections of resource analysts simply cannot factor in.

In the last year and a half, property speculation has reached epic proportions in China and much like Australia in the early part of this decade, the most popular shows on TV are related to property investing and speculation. I was told that a program about the hardships the property bubble has provoked was the single most popular, but has been pulled.

Middle and upper middle class people are buying two, three and four apartments at a time. And unlike Australia, these investments are not tenanted. The culture in China is to keep them new. I saw this first hand when I traveled to China a while back. Row upon row of apartment block. Empty. Zero return and purchased on nothing other than the hope that prices will continue to climb.

It was John Kenneth Galbraith who, in his book The Great Crash, wrote that it is when all aspects of asset ownership such as income, future value and enjoyment of its use are thrown out the window and replaced with the base expectation that prices will rise next week and next month, as they did last week and last month, that the final stage of a bubble is reached.

On top of that, there is, as I have written previously, 30 billion square feet of commercial real estate under debt-funded construction, on top of what already exists. To put that into perspective, that’s 23 square feet of office space for every man, woman and child in China. Commercial vacancy rates are already at 20% and there’s another 30 billion square feet to be supplied! Additionally, 2009 has already seen rents fall 26% in Shanghai and 22% in Beijing.

Everywhere you turn, China’s miracle is based on investing in assets that cannot be justified on economic grounds. As James Chanos referred to the situation; ‘zombie towns and zombie buildings’. Backing it all – the six largest banks increased their loan book by 50% in 2009. ‘Zombie banks’.

Conventional wisdom amongst my peers in funds management and the analyst fraternity is that China’s foreign currency reserves are an indication of how rich it is and will smooth over any short term hiccups. This confidence is also fuelled by economic hubris eminating from China as the western world stumbles. But pride does indeed always come before a fall. Conventional wisdom also says that China’s problems and bubbles are limited to real estate, not the wider economy. It seems the flat earth society is alive and well! As I observed in Malaysia in 1996, Japan almost a decade before that, Dubai and Florida more recently, never have the problems been contained to one sector. Drop a pebble in a pond and its ripples eventually impact the entire pond.

The problem is that China’s banking system is subject to growing bad and doubtful debts as returns diminish from investments made at increasing prices in assets that produce no income. These bad debts may overwhelm the foreign currency reserves China now has.

Swimming against the tide is not popular. Like driving a car the wrong way down a one-way street, criticism and even abuse follows the investor who seeks to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. Right now, with analysts’ projections for the price of coal and iron ore to continue rising at high double digit rates, and demand for steel, glass, cement and fibre cement looking like a hockey stick, its unpopular and decidedly contrarian to be thinking that either of these are based on foundations of sand or absent any possibility of change.

The mergers and acquisitions occurring in the coal space now are a function of expectations that the good times will continue unhindered. I hope they’re right. But witness the rash of IPOs and capital raisings in this space. Its not normal. The smart money might just be taking advantage of the enthusiasm and maximising the proceeds from selling.

A serious correction in the demand for our commodities or the prices of stocks is something we don’t need right now. But such are the consequences of overpaying.

Overpaying for assets is not a characteristic unique to ‘mum and dad’ investors either. CEO’s in Australia have a long and proud history of burning shareholders’ funds to fuel their bigger-is-better ambitions. Paperlinx, Telstra, Fairfax, Fosters – the past list of companies and their CEO’s that have overpaid for assets, driven down their returns on equity and made the value of intangible goodwill carried on the balance sheet look absurd is long and not populated solely by small and inexperienced investors. When Oxiana and Zinifex merged, the market capitalisations of the two individually amounted to almost $10 billion. Today the merged entity has a market cap of less than $4 billion.

The mergers and takeovers in the coal space today will not be immune to enthusiastic overpayment. Macarthur Coal is trading way above my intrinsic value for it. Gloucester Coal is trading at more than double my valuation for it.

At best the companies cannot be purchased with a margin of safety. At worst shares cannot be purchased today at prices justified by economic returns.

Either way, returns must therefore diminish.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 19 April 2010.

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On 3 March I shared my thoughts about the future of Australian companies that supply directly or indirectly, the Chinese building industry, or have more than 70% of their revenues or profits reliant on China with subscribers of Alan Kohler’s Eureka Report. Following are my insights…

Glancing over yet another set of numbers as reporting season draws to a close, my mind started to wander as I wade through forecasts for one, two and three years hence. I began to consider what might happen that could take the shine off these elaborate constructions and which companies are in the firing line.

Consider Rio Tinto, which, in an effort to make itself “takeover proof” back in 2007, loaded itself up with debt up to acquire the Canadian aluminium company Alcan. It paid top-of-the-market multiples just 12 months before the biggest credit crunch in living memory forced it to sell assets, raise capital and destroy huge amounts of shareholder value.

Do you think they saw that coming?

Before I elaborate on events that could unfold, allow me to indulge in a bit of history and take you back to the mid-1990s when I was in Malaysia and the Kuala Lumpur skyline was filled with cranes because of a credit-fuelled speculative boom. It was the same throughout the region.

A year or so after my visit, the Asian tiger economies were in trouble and the Asian currency crisis was in full flight. These are the returns that are produced by unjustified, credit-fuelled “investing” unsupported by demand fundamentals.

In December 2007, as I travelled to Miami, I experienced a distinct feeling of déjà vu as I once again witnessed residential and commercial property construction fuelled by low interest rates and easy credit, unsupported by any real demand.

These are not isolated incidences. Japan, Dubai, Malaysia, the US. Credit fuelled speculative property booms always end badly.

So what does this have to do with your Australian share portfolio? Australia’s economic good fortune lies in its proximity – and exports of coal and iron ore – to China. Much of those commodities go into the production of steel, one of the major inputs in the building industry.

In China today there is, presently under construction and in addition to the buildings that already exist, 30 billion square feet of residential and commercial space. That is the equivalent of 23 square feet for every single man, woman and child in China. This construction activity has been a key driver of Chinese capital spending and resource consumption.

About two years ago if you looked at all the buildings, the roads the office towers and apartments under construction the only thought to pop into your head would be to consider how much energy would be required to light and heat all those spaces.

But that won’t be necessary if they all remain empty. In the commercial sector, the vacancy rate stands at 20% and construction industry continues to build a bank of space that is more than required for a very, very long time.

Because of this I am more than a little concerned about any Australian company that sells the bulk of its output to the Chinese, to be used in construction. That means steel and iron ore, aluminium, glass, bricks, fibre cement … you name it.

Last year China imported 42% more iron ore than the year before, while the rest of the world fell in a heap. It consumes 40% of the world’s coal and the growth has increased Australia’s reliance on China; China buys almost three-quarters of Australia’s iron ore exports – 280 million of their 630 million tonne demand.

The key concern for investors is to examine the valuations of companies that sell the bulk of their output to China. Any company that is trading at a substantial premium to its valuation on the hope that it will be sustained by Chinese demand, without a speed hump, may be more risk than you care for your portfolio to endure.

The biggest risks are any companies that are selling more than 70% of their output to China but anything over 20% on the revenue line could have major consequences.

BHP generates about 20%, or $11 billion, of its $56 billion revenue from China; and Rio 24%, or $11 billion, from its $46 billion revenue. BHP’s adjusted net profit before tax was $19.8 billion last year and Rio’s was $8.7 billion.

While BHP’s profitability would be substantially impacted by any speed bumps that emerge from China, the effect on Rio Tinto would be far worse.

According to my method of valuation, Rio Tinto is worth no more than its current share price and while the debt associated with the $43 billion purchase of Alcan is declining, the dilutive capital raisings (so far avoided by BHP) have been disastrous for its shareholders.

As a result, return on equity is expected to fall from 45% to 16% for the next three years. Most importantly the massive growth in earnings for the next three years is driven by the ever-optimistic analysts who are relying on China’s growth to extend in a smooth upward trajectory.

Go through your portfolio: do you own any companies that supply directly or indirectly, the Chinese building industry, have more than 70% of their revenues or profits reliant on China and are trading at steep premiums to intrinsic value?

Make no mistake: Australia’s future is written inside a fortune cookie – some companies’ more than others.

Subscribe to Alan’s Eureka Report at www.eurekareport.com.au.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 4 March 2010

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Welcome back. On Christmas Eve, just before I left for my annual family holiday, I said that this year would be fascinating in terms of inflation, interest rates and commodities prices. Interest rates can be ticked off – the topic has already been front page news and I expect the subject to hot up even more over the coming year.

Inflation and commodities however are arguably even more interesting. When money velocity picks up in the US – that is, the speed with which money changes hands – inflation could be a problem. I don’t know whether that will be this year or not, but I do know that at some point the benign inflation and extraordinarily low interest rates will be nothing but a fond memory.

One of the places inflation presents is in commodity prices, and there is no shortage of very smart, successful and wealthy people – Jim Rogers is one – who believe the bull market in commodities is far from over. continue…

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I am away for Christmas and January and will only be publishing thoughts to the blog on a spasmodic basis.

If you go to my website, www.rogermontgomery.com, and register for my book or send a message to me, I will let you know via email when I am back on deck.

I expect 2010 will be a very interesting year on the inflation, interest rate and commodity fronts so stay tuned and focus on understanding what is driving a company’s return on equity and how to arrive at its value.

Before doing anything seek always professional advice, but zip up your wallet if you hear the words “only trade with what you can lose”. I don’t like losing money at any time and neither should you.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 23 December 2009

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Commodity prices…  can anyone predict their movements? Driven by supply and demand, and exaggerated by speculation, predicting the price of oil, iron ore, coal, diamonds and titanium is an almost impossible task.  \It is however a task that is required if you are planning to buy shares in a mining company. Ruling out mining exploration companies that make no profit, and whose race to a valuation of zero is only retarded by the amount of cash remaining in the bank and measured by a ratio called the cash ‘burn’ rate, we are left with the producers.

For reasons mentioned above, no mining company is easy to value, however some lend themselves to valuations better than others. The best are those that are large, broadly diversified and relatively stable. BHP immediately comes to mind.  Born as a silver and lead mine in Broken Hill in 1885, BHP, following the 2001 merger between it and Billiton, is now the world’s largest mining company with operations from Algeria to Tobago and everywhere in between.

But even BHP cannot escape the commodity cycle and this can be seen in the swings in its valuations in the past.  BHP’s valuation can be $48 in one year (2008) and $13 the next (2009). This “valuation volatility” is vastly different to JB Hi-Fi, for example, whose value has risen from less than a dollar in 2003 to $20 to $24 today and in a steady ‘staircase’ fashion.

Many of you have asked me for a valuation for BHP. Using the earnings estimates of the rated analysts on the company, there is clearly some optimism about BHP’s prospects. Returns on equity are expected to rise from 17.5% this year to 24% next year, and circa 28% in 2011 and 2012. These numbers however are still lower than the rates of return the company generated between 2005 and 2007. The estimate I come up with for BHP using the actual estimates of the rated analysts is a value of A$36.56, and if the analysts are right, the value rises dramatically in future years.

Warren Buffett doesn’t like businesses that are price takers – commodity type businesses. The reason is that it is impossible to forecast future rates of return on equity with any confidence.  BHP reflects this historically.  BHP is big enough now that in some cases it is calling the (price) shots, but don’t forget we are talking about capital-intensive businesses.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 23 December 2009

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For some reason over the last few weeks I have received an influx of requests for a valuation on Caltex. I guess it must have something to do with the share price declines.

Let me start by saying, you are on a hiding to nothing, trying to value this company. Like any business, the true value of Caltex has nothing to do with its share price and is instead determined by its equity and the profitability of that equity. As you are probably already aware profitability (return on equity) is going to be heavily impacted by input costs and revenues which for Caltex are fast changing. To better understand Caltex profits, have a look at what goes into the price of a litre of petrol that it sells.

To determine an Australian refiners’ profits you must start with the Singapore refiners’ price for petrol. This is because Australia’s local oil refineries compete with imported petroleum products from refineries in Asia, regardless of the cost of importing and refining crude oil. Consequently, the price of petrol at Australian refineries is based on international petrol prices. If local prices were higher than international prices, imports of petrol would displace local production. The result is “import parity pricing” – in other words, what it would cost to land fuel from Singapore refineries into Australian terminals. In turn, this price includes the Singapore benchmark price for refined petrol or diesel, the addition of an Australian “quality premium” (dubious but said to take into account Australia’s “high fuel standards”), plus shipping costs and cargo insurance. The result is then converted from US dollars per barrel into Australian cents per litre (1 Barrel = 159 litres).

So, starting with the Singapore petrol price (which is itself prone to wild swings),we have to add shipping (variable), quality premium, shipping insurance (variable), covert to Aud (variable), then add port costs (relatively stable), then add wholesale and retail margins (variable) and freight (variable) and then after GST and the Governments fuel excise we have a retail price for petrol.

You can see that there are many factors that are out of Caltex’s control and will determine its profitability and I haven’t addressed the factors that will influence the Singapore refiner’s margin, although the cost of crude oil has the most impact in the long term.

Feel like a break yet?

The result is that Caltex’s profitability is volatile and this is evident in the numbers. In 2001 Caltex’s return on equity was -20%, while it was 40% in 2004. Based on some of the research I have seen, return on equity is expected to be around 10% for the next three years. Really? Who knows? How could you know? It will depend on the price of oil. In the 2007 year (Caltex has a December year end) oil prices traded between US$49.90 and US$99.29 and Caltex’s return on equity was 24%.  n 2008 the oil price began at US$96, rallied to US$147 and fell to US$32.40. Caltex’s return on equity that year was 1.3%.

If we assume that the analysts are right with their forecasts of a 10 percent return on equity, then the value of Caltex is somewhere between $8 and $9. My valuation actually comes in at $8.74 but for the reasons I described above, I would not even consider a purchase unless the shares were at a very substantial discount to this valuation.

You should be aware that if you are trying to value Caltex, you are punting and making a plain old bet. Its a bet you might get right, but it is speculating not investing. Perhaps if you can buy Caltex at a 50% discount to a conservative estimate of intrinsic value it would be a safer bet but even then it is still a bet.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 10 December 2009

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Yesterday an investor who likes his commodities, James, posted the following comment to the blog:

Hi Roger,

Following you on the TV shows is really helpful to my investment decisions, so thanks very very much.

I’d also like to have your view on current commodity bull trend. I understand that you like to value companies based on ROE, RR, etc, but do you ever try to reasonably predict the metal / commodity / gold price for next year? While you may say that is speculation, but a reasonable prediction based on supply / demand would also help in determining the company value?

James

Following is my response:

I am interested in commodity companies.

There’s something in the fact that billionaire Jim Rogers has been saying expect new highs in virtually all commodities over the next decade. There’s also something ominous in Warren Buffett’s purchase of a railroad company. Both men believe that oil prices will rise substantially.

I think its impossible to predict prices of anything in the short term, however I do believe that over longer periods there are supply/demand considerations that are easier to discern.

With regards to taking advantage of this, I have so far been biased to investing in the commodity itself rather than stocks. Companies that mine, plant or otherwise produce a commodity have risks associated with them that are unrelated to the commodity’s price itself.  For example for an exploration company, there are funding risks and execution risks, not to mention management risk and stock market risk.

It is quite possible that you believe that the gold price is going up, but the gold explorer whose shares you have just bought doesn’t find any gold! You may believe that the oil price will rise and yet the particular company you have bought shares in has an environmentally  catastrophic spill.  The wheat or corn price may be going to go up, but the farm you just bought had its crop wiped out by a flood resulting in no revenue and a higher future capital expense. There are simply risks that aren’t related to the commodity price.

For these reasons, where I have had a view about a commodity, I have thus far taken interests in the commodities directly rather than through stocks.

Posted by Roger Montgomery, 3 December 2009

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On Richard Goncalve’s Market Moves show on the Sky Business Channel last week I mentioned I would estimate a value for Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG). Let me be the first to say that, like IT businesses, companies in the resources sector are notoriously difficult to value. This is not because they are in a fast changing industry whose long term economics are difficult to predict, but because the economics are based on commodity prices that change daily and whose prediction is almost impossible.

Having said that I should offer a caveat; Buffett’s announcement that he is buying the railroad operator Burlington/Santa Fe in a $44 billion deal – his biggest ever – suggests he truly believes that fuel prices are going up a lot. Indeed while higher diesel prices will raise the costs of running trains, it will raise the cost of operating trucks over trains by a factor of four.

But I digress, FMG – based entirely on 2010 consensus analyst forecasts – is worth $1.90 to $2.00. Another caveat – consensus analysts predictions could be wrong.

By Roger Montgomery, 4 November 2009

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