2016 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part I)

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Aryzta, Celtic Phoenix, Formation Group, Fyffes, Hibernia REIT, Independent News & Media, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Kerry Group, Kingspan Group, Mainstay Medical International, Origin Enterprises, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, WisdomTree ETF

Um, apologies, the blog’s been quiet since early last month – though I’ve certainly been keeping up with readers via Twitter…Good Lord, I’m now up to 25K+ tweets!? Actually, I’ve been more than usually focused on stocks both old & new in my portfolio. Which seem to be increasingly bifurcated between special situation stocks where I continue to engage with/push management to enhance and realise shareholder value, and growth stocks (at the right price) where I can sit back & watch smart management compound shareholder value over time.

Hmmm, put it like that & growth stocks seem like the far more compelling choice..!? Though in reality, each presents their own unique risks/opportunities. And for me, somewhat perversely, one tends to inspire the other…dealing with recalcitrant management can inspire me to seek out smartly managed growth stocks, but actually seeing it done right, such companies also highlight the compelling value lurking out there just waiting to be tapped (sometimes, literally, overnight) if only management would come to their senses (or a third party steps in & does it for ’em).

Anyway, a little break’s a good thing – and we’re all feeling much better now, with most markets recovering their Jan/Feb losses this month. Hopefully, this new-found momentum will continue (at least ’til the usual ‘Sell in May & go away’ debate!), as markets generally remain flat/down over the past year – it’s been a tough period for nearly all concerned (spare a thought for those poor billionaire hedge fund managers!), clearly exacerbated by oil’s elevated volatility & influence.

And as promised, a good time to kick-off The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, with the ISEQ on a breather for the past year (down 0.6%) (but still over 40% off its all-time high, as set nearly a decade ago now), and the Celtic Phoenix offering more opportunity than ever… Long-time readers will be familiar with TGISVP (here’s my kick-off posts from 2012, 2013 & 2014), where I attempt to analyse & value every listed Irish stock out there (and usually piss off some tired & emotional shareholders in the process). The great thing about the Irish market is its size…one of the few globally (with about 70-80 stocks, in total) which actually presents investors with the opportunity to really get down & dirty with every single stock. And it’s a real stock pickers’ market, as I’ve previously highlighted:

‘And it’s worth noting brokers often segment the Irish market into very different sector/exposures. And so, accordingly, it tends to attract pretty dissimilar investor constituencies, who may only focus on: i) a handful of the largest caps, regardless of valuation & exposure, ii) stocks which (may) offer cheap/alternative access to overseas growth (a surprisingly large number of Irish companies are UK/Europe/globally focused), iii) stocks offering domestic exposure (notably, economic pure-plays are actually pretty rare), iv) a listed commercial & residential property sector that’s only emerged in the past couple of years, and finally (& perhaps most notoriously) v) a (junior) resource stock sector that’s been decimated in the last few years.‘

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TGISVP – An Updated Snapshot

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Donegal Investment Group, Fyffes, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, NTR, Petroneft Resources, Prime Active Capital, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, Zamano

Unfortunately, after starting with such promise, the months of September & October now appear to be living up to their more usual fearsome reputation. At this point, we’re forced to commiserate over a 10% correction (in round numbers) for the ISEQ from its most recent (early-Sep) high, including a 6.3% fall last week. And the fact the index is down almost 14% from its (end-Feb) 2014 high just compounds the misery. But corrections also present a good opportunity to re-evaluate battle plans… Now, I’ll obviously be reviewing The Great Irish Valuation Project in greater detail at year-end, so I’m going to strictly limit my comments here.

Updated snapshots of this year’s top winners & losers might prove instructive… [NB: Each stock’s gain/loss is simply measured from its TGISVP evaluation date (i.e. Feb-May, except for NTR), so actual YTD performance rankings of stocks might look a little different]. First we have the Sewer Shit:

Maybe it’s worth picking through the rubble for a couple of bargains? Hmm, perhaps not – with a couple of notable exceptions, all I see here really are bombs that may still explode in one’s face. As for ‘investors’ who already own some of these stocks, what can I say…if they’re stupid enough to buy ’em in the first place, I’m surely not the person who’s going to persuade them to finally cut their losses & run!

2014 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part VIII)

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Ardmore Shipping, Chiquita Brands International, CRH, Fyffes, IMC Exploration Group, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Kenmare Resources, Keywords Studios, Mincon Group, Paddy Power, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, US Oil & Gas

Continued from here:

[NB: Worth revisiting Part I if you’re a new reader, or you’d like a refresher on TGISVP & my approach to the whole project.]

Company:   Fyffes

Prior Post(s):   2012 & 2013

Ticker:  FFY:ID

Price:   EUR 1.27

Seems like I picked the wrong horse, choosing Total Produce (TOT:ID) instead of Fyffes…but I can live with that, you can’t pick ’em all & TOT’s been good to me. But maybe not good enough – because FFY popped 46% in early March, on the news of a definitive merger with Chiquita Brands International (CQB:US). [CQB also closed 11% higher on the day – since then, on average, each stock’s held onto its gains]. I think we can comfortably assume the deal will go ahead (unscathed):  Shareholders love it, the DoJ doesn’t give a damn what happens in Europe, and the Irish Competition Authority is presumably asleep at the wheel, as per usual. [A study confirmed the ICA has a rejection rate of just 0.7%!] Anyway, what deal dissenter would relish the possibility of mercenaries dropping in for tea & a little chat..?! 😉 At this point, let’s just rely on the merger terms for our valuation:

USD 12.25 CQB Share Price * 0.1567 CQB Share (per 1 FFY Share) / 1.3841 EUR/USD = EUR 1.39

Fyffes is marginally undervalued – it offers an attractive arbitrage for the big boys, or a cheap entry price if you’re interested in going long the new ChiquitaFyffes.

Price Target:   EUR 1.39

Upside/(Downside):   9%

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Total Produce – A Fresh Perspective

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activist investors, Balmoral International Land Holdings, Carl McCann, empire-building, Fyffes, Greencore Group, intrinsic value, Irish shares, Irish value investing, private equity funds, share buyback, TOT, Total Produce, Warren Buffett

…

Total Produce (TOT:ID, TOT:LN) was one of my very first blog write-ups, back in Nov-2011 at EUR 0.39. [And I’ve written about it a number of times since]. Less than two years later, we’ve enjoyed a nice double on the stock – which is now trading within spitting distance of my original EUR 0.882 fair value target. This warrants a fresh perspective… But looking back, now I remember – even then, I offered up a very specific perspective:

So we’re talking a business that really runs itself, just what I like! Particularly as I don’t have great respect for management (except if you compare them say to Greencore Group (GNC:ID) management – whose shareholders may finally be put out of their misery with a potential bid, rumoured to be coming from Dubilier Clayton & Rice). Carl McCann is Chairman, while his brother David’s in the Chairman seat over at TOT’s ‘sister’ company Fyffes (FFY:ID), and neither is really a patch on their father Neil McCann (I was sad to hear he passed away recently) who joined Fyffes in 1948. I think of the crazy worldoffruit.com online effort in the v late 90s (which ‘…received a very positive reaction from within the produce industry and looks set to dramatically change the way in which fresh fruit and vegetables are traded across the globe…’), the lack of earnings growth in the past few years, the ludicrous de-merger of Fyffes, Total Produce & Blackrock (now Balmoral Int’l Land Holdings, whose shares subsequently collapsed & are now delisted), etc.

I also look at the excessive B/S Cash of EUR 89.6 mio, and I’m bemused (and slightly alarmed) to remember a colleague telling me many years ago his impression that having large amounts of Cash on hand appeared to give management the warm and fuzzies, and they appeared to enjoy playing the banks off against each other for deposits (and perhaps even some jolly currency switching). All very well, I confess I’ve been through all that myself professionally, but always felt frustrated at having giant hoards of Cash on hand to invest – in an ideal world, I knew the best thing for shareholders and Return on Equity was to have zero Cash and just come in each day and draw down/pay down on a Debt/CP facility. With TOT, of course, the obvious answer to this Cash is frequent execution of small/medium sized acquisitions across Europe (similar to what DCC (DCC:LN) has done for years in its Energy business) – considering the nature/scope of potential business acquisitions, I think there’s a marvelous opportunity here to hoover up cos and double their operating margins v quickly through cost elimination and economies of scale.

Then of course there’s the silent but deadly fart in the room…finally figuring out it’s time to swallow their pride and reverse the Total Produce/Fyffes break-up – a nil-premium merger is the obvious way to achieve this and I imagine could easily yield 2-3 years of decent EPS growth even if the underlying business remained unchanged. But kudos to management for the 22 mio share buyback last year…! I was impressed, can you please repeat?

2013 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part II)

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First Derivatives, Fyffes, Irish Continental Group, Irish shares, Irish value investing, Ormonde Mining, Petroneft Resources, Rathdowney Resources, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, Total Produce

Continued from here. Why don’t we just jump into the next (er, smaller!) batch of TGISVP stocks:

Company:   Ormonde Mining

Prior Post:   Here

Ticker:   ORM:LN

Price:   GBP 7.25p

ORM message boarders really took exception to my comments last year – clearly, they’re nuttier than the average Snickers bar… For God’s sake, I posted a marginally bullish valuation! Suggesting dilution might prove an issue seems to have caused most offence & was emphatically rejected. Er, what about the two subsequent placings in 2012 (one arrived a mere 5 weeks after my post)?! Muppet magic… Jesus, they probably won’t even like this year’s valuation!

Total Produce – Seeing Green!

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Capespan, Fyffes, stock fungibility, technical analysis, Total Produce

[Reference here, here and here]

Total Produce (TOT:ID or LN) is releasing 2011 Preliminary Results @ 7am tomorrow, Tuesday March 6th. Consensus 2011 EPS appears to be around EUR 0.071, bang on my own estimate. This out-turn would put TOT on a 6.3 P/E – far too cheap for such a defensive stock with plenty of firepower for acquisition led growth!

In fact, one of the cheapest companies they could buy is…themselves! With Fyffes (FFY:ID or LN) buying back 32.2 mio shares in Sep-Nov last year, I was v disappointed to see no such announcement from Total Produce. Especially with such a cheap share price, and when you note they’d EUR 89.6 mio of cash lying idle when they reported their interims. I hope to see some comment/plans in this regard tomorrow – failing that, management definitely needs to justify themselves with a more aggressive future acquisition strategy…

Total Produce (TOT:ID) – A Fruity Delight?

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Balmoral International Land, DCC, Fyffes, Greencore, Margin of Safety, Net Interest/EBITA, pdosullivan, Total Produce, value investing, valuestockinquisition

Total Produce (TOT:ID)

Mkt Price:  EUR 0.39

Mkt Cap:  EUR 128.7 mio

Net Interest/EBITA%:  9.0%

P/E Ratio:  5.6

P/S Ratio:  0.05

Dividend Yield:  4.6%      

Fair Value:  EUR 0.882

Upside Potential:  126%

Total Produce is Europe’s premier fresh produce provider. Growing, sourcing, importing, packaging, distributing and marketing over 200 lines of fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers, the Total Produce group distributes some 250 million cartons of fresh produce annually to the retail, wholesale, foodservice and processing sectors across 19 countries in Europe.