Category Archives: Stock ideas

Graff Diamonds yanks its proposed Hong Kong IPO

May 30, 2012 By in China, Gold, Hong Kong, Industry Analysis, Luxury goods, Retail, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

fuses blown

Bad day in New Jersey.  Yesterday was the first super-hot day of the late spring, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  Creaking power infrastructure reacted in the way we’re unfortunately becoming accustomed to.  It collapsed.  No power for most of our neighbors, no internet or cable TV for us.  Hence the late post.

Graff

According to Bloomberg, the plug was pulled on the Graff Diamonds offering less than two days before the stock was supposed to debut.

I can’t say I was shocked, for several reasons:

–Hong Kong has been pummelled especially badly by selling emanating out of the EU, where another flight to safety by equity investors is in full flower.  It looks almost like last summer.  (Where did they get all the stock?)

–Chow Tai Fook Jewellery (HK: 1929) came public late last year and is now trading at about 2/3rds of the IPO price.  True, 1929 sells mainly chuk kam pure gold jewelry and knickknacks, not diamonds.  But the market is the same–China.

–TIF, whose main problems appear to me to be in the US, nevertheless also reported a deceleration in its China business last quarter.

–I suspect that retail investors in Hong Kong–always important in that market–were especially badly burned by the Facebook IPO.  IF US retail investors got 5x-10x what they expected, Hong Kongers could have gotten double that size.  Hong Kong is a market of veteran stock market participants, so they’ll shrug off their bad treatment by underwriters quickly.  But if I’m correct, they’re still licking their wounds.

–I haven’t tried to locate a copy of the Graff Diamonds prospectus.  My experience is that in Hong Kong these documents weigh a ton, but don’t contain anything like that amount of information.  Besides, they’re not supposed to be available in the US until after the offering.  Media reports do bring up two potentially worrying issues, however.

Apparently, a mere 20 customers make up 50% of revenues.

A large chunk of the IPO proceeds were said to be earmarked for buying diamond inventory from the company’s founding family.  I’d want to know how this inventory is being valued–and how many months’ (years?) sales this represents.  I’d also want to know how the acquisition of the gigantic gems Graff is famous for will proceed from now on.  Does the Graff family act as exclusive agent for the company?  …is the family paid a commission for acquisition?

a paucity of demand

When the IPO was pulled, the underwriters had orders for only half the shares intended to be offered by the company.  In a healthy offering the books would be, say, 5x covered.  A “hot” offering might have books 10x covered.  In Hong Kong, which operates under different rules than the US, 100x isn’t unknown.

my thoughts

In the current economic environment, Graff Diamonds was always going to be a tough sell, especially with the family wanting 25x earnings for its shares.  I think FB did much more to suck the life out of this offering than most brokers would be willing to admit, however.

TIF’s 1Q12: surprising slowdown by US customers

May 25, 2012 By in earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, Luxury goods, Retail, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the report

TIF reported 1Q12 (ended April 30th) results prior to the opening of equity trading in New York yesterday morning.

Revenues were up 8% year on year, at $819.2 million.  The company earned $.64 a share for the three months, down a bit less than 5% from  results–but substantially below the Wall Street consensus of $.69.

Tif also lowered its full-year guidance by $.25 a share, to a range of $3.70-$3.80.  Worldwide sales are now expected to grow at a 7%-8% rate, down from the prior expectation of +10%.  Eps comparisons will likely be negative in 2Q12 and 3Q12.

The stock dropped sharply on the news.

As I’m writing this on Friday morning, TIF shares are somewhat lower again, in a choppy but flattish market.

the details

sales

Americas           up 3% at $386 million

Asia Pacific         up 17% at $195 million

Japan          up 15% at $142 million

Europe     up 3% at $88 million.

Business was much better than I had expected in Japan.  Analysis is complicated by the fact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in mid-March 2011.  Still, same store sales growth is up more than 10% from two years ago, in a land that had been turning decidedly cool toward luxury goods.

I think any gain in Europe, now the epicenter of world economic woes, is just short of miraculous.

Asia Pacific performed as expected–no better, no worse.  The company says Chinese business has cooled a bit from the torrid pace of last year.  I don’t consider this a worry.  But it does suggest that Asia won’t be a source of significant upside surprise for a while.

It’s the Americas, and specifically the US, where the falloff versus expectations lies.  Sales to foreign tourists are up, with weakness in European buying more than offset by a step-up in purchases by Asian visitors.  So it looks like the problem is with sales in the US to Americans.

TIF pointed out in its conference call that the softness:

–occurred in April

–is not focussed in any one region of the country (so it isn’t just laid-off NY bankers), and

–is consistent with MasterCard data for high-end jewelry in general (so it isn’t a Tiffany-specific issue).

my thoughts

Some portion of the poor US performance may be attributed to a later date for Mother’s Day this year.  But everyone who has access to a calendar already knew that.  Certainly management had factored this into its earlier guidance.

The downward revision comes after TIF has seen Mother’s Day sales.  I think this means that–unlike the case with more mass-market jewelers like Signet–Mother’s Day didn’t counteract April weakness for TIF.  It confirmed the slowdown.

Elsa Peretti

TIF has an exclusive license to sell Elsa Peretti jewelry, which makes up about 10% of company revenues.

The company filed an 8-K with the SEC on May 23rd in which it says that Ms. Peretti, 72, wants to retire and to sell her brand name and designs.  Negotiations between her and TIF are now in progress.  The Peretti intellectual property should have more value to TIF than to anyone else, so in a completely rational world TIF would end up obtaining it.  Earnings would be affected by, say, +/- 7%-8%, depending on whether negotiations result in purchase or not.

the stock

A short while ago, I sold the last of the TIF I held while I was doing a portfolio housecleaning.  My position was small and–as I’ve written elsewhere–I think the stock market is moving toward playing recovery of the average American rather than the continuing prosperity of the affluent.

I don’t feel a huge urge to buy back the stock I sold.

On the other hand, the stock looks cheap to me at 15x earnings.

15x was the place where I became interested in the stock–which I had owned in my portfolios, off and on, for many years–during the bounceback from Great Recession lows.  There’s always the possibility that the company could be acquired by a luxury goods conglomerate or a sovereign wealth fund.  We also know TIF management, which should know the value of the firm better than anyone else, has been buying the stock at above $60 a share.

I guess I’d like to watch the price for a while-and possibly get a better understanding of the current dynamics of the US customer.

 

 

 

 

Facebook’s first day

May 18, 2012 By in Recent Market Action, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m writing this at about 3pm, so the trading day isn’t over.  Several aspects to the FB IPO are already notable, though.

The stock opened at $43 and quickly reached a high of $45.  It then dropped to the IPO price of $38, where it met stiff resistance.  It now seems to be settling in at around $40 (note: I have a limit order in for today a tiny amount at $38.25).

1.  The day before yesterday the underwriters announced that the FB offering would be increased by 25% from an already hefty size.  This virtually always has the effect of tempering any first-day appreciation of the stock.

We should assume this was the main purpose of the move.

It isn’t clear if in this case the number two reason was:

–to accommodate holders chomping at the bit to sell or

–to ensure that the stock wouldn’t reach a crazy-high price in the first few days of trading and then collapse.

2.  The extra stock comes predominantly from selling shareholders, not from new shares issued by FB.  Normally that’s a bad thing, because the market argues (reasonably) that employees and venture capital investors know a lot more about the true worth of their firm than the rest of us do.

But the dynamics of this case aren’t so crystal clear.  The more new stock that’s issued by FB itself, the more Mark Zuckerberg’s margin of voting control over the company shrinks–and the less able he is to sell shares in the future and still maintain his voting majority.  This is not a worry for today or tomorrow, but Zuckerberg may have been quite happy to encourage employees or early investors to sell more.

3.  It’s not well-known, but underwriters have a short period of time in which they’re legally permitted to “stabilize” the price of a new issue (read:  step into the market and prop the stock up so it won’t fall below the IPO price).  That appears to have occurred with FB shortly before noon.

…not a great sign.  It raises the question of what will happen to FB next week, when the stabilization period expires and underwriters can’t stabilize anymore.

4.  The stock didn’t open until around 11am.  “So what,” you say.  That’s normal for a “hot” IPO.  Historically, that’s true.  But the brokerage industry trade association, FINRA, changed the IPO rules late last year so buyers can only place limit orders (that is, ones that specify a maximum price) before the first trade.  This eliminates market orders (ones where the buy price is open-ended) and should make the process of finding an initial market-clearing price much simpler. So a ninety-minute delay before opening is a lot.

5.  There are continuing reports of problems with trading in FB.  No one seems to know why.

WYNN’s 1Q12: good gaming revenue, bad gaming luck

May 17, 2012 By in Casinos, earnings conference calls, Entertainment, Industry Analysis, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the report

WYNN reported 1Q12 earnings results after the close of stock trading in New York on May 7th.  Adjusted earning per share were $1.33 ($152.0 million) for the period, down by about 4% from the $1.38 ($173.4 million) the company earned in the opening quarter of 2011.  Actual net was down by $21.4 million, or 12% yoy.  The forced redemption of Aruze USA’s 22.5 million shares in February explains the smaller decline in the per share figures.

Wall Street was not impressed.  The stock had been declining somewhat already from the intraday high of $138+ it achieved early in the month, on the announcement that Wynn Macau had received a government go-ahead for its new Cotai casino.  The apparently weak earnings kicked the decline into overdrive.

The report even prompted a comment from the normally reliable Financial Times–which appears not to like the gambling industry much– to the effect that it might be the canary signalling bad times ahead in the Las Vegas casino coal mine.

The reported earnings don’t tell the whole story, however.  The reality is that WYNN had a good quarter, not a bad one.

drop vs. take:  i.e., gross revenue vs. net

What casinos count as revenue is not the amount wagered by customers.  Rather, it’s the portion of total wagering “held” or “won” by the casino.  That is, revenue is the amount customers lose on their wagers. This means casino revenue is not only a function of the amount bet but also of “luck,” or random variation away from theoretical or historical winning percentages.

Such variations–plus or minus–rarely show up in slot machine results, since there are so many transactions in a quarter.  But they often do with table games, especially in the high-roller segment that WYNN specializes in.

WYNN’s 1Q12 earnings comparisons in both Las Vegas and in Macau are skewed unfavorably because of such random factors.

Las Vegas

EBITDA was $100.9 million in 1Q12 vs. $132.1 million in 1Q11.

Table games drop was $654.4 million in 1Q12 vs. $634.0 million in 1Q11.  Win percentage was 22.8% in 1Q12 vs. 30.4% (historically, win has been between 21%-24%; on the 1Q12 conference call, Steve Wynn said he’d never seen a win percentage this high in his casinos).  because of this difference, win was $149.2 million in 1Q12 vs. $192.7 million in 1Q11.

At a 30.4% win percentage, this year’s results would have been $198.9 million.  So the comparison would have been $49.7 million more favorable had WYNN been able to repeat the same extraordinary luck it had last year.

Macau

VIP gamblers bet $33.5 billion (!!) at Wynn Macau’s tables during 1Q12.  This is up 14.6% year on year (partly due to Wynn Macau converting some mass market tables to higher-profit VIP use). Win percentage this year was 2.59%, down 10 basis points from 1Q11′s 2.69% (the normal range is 2.7%-3.0%).  Slightly worse luck in 2012 than in 2011 clipped $33.5 million from the subsidiary’s win.

together

Had WYNN had identical luck during the first quarter this year as last, revenue–and EBITDA–would have been $83.2 million higher.  On such an apples-to-apples basis, EBITDA for WYNN as a whole would have been up 17% instead of down by 3.5%.

Other stuff: hotels

Macau continues to boom.  Hotel occupancy is up to an extraordinary 91.3% vs. 88.6% a year ago.  Room rates are up 5.5% to $324 a night.

In contrast, in Las Vegas, a city drowning in empty hotel rooms, WYNN’s push to higher room rates seems to me to have met serious resistance.  The company achieved a room rate of $255 a night in 1Q12, up $5 from 4Q11 and $15 from 1Q11.  But customers balked.  Occupancy dropped from 85% or so, to 79.3%, yoy.  Greater spending on food and entertainment by less price-sensitive customers made up for this.  But my guess is that WYNN won’t be raising rates again for a while.

my thoughts

The stock is very close to its 52-week low.  The PE multiple is now a reasonable 18x this year’s earnings, with, say, 15%-20% growth in prospect for 2013.  In addition, about 90% of the market cap of WYNN is explained by its interest in Wynn Macau, despite the recent selloff in that equity in Hong Kong (by panicky Europeans, I think).  This leaves the company’s slowly recovering Las Vegas holdings–plus its big management fees from Macau–substantially undervalued, in my view.

I’m content to hold the WYNN shares I have.  At today’s prices I’d purchase LVS, 1128 or 1928 before I’d buy more.

Warren Buffett has been selling INTC–should we? //the INTC dividend

May 16, 2012 By in Dividends, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Buffett’s INTC buy

Institutional money managers are required to disclose their equity portfolio holdings to the SEC each quarter in a filing called a 13F. (The 13F is not to be confused with the 13D, a filing the SEC requires ten days after anyone not an institutional investor acquires a 5% of any class of securities (equity or debt) of a public company).

In its 13F filing for the December 1011 quarter, Berkshire Hathaway indicated that it had bought 11.5 million shares of INTC, worth over a quarter billion dollars, during the period.

In its just-released March 2012 13F, the company says it held only 7.7 million INTC shares at the end of the quarter–meaning it sold a third of its holding in the interim.  As thestreet.com points out, Buffett added roughly the same dollar amount to his holding in IBM.

What’s going on?  Should we follow the Buffett lead?

my thoughts on the recent selling

1.  Mr. Buffett makes no secret of the fact he feels he doesn’t have a deep understanding of technology nor is he comfortable with large tech holdings.  He likes financials like GEICO, instead.  IBM, a steady grower that sells a branded set of services on a recurring subscription basis through a large sales force, is much more his style.

2.  My guess is that, at least implicitly, Buffett has put a dollar size limit on the INTC position because it’s in an industry he’s not an expert in.  He’s trimming to keep the position from getting too big.

3.  Coming at INTC from a slightly different angle, the company is a turnaround story.  To me, at $20 a share, the stock was so cheap that it didn’t matter too much whether the company’s efforts to reinvent the PC ( or at least clone the Macbook Air) and crack the mobile market will be successful.  At $30 a share, in contrast, it seems to me that a buyer/holder is betting that ultrabooks are a hit and that designing bespoke cellphones for carriers will work, as well.

I feel no strong urge to buy at today’s level, but I’m content to wait and see what happens.  Mr. Buffett seems to me to be acting in line with my general analysis.  He wants to continue to make the positive bet–or else he would have sold everything–just not a big one.

4.  Stock picking is like baseball, in that it’s the season’s average that counts, not a given at bat.  Even the most successful professional equity managers are wrong at least 40% of the time (the industry cliché is that 55% right/45% wrong = genius, the reverse proportions = unemployed).  So riding on anyone’s coattails on a single decision is a risky position. Think:  Albert Pujols.

the INTC dividend increase

On May 7th, INTC announced its board of directors had upped the quarterly dividend to $.225 from $.21.

I’m pleasantly surprised.  This is the fourth boost to the payout in less than three years.  My picture has been that 2012 would be a flattish year, before a reacceleration earnings during  2013.  I thought the company might wait until November or December to decide on a dividend increase.  That’s because dividend decisions are never made in anticipation of future profits.  They’re always backward-looking.  They’re made based on what earnings already booked will support.

I take the board action as an indication INTC’s current business is going better than I’d anticipated.

 

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 100 other followers