Monthly Archives: May 2012

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.

 

a quick look at DIS

May 15, 2012 By in earnings conference calls, economics, Stock ideas, Strategy Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

a little history

I became reacquainted with DIS in late 2009 when the company bid for Marvel Entertainment, which I had been a shareholder of for a couple of years.  Several things struck me about DIS that made the investment case more compelling than I expected:

1.  A new chairman, Bob Iger, was steadily reenergizing a company that had suffered for years under complacent and bureaucratic management, as happens with many mature firms.

2.  Although the price being paid, $4 billion, seemed pretty full to me, I knew Marvel would benefit from DIS’s stronger distribution.  And I also saw that Mr. Iger wanted to build the attractiveness of the Disney brand to boys, so Marvel had an “extra” value to DIS.

3.  The theme parks were suffering from the Great Recession.  I thought results would gradually improve as the economy recovered, first through an increase in foreign tourists, then through a return of US vacationers.

4.  Wall Street didn’t like the Marvel deal, which made DIS even cheaper.  So I bought some more.

I ended up selling most of my DIS stock about a year ago, soon after it popped above $40 a share.  Two reasons:  the stock was up a lot, and I worried that possible strikes by the NFL and/or NBA players would dent the profits of ESPN, which is DIS’s dominant business.

I’ve still kept my eye on DIS, which has been a market outperformer even after my sale.  The media reports of strong theme park business in 2Q12 (ended March 31st) when the company reported results last week caught my eye.  So I thought I’d take a closer look.

Here’s what I found.

DIS’s 2Q12 results

Excluding unusual items, earning per share were up 18% year on year, at $.58 vs. $.49 in 2Q11.

parks and resorts

Disney cruise line bookings were up 30% yoy.

Domestic theme park attendance was up 7% yoy, with spending per person up 5% in addition.

Occupancy in park hotels was up 2% yoy at 82%.  Room rates were up by about 5% as well.

Disneyland set a new 2Q attendance record.

The strength in the domestic theme park business comes from two sources:

–foreign tourists, especially from Latin America and Asia, and

–reviving interest from in-state residents in California and Florida.

Out of state domestic visitation to the parks was about flat, yoy.

Operating income from the worldwide Parks and Resorts business was up 53% yoy at $222 million.  The comparison is skewed by the closing of Tokyo Disneyland last year after the mid-March nuclear reactor accident in Japan, combined with a $15 million business interruption insurance payment made in the current quarter.  Ex these factors, the theme park business was probably up a bit over 20%.

To me, the most encouraging news is that residents of two of the areas hardest hit by the domestic housing crisis–southern California and Florida–are starting to come back to the Disney parks.

studio entertainment

Currently, this business is a tale of two movies.  John Carter, which may have made a $100 million loss, is certainly the main reason Studio Entertainment operating results dipped into the red by $84 million in 2Q12.  The other is The Avengers, which reportedly cost $220 million to make but which has had box office of over $1 billion in the first three weeks.  So 3Q12’s results in this segment will doubtless be eye-popping.

consumer products

Avengers-related merchandise sales are going much better than DIS had planned for.  A change of actors appears to have even breathed back life into the Hulk.

media networks

This segment is two-thirds of DIS’s operating income and is driven mostly by ESPN.  Changes in affiliate contracts and the differences in  timing/number of sporting events make year-on-year comparisons particularly hard for an outsider to interpret.  The reported you gain in operating income is 13%.  DIS says an apples-to-apples comparison would be more like half of that.

my thoughts

I find the implications for the US economy in DIS’s results to be encouraging–and consistent with what other companies who appeal to a broad range of Americans are saying.

DIS shares aren’t expensive.  They’re trading at 15x the Wall Street earnings consensus of $3.00 a share for fiscal 2012.  Trend growth is probably around 15% a year.  My guess is that they’ll be mild outperformers over the year ahead, with their best relative showing coming in uncertain days like these.

 


 

 

Facebook: my take

May 11, 2012 By in Facebook, Industry Analysis, internet Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

how is FB describing itself to the financial community?

I think the roadshow video is very instructive.

First of all, it is very expertly and painstakingly scripted and filmed.  A great deal of time, energy and thought went into it, in my view.  Therefore, it should be taken seriously as saying how FB wants to position itself in the minds of investors.

What are the main messages?  I think there are three:

1. FB is as much a social cause as a company.  And, by implication, we all now have a chance to be a part of the movement by becoming owners.

Mark Zuckerberg says both in the video and in a letter in the prospectus that he didn’t initially intend for FB to be a company.  He created it (I think I see a slight change in his delivery as he says this on the video) because it needed to be done.

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company.  It was built to accomplish a social mission–to make the world more open and connected…There’s a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future…We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other,” he writes.

2.  FB is in a unique position among internet companies. 

Everyone else has succeeded only in creating the “raw tools” that FB is cementing together into a comprehensive communications network.  Because of this unique position, future applications developers will doubtless build their products on the FB infrastructure, giving the company huge profit expansion potential.

3.  FB is only at the start of its “rewiring” of the way people communicate with one another.

There’s very little discussion of current operations in the video–despite the fact it’s a half-hour long.  You’ll see why below.  To me, the implication is that the concept of a possible future is much more important than the present.  It’s a sort of “If you build it, they will come” message.

what about current operations?

Here are the numbers I find most interesting:

users

As of March 31, 2012, FB had 901 million registered users worldwide who have interacted with Facebook in some fashion at least once over the prior month.

As of the same date, it was averaging 526 million registered users who have some interaction with Facebook on a given day.

Of monthly active users, 83 million use mobile devices exclusively to interact with Facebook; 405 million others use both computers and mobile devices.  This is a big change.  Mobile usage grew by 69% over the past year.  It contributed most of the gains shown in North America.

Overall user growth was 33%.

geography

FB breaks out active users into four geographical areas:  US and Canada, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World.

US/Canada

20.7% of all users

average quarterly revenue/user = $2.86, up 14% year on year

user growth was +91% two years ago, +46% last year, +15% this year

biggest boost to growth appears to have been through mobile devices

Europe

27.9% of all users

average quarterly revenue/user = $1.40, up 18% yoy

user growth +94% two years ago, +46% last year, +20% this year

Asia

25.5% of all users

average quarterly revenue/user =$.53, up 23% yoy

user growth +268% two years ago, +93% last year, +47% this year

RoW

26.9% of all users

average quarterly revenue/user = $.37, up 19% yoy

user growth +137% two years ago, +58% last year, +33% this year

what these figures mean

To me, they suggest that the North American market is maturing rapidly and that Europe may be only a year or so behind.  Not surprising, given that Facebook users in North America already outnumber non-users.

The two regions make up three-quarters of FB’s revenue.   So, if it isn’t already, emphasis in North America has got to shift away pretty soon from grabbing as many new users as possible (to prevent rivals like Google+ from snatching them us) to raising revenue per user.  How that will go is unclear (to me, anyway).

income statement

FB has two sources of revenue:  advertising and payments, the latter mostly generated by microtransactions in games. During calendar 2011, FB collected $3.154 billion in ad revenue and $557 million as its share of payments (the lion’s share of that from Zynga).  That was an 88% yoy gain.  Net income was up by 66%.

For the latest quarter, however, net was down yoy, despite a 45% yoy rise in revenue to $1.058 billion.  How so?

Expenses rose by 97% yoy during the period.  R&D was up by 168% to $153 million, marketing by 134% to $159 million, spending on infrastructure by 65% to $277 million.

I interpret this as FB’s recognition that to continue to grow it has to do so in a new way.  It either has to sign up a whole big bunch of low-revenue users outside the US and Europe, or find new ways to raise average revenue per user in its more affluent, but more mature markets in North America and Europe.

It’s conceivable that during this transition time, eps growth will be nothing to write home about.  It’s also not 100% clear FB will be successful, although it is in a very powerful position in the social networking arena.

conclusions

FB’s IPO materials tell two different stories.

–one, portrayed in the video, is of a unique company with boundless potential in an increasingly interconnected world.

–the other, from the numbers in management’s discussion of operations in the prospectus, is of a company that has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit and which is ramping up spending to fend off slowing revenue growth.  The price of this ramp may be lackluster profit growth for at least a while.

Which story to believe?

Here I have no strong opinion.

On the plus side,…

…good growth companies tend to reinvent themselves every few years.  For example:

–Microsoft was originally the PC operating system company.  Then it was the Windows graphical interface company.  Then it was the corporate Office productivity suite company.  Then, a dozen years ago, it stopped growing.

–Apple was the iPod company.  Then it was the “halo effect”/Apple Store company.  Then it was the iPhone company.  Now it’s the iPhone/iPad/iCloud company.

–Amazon, which I think FB resembles the most closely, was originally an Internet “concept” company that sold books in cyberspace and didn’t make much money.  Then it “pivoted”, expanded the range of products it sold itself and began to act as an online sales conduit for third parties.  Profits exploded.

What could go right in this fashion for FB?

Let’s say that corporate advertising on Facebook could double–I’m not sure whether this is an aggressive assumption or an underestimation–over the next two or three years, while FB maintains something like its current cost base.  If so, earnings would rise by about 150%.  Companies would arguably shift ad dollars to FB because it’s cheaper and because customer targeting is better.

Or something really good that’s unexpected by the investment community could develop, as happened in all the cases I’ve cited above.

On the minus side,...

…the valuation, based on current profit levels, is high at 96x earnings per share.  That’s not necessarily a deal-breaker.  LinkedIn, which I don’t think is as promising a company, trades at 686x.  Amazon trades at 186x, with a similar story of heavy investment in new product development.

Priceline.com, clearly a more mature company, trades at 30x.

An “old” warhorse like Apple, where the price earnings multiple has been contracting for the past several years, trades at 14x.

Microsoft, which hasn’t shown any innovative spark so far this century, trades at 11x.

what will professional investors do?

Value investors will hold onto their MSFT and not touch FB with a ten-foot pole.

Growth investors will probably take all the FB they can get in the IPO.  Knowing that the stock will very soon be part of the NASDAQ index, I think they’ll try to build their positions to the point they have only slight underweights and then await further developments.

For me, the stock would be a roll of the dice–something I try to avoid.  It’s not simply a question of valuation. If I thought FB’s earnings in three years would be close to triple the current level, as a doubling of revenue/user would achieve, I’d be very happy to buy it.  I don’t know the company well enough to have that conviction.  But I believe this is the key question potential investors should have an answer to.

Note:  Since I  wrote this post, two new pieces of information have come out:

–FB amended its prospectus to reflect what was apparently a management answer to a question posed during the roadshow.  FB said that some users were switching to accessing Facebook through mobile devices rather than through computers.  This has a negative effect on revenues, since FB runs fewer ads through mobile devices and advertisers pay less for them.

–apparently demand is strong enough for the issue that FB is talking about raising the IPO price to $34-$38.