Reviewing the past week

The past week was relatively interesting.

The 10-year bond yield went down about 0.25% from the beginning to the end of the week. Likewise, the long part of the yield curve also dropped (prices rose) and a whole flurry of the usual interest rate sensitive subjects got taken up VERY sharply. I’ll just give a few of them, but you get the idea – these four are from very different industries:

(But also take a look at REI.un.to, CAR.un.to, etc. – also dramatically up over the past few trading days).

REITs, lumber, sugar, and fast food. All of these are yieldly and leveraged. Don’t get me started on other components of the fixed income markets either, but I’ll throw in the 30-year US treasury bond yield:

There is a cliche that in bear markets, bull trap rallies are the sharpest. This is usually the case because short sellers are a bit more skittish than in the opposite direction.

My suspicion is that the bears on the long side of the bond market got a bit too complacent.

The calculation of the risk-free rate is a very strong variable in most valuation formulas. If you can sustain a 5% perpetual risk-free rate, there is no point in owning equities that give a risky 4% return. The price of the equity must drop until its yield rises to a factor above 5% (the number above 5% which incorporates the appropriate level of risk).

So what we see here is the strong variable (risk-free rates) moving down and hence the valuation of yieldy and leveraged equities rising accordingly, coupled with some likely short squeeze pressure on the most leveraged entities.

There are likely powerful undercurrents flowing in the capital markets – the tug-of-war with the ‘higher for longer, inflation is here to stay’ crowd competing with the ‘Economy is going bust, the Fed has to lower rates!’ group.

The last chart, however, I must say was not on my bingo scorecard for 2023 – Bitcoin is up over double from what it was trading at the beginning of the year:

I should have just pulled a Michael Saylor and gone 150% on Bitcoin. Go figure.

Rogers Sugar Q4-2020

A very small research note.

Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI) reported their year-end yesterday.

The sugar side of the industry remains rock-solid stable (and this is primarily the reason why the stock has been trading as a bond-like security). There are glimmers of hope that they are slowly turning around their maple operations – although gross profits are still relatively flat on a comparative basis, the top line is up and presumably they are still ironing out the issues on this segment of the business.

As a result, the stock has risen – from the beginning of the month to today, by just over 10% which is an unusual fluctuation for the stock.

In terms of cash generation, while the underlying business is indeed making plenty of it, they are over-leveraged. After subtracting interest, taxes, lease payments and capital expenditures, they pulled in $34 million in cash for the year, while their dividend payout is $37.5 million. In the previous fiscal year, that was $29 million generated. In light of the current stock price, just in terms of cash generation, it would make them fairly expensive – about 17 times, unadjusted for leverage. The only solace is the relatively safe moat of having control of most of the sugar refining industry in Canada, and having the industry mostly trade-protected.

Rogers Sugar Q4-2019 – not a good trend

Rogers Sugar reported their fiscal year-end results yesterday. I wrote about them mostly recently in their last quarter. The erosion of the profitability of their maple division is continuing to hurt the company. The highlight is the following:

Rogers is able to make a 17% gross profit on sugar refining, and this has been stable (indeed, threat of substitutes is the primary competitive force). However, on the maple division, profitability has continued to decrease due to competition. This is continuing to hurt the company’s financial performance.

On the cash side, the company continues to distribute more capital in dividends than they are able to sustain with operating cash flows plus capital expenditures:

This is financed with debentures, and a bank line of credit and a revolving facility – which is increasing. The credit pressure will increase if this keeps up. They even spent a little bit buying back stock despite the cash situation, which they probably rationalize in their heads by a 6.9% yield rate (at the $5.22/share they purchased the stock with the 36 cent dividend), but without paying attention to the debt, these sorts of repurchases are going to be much more expensive for shareholders today!

We see the equity markets are starting to get concerned – Rogers is down about 5% today after the annual report. Rogers does have a couple convertible debenture series outstanding which are trading near par presently (with a 5% and 4.75% coupon, maturing in December 2024 and June 2025, respectively) which clearly shows they are not in dire straits by any means, but things are headed in the wrong direction.

The clear conclusion is that the diversification into maple is not turning out very well – the people selling the businesses probably knew more than Rogers did about the future outcome.

At $4.80/share I am still not interested in the equity, although I’m sure yield chasers will love the 7.5% yield.

Rogers Sugar – Example of diversification not going well for shareholders

When a company dominates its product or service space, it has two choices – either stick with it and be very vigilant to ensure that whatever competitive moat you have continues to exist, or start to expand and diversify.

In many cases, expansion and diversification can end up consuming far more money and mental capital of management than otherwise warranted.

Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI) is a good case example. By virtue of trade protection, the refined sugar domain in Canada is dominated by Rogers (and its other label, Lantic). The only Canadian competitor is Redpath Sugar (privately held and ironically owned by American Sugar Refining), which is a distant second in terms of volumes sold, and geographical presence (their operations are mainly around the Toronto area, while Rogers has a presence across most of Canada).

I have been tracking Rogers Sugar for well over a decade. In fact, at one point (during the economic crisis) it was my largest portfolio position since their units (back then they were an income trust) were trading at such a ridiculously low level given their rock-solid business. I still follow it and would love to get back in at the right price.

In 2017, Rogers decided to purchase a maple producer (L.B. Maple Treat Corporation – located in Quebec and Vermont) for $160 million, paid with a mixture of cash raised in equity ($69 million raised at $5.90/share) and debt. Later in the same year, they purchased a bottler and maple producer, Decacer (also located in Quebec), for another $40 million (paid by the credit facility). Subsequent to the acquisitions there has been further capital investment in the maple unit, but for the purposes of this post I will ignore these expenditures.

It is nearly two years later, and Rogers is still having difficulty with their maple acquisitions. Was this the correct decision?

The sugar industry in Canada can be described as very mature. Rogers can generate about $80 million a year of EBITDA with the sugar segment, and this is stable. It takes approximately $20 million a year in capital investment ($17 million in FY2017, $23 million in FY2018) to sustain this, so sugar is a cash machine in Canada. There is a very high barrier to entry in the marketplace given the total size of the market. The sugar market only grows in relation to the population size. There are substitutes available (high fructose corn syrup) that keep a lid on prices for industrial customers.

A $60 million a year cash stream ($80 million EBITDA minus $20 million CapEx) is approximately $44 million after taxes. Since the sugar business is so bond-like, an unlevered firm in today’s interest rate environment would probably go for a 7-8% perpetual discount, or approximately $580 million (at 7.5%). Indeed, one can make an argument that the sugar industry deserves an even lower discount when looking at comparators such as Keg Royalties Income Trust (TSX: KEG.UN – with 6.8% at a 100% payout ratio) or the grossly over-valued A&W Revenue Royalties Income Fund (TSX: AW.UN – a ridiculous 3.4%!). Both of these entities have nowhere close to the competitive moat that Rogers Sugar has.

Rogers is capitalized entirely by debt financing – tangible book value is negative $19 million, and total debt is $362 million (face value) consisting of secured bank loans and unsecured convertible debentures (TSX: RSI.DB.E and RSI.DB.F) for low rates of interest (the debentures are roughly at 5% and the credit facility is at LIBOR plus 20 to 200bps depending on financial ratios – blended interest expense, ignoring financing costs is 3.6%).

Completely ignoring Rogers’ sugar adventures into maple syrup, the debt completely self-sustains the entire company for a cost of $13 million a year. Even if interest rates doubled, the sugar entity would be very profitable.

As such, the enterprise value of Rogers is about a billion dollars. The equity pays a 36 cent/share dividend or about a 6.4% dividend yield – not too bad given some comparators above.

After the close of August 1, 2019, they released their 3rd quarter results. It is quite apparent that as of right now, their expansion in Maple has yielded sub-par results.

In fiscal year 2018 (the first full fiscal year after the maple acquisitions), the adjusted EBITDA on maple was $18.6 million – and depreciation was about $5 million and $1.9 million in “non-recurring” costs, but we will ignore the latter costs for the sake of argument. After taxes, this is approximately $10 million a year – or 5% on the original $200 million invested in 2017. Definitely a worse outcome than what is going on in sugar – and barely enough to keep up with the cost of capital it paid.

One might be able to understand that in the first full year after an acquisition there will be growing pains before things get “back to expected”, but this is not happening as of the 3rd quarter of 2019.

For the first 9 months of the June 2018 reporting period, the maple division had adjusted EBITDA of $13.9 million, while the same period in 2019 was $12.1 million, or a 13% decline. Management now expects a $16 million adjusted EBITDA result for the full fiscal year and additional capital expenditures to increase the efficiency of the maple operation. The cited reason for the decline in profitability is “heightened competitiveness in the marketplace and, to a lesser extent, some operational inefficiencies related to the plant footprint optimization.”

It does not take a CFA to figure out that the maple acquisition is turning out to be a negative decision for the company, given how much was actually paid.

Despite the fact that the decision to get into the maple market had logic to it (sugar and maple syrup are both sweeteners; the company has its major operating headquarters in Quebec and some French-speaking executives; the company has vast experience in manufacturing and distribution of food products; etc.) – the capital invested is clearly earning a sub-par return, despite the company’s operational expertise.

This is a pretty good lesson that moving from a competition-protected domain (sugar) into a business that has less protection (maple syrup), no matter how similar, conducted at the wrong price will end up destroying shareholder value. I am guessing the board, management and public shareholders didn’t see this one coming.

I expect the stock to trade lower on August 2, 2019.

A very quiet May and some self-reflection

It has been a relatively calm month of May for me – I know the cliche of sell in May and go away has resonated in my mind, but my positioning is still quite defensive (very heavily weighted in preferred shares and corporate debt). One advantage of such a defensive portfolio structure is that it is relatively insulated to equity volatility.

The past three months have seen quite a significant performance gain and when there are gains this large I always ask myself whether it is sustainable. When I look at the fixed income components of my portfolio, I see higher room for appreciation from current levels as markets continue to normalize. For whatever reason, Canadian markets were heavily sold off in early February, especially in the fixed income space, and we are still continuing to see a normalization of these valuations.

There were a few missed opportunities on the way. I will throw out a bone for the audience and mention I was willing to pounce on Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI) when it was going to trade below $3.75/share, but clearly that did not happen (sadly, its low point was $3.84/share) and it has rocketed upwards nearly 50% to $5.71 presently on the pretense that Canadians are going to have a sweeter tooth for sugar rather than corn sweeteners in the upcoming months (which is true – their last quarterly financial statements show an uptick in business and this should continue for another year or so and the market has priced this in completely).

My overall thesis at this point is that the aggregate markets will be choppy – there will not be crashes or mega-rallies, but there will be lots of smaller gyrations up and down to encourage the financial press that the world will be ending or the next boom is starting. When looking at general volatility, the markets usually find something to panic about twice a year and we had a large panic last February. The upcoming panic would likely deal with the fallout concerning the presidential election.

If net returns from equity are going to be muted, it would suggest that the best choices still continues to be in fixed income. The opportunities at present are not giving nearly as much of a bang for the buck in terms of risk/reward, but there are still reasonable selections available in the market. A good example of this would be Pengrowth Energy debentures (TSX: PGF.DB.B) which is trading between 94 to 95 cents of par value. Barring crude oil crashing down to US$30/barrel again, it is very likely to mature at par on March 31, 2017. You’ll pick up a 6% capital gain over 10 months and also pick up some interest at a 6.25% coupon rate. Worst case scenario is they elect a share conversion, but with Seymour Schulich picking up a good-sized minority stake in the company, I very much doubt it. (Disclosure: I bought a bunch of them a couple months ago at lower prices).

In the meantime, I am once again twiddling my thumbs in this market.