The corporate soap opera at Aimia

I last covered Aimia (TSX: AIM) last September and things have progressed from bad to just outright hilarious (unless if you’re a shareholder).

Aimia had raised nearly half a billion in cash from the disposition of one of their legacy business units, leaving their balance sheet relatively open for investment. The company’s stated objective was to invest such proceeds in such a manner that could utilize their extensive tax losses, neatly summarized by this page on their last annual report:

What does the corporation do instead?

Two headlines:
a) January 31, 2023: AIMIA TO ACQUIRE TUFROPES FOR $249.6 MILLION

Aimia Inc. (TSX: AIM), a holding company focused on long-term global investments, has announced today that it has signed definitive agreements to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Tufropes Pvt Ltd. as well as certain business undertakings of India Nets (together referred to as “Tufropes” or the “Company”). Aimia will pay a purchase price of $249.6 million (1) on a cash-free and debt-free basis

…

A family-owned business founded in 1992, Tufropes is expected to achieve annual revenue of approximately $130 million (1) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023 , and industry-leading EBITDA margins of 18%.

b) March 6, 2023: AIMIA ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF BOZZETTO GROUP FOR $328 MILLION

The purchase price will be based on an enterprise value of approximately $328 million (1) . It is anticipated that the acquisition will be financed with a combination of cash and debt, with an expected level of debt of around 3x Adjusted EBITDA, or approximately $135 million . Bozzetto achieved annual revenue of approximately $326 million (1)(2) and Adjusted EBITDA of $47 million (1)(2) with an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.5% (2) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 , with higher than 80% free-cash flow conversion (3).

Quick analysis

Acquisition (a) invests $250 million for [$130*18%?] $23.4 EBITDA margins. Assume no “I” and a combined TDA of 40% and that leaves $14 million net income. Tufropes is an Indian corporation.

Acquisition (b) invests $193 million cash ($328-$135) for an “adjusted” EBITDA of $47 million. Let’s ignore “adjustments”, and apply an “I” of $135*7%, and according to the press release, claims a “free cash flow conversion of 80%” which miraculously assumes that a multi-country specialty chemical business has little in the way of capital investment requirements. Somehow, I don’t think so. Looking at Chemtrade, for example, we have 43% of their 2022 EBITDA going to capital and lease and cash taxes. But they are a trust structure, so I would suspect that Bozzetto would be paying more than 50% of adjusted EBITDA on this, but let’s round to half and you get $23 million. Bozzetto is an Italian company.

Add these up, you get about $37 million on a $443 million cash investment or an 8.3% leveraged return. Not only that, but it is an incredibly tax inefficient way of utilizing the tax losses.

These guys could have bought CNQ and would likely do a lot better and gone through less headaches than dealing with jurisdictional headaches like the ones they’re entering in now!

Follow-through soap opera

Over the past half year, a Saudi-run capital corporation, Mithaq Capital, has acquired 19.9% of the common stock. Understandably they’re not happy with how present board management has handled the investment portfolio.

Aimia is holding their annual general meeting on April 18.

Mithaq released on April 6:

Mithaq is disappointed with recent events and has lost confidence in the Board and management. Mithaq believes that it would be in the best interests of Aimia to reconstitute the board and will vote against the re-election of David Rosenkrantz (Chair), Philip Mittleman , Michael Lehmann , Karen Basian , Kristen M. Dickey , Linda S. Habgood , Jon Mattson and Jordan G. Teramo to the Board at the Meeting.

The reasons underlying Mithaq’s decision to vote against the re-election of the Board include concerns previously raised with Aimia regarding capital allocation decisions relating to acquisitions.

Aimia management quickly rebuked and claimed it is taking action to “protect the integrity of the market”:

Over the past month, Aimia has been investigating the misuse of confidential information belonging to the Company and one of its affiliates. The misuse involved an insider who was a former member of the Company’s board of directors and a senior officer of the affiliate in breach of his legal obligations. The investigation also uncovered what Aimia believes to be undisclosed joint actor conduct relating to the acquisition and voting of Aimia securities.

Upon uncovering this misconduct, Aimia’s affiliate recently terminated the insider and Aimia reported its concerns about breaches of securities legislation to the relevant securities regulatory authority. The Company is considering all legal options available to it to protect shareholders and the integrity of the market.

Mithaq filed an official proxy statement on SEDAR (April 10, 2023) and there are many gems in there, but this one in particular was interesting:

Aimia’s current operating expense at the head office level is at an approximate C$15 million annual run rate, which is a grossly inappropriate set-up for an investment holding company of Aimia’s size. In addition to this, by bringing Paladin into the recently announced acquisitions, Aimia shareholders will be paying a 2% annual management fee and a 20% performance fee.

This makes the old corporate headquarters at the former Pinetree Capital (pre-2016, the current entity is parsimoniously run) look spartan by comparison.

Aimia on April 11:

Mithaq and its joint actors seek to control Aimia out of self interest

…

Aimia believes that these statements were made in furtherance of a self-interested attempt by Mithaq and its joint actors to acquire control of Aimia’s cash for the purpose of investing in the securities of poorly performing public companies held by Mithaq.

Of course there’s self-interest! They own 19.9% of the company. It indeed is quite ironic that one of the poorly performing public companies held by Mithaq is Aimia itself!

I am sure there will be more theatrics between now and the April 18th AGM. I do not expect a sane shareholder would vote in the incumbent board, but some shareholder votes in the past have surprised me!

In terms of how Aimia’s stock is doing, their preferred shares are trading at roughly a 9.5% reset yield. Definitely not enough compensation for risk in my books.

Also, if Mithaq is successful in taking over Aimia’s board, they have the unenviable task to undo the capital damage that has occurred. Basically they’d be taking over when the family silverware has already been ransacked.

The Teck Sweepstakes!

Glencore: Proposed Teck merger and coal demerger

What the heck is a “demerger”? Rhetorical question.

I see two events going on here. The very public event is the following slide on copper:

Glencore makes a case that there is a strategic synergy to utilizing QB2 facilities to improve efficiencies on its own project (Collahuasi), which you can see on a map are relatively close together:

It is a geographical advantage that the others (specifically BHP) does not have.

But really, this merger is all about coal.

With Teck, Glencore picks up 10 million tons a year of production and this will nearly double its Canadian production.

When working in its entire base of met and thermal operations, if you believe the slide deck, it will generate CAD$14 billion pre-tax cash. Needless to say, this would be a lot of money.

At Glencore’s stock price of about $7.60/share, it prices Teck (Class B) at around CAD$59/share. Notably this is below 10x analyst forward estimates, but given that most of the Capex has already been spent on QB2, Teck’s future free cash flows will be immensely higher in the future.

Thus, the price has to go higher. In addition, after the coal spinoff was announced, the market had Teck go up to around $62/share and I think that will be a psychological anchor point as a minimum.

Because Teck has a dual class structure, there is some inside baseball going on with the Class A shares. It could be possible they will be offered a sweetened deal, especially to the exclusion of Class B shareholders, and eventually agree to it.

There are cases where you hit the sell button after a proposed takeout offer. There are times where you hold on and wait for a better offer. The latter is likely the case.

I’m guessing a deal gets done in the mid to upper 60’s.

If not, there’s a ton of cash flow to be distributed in the future, especially with the Elk Valley spinout – will be interesting to see how much the market puts a price on political correctness.

After that, however, will be a regulatory nightmare that will make Shaw and Rogers look simple.

Late Night Finance with Sacha – Episode 24

Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Time: 7:00pm, Pacific Time
Duration: Projected 90 minutes.
Where: Zoom (Registration)

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: What are you doing?
A: Quarterly review, economic thoughts (the crystal ball is clearing up somewhat), and time permitting, Q+A. Please feel free to ask them on the zoom registration if any questions.
** LATE ADDITION (March 31, 2023): SPECIAL GUEST! I will be interviewing a professional in the GTA/Canadian commercial (retail/office/industrial/multi-family) real estate investment/development industry for a guest interview! This probably means the whole episode will go over 60 minutes. (April 4, 2023: Sadly he got sick and we can no longer do this interview).

Q: How do I register?
A: Zoom link is here. I’ll need your city/province or state and country, and if you have any questions in advance just add it to the “Questions and Comments” part of the form. You’ll instantly receive the login to the Zoom channel.

Q: Are you trying to spam me, try to sell me garbage, etc. if I register?
A: If you register for this, I will not harvest your email or send you any solicitations. Also I am not using this to pump and dump any securities to you, although I will certainly offer opinions on what I see.

Q: Why do I have to register? I just want to be anonymous.
A: I’m curious who you are as well.

Q: If I register and don’t show up, will you be mad at me?
A: No.

Q: Will you (Sacha) be on video (i.e. this isn’t just an audio-only stream)?
A: Yes. You’ll get to see me, but the majority will be on “screen share” mode with MS-Word / Browser / PDFs as I explain what’s going on in my mind as I present.

Q: Will I need to be on video?
A: I’d prefer it, dress code is pajamas and upwards.

Q: Can I be a silent participant?
A: Yes.

Q: Is there an archive of the video I can watch later if I can’t make it?
A: No.

Q: Will there be a summary of the video?
A: A short summary will get added to the comments of this posting after the video.

Q: Will there be some other video presentation in the future?
A: Most likely, yes.

Yield-seekers – a 13.3% coupon on investment-grade debt!

This is a couple months late, but one of the casualties of the high-CPI environment is the issue of debentures that Constellation Software (TSX: CSU) made many years ago.

At the end of every March, they update it to CPI plus 6.5%. This year, bondholders will get a coupon of 13.3%!

CSU has the right to call the debt with 5 years’ notice in the last 15 days of March each year, and otherwise it matures on March 2040.

If they exercise this right, and if the 13.3% coupon keeps up for the next five years (doubtful), you are looking at a 3.3% yield to maturity, due to the fact that the debt is trading at 38 cents over par.

But for current yield seekers, I find some humour that the largest coupon available on the debt market right now is from a top-rated company.

The next TSX-traded debt issuer that has the largest coupon is Valeo Pharma (TSX: VPH) with a 12.0% coupon. With a market cap of $44 million, it is miles away from the financial condition that CSU is in.

Liquidity needed! Race for the exits!

The fear over financial institutions is ramping up quite rapidly with Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) next on the media radar for insolvency.

Pretty much every sector of the financial market is having a huge amount of supply pressure added to it, with the exception of gold commodity and long duration AAA debt.

Commodities, specifically oil and gas, are getting absolutely slaughtered over the past week, presumptively due to a forecasting of demand going off a cliff with the rest of the world economy.

Cash is an essential element in the portfolio – it just sits there and is generally disrespected until moments like these where it provides a layer of comfort.

Some surprises in this is that the CAD/USD is not lower than I would have thought given what is happening to fossil fuel pricing and the increase in VIX.

When central banks raise interest rates like they have, it was bound to cause some sort of financial earthquakes, but predicting where they hit is usually done only with the benefit of retrospect. The first casualty is improperly leveraged financial institutions. The spillover effects of this remain to be seen. Cash, however, is a good short-term defense.