Interactive Brokers CEO Thomas Peterffy on Bitcoin

Just reading the Interactive Brokers Q3-2017 conference call, we have the following amusing dialog between an analyst and CEO Thomas Peterffy:

=============

Mac Sykes
Understood. And when I think of IBG, I think of technology innovation, a broad suite of global product vehicles and as you mentioned, sophisticated traders. And love it or hate it at this point, Bitcoin’s market cap is now about 1/3 of JPMorgan’s. So 2 questions on this. Have you considered accessing this marketplace? And number two, have you heard client feedback asking for this kind of access?

Thomas Peterffy
The answer is yes to both, and the result is that we’re not going to do it.

Mac Sykes
Got it. What would make you just change your mind?

Thomas Peterffy
If the United States of America said, you know, besides dollars, we also have Bitcoins, and you can pay your taxes in Bitcoins, we would be the first one to go and do it.

=============

Ouch. Interactive Brokers is a brilliant, brilliantly run company, but the public entity is a company that only owns 17.4% of the actual operation. It is primarily for this reason and valuation that I am not an investor, but it is up nearly 50% over the past half year and strategically I think they are hitting every correct button in their business execution.

Morneau Shepell Inc. Research

After the news that the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, will be selling his remaining stake in Morneau Shepell (terms and conditions to presumably not disclosed), it was time to look at the company. Whenever you hear of anybody forced to liquidate a stake in a company (especially through a margin call) it is always time to look to see if the underlying company can be bought for cheap. When something like this becomes too public (which I believe this news would qualify as), the opportunity to take advantage is diminished, but it is still worth examining.

There are two issues trading on the TSX, the equity (TSX: MSI) and a $86 million convertible debenture (TSX: MSI.DB.A) that matures on June 30, 2021; coupon 4.75%, conversion price $25.10.

I’ve examined the June 30, 2017 financial statements. The corporation has about 55.7 million shares outstanding, diluted.

Valuation

On the balance sheet, the company is primarily financed with debt. Book value is $366 million, but $543 million of this is in goodwill and intangibles, which leaves a negative $177 million equity balance. This, in addition to working capital, needs to be paid for with debt financing. They have a $300 million available credit facility, and are currently utilizing $186 million. They also have the aforementioned $86 million in 4.75% convertible debentures outstanding. This financing is very cheap – the bulk of the credit facility is at Banker’s Acceptance rates plus 1.45%. Overall, the company is financed with very inexpensive debt financing. If at some point in the future financing costs were to increase, this would put considerable stress on the balance sheet and would be disruptive to shareholders if it occurred.

Income-wise, the company is stable and profitable. For the first half-year, they made $36.1 million before interest and taxes, and net was a shade above $20 million. Cash-wise, they are performing slightly worse than their income statement (operating cash flow was $15 million for the first half). Their dividend payout amount was $21 million for the half, and thus when accounting for capital asset acquisition and other business acquisitions, they are currently a cash negative entity unless if they can curtail their cash outflows.

The market capitalization of MSI is $1.1 billion and for an entity that has a negative tangible book value and only flowing (making some paper napkin adjustments that I will omit from this analysis) about $45 million annualized cash flow, does not make them a compelling investment at current prices. If the company’s equity traded around the $500-550 million level (about half of what it is trading for currently) I might get interested, but I do not see this as a probable scenario.

The convertible debenture is trading at 105 cents on the dollar (effective yield is 3.2% assuming maturity). Given the elevated equity valuation, the market is clearly pricing in some call option value in the debt, but given the high equity valuation I would not consider this debt for purchasing at existing valuations.

Minister of Finance Sale

Over the past month, about 50,000 shares of MSI trade daily. The Finance Minister, from an April 2, 2015 SEDAR filing (Management Information Circular) owns or controls or directs 2,247,812 shares of the corporation. This is presumably through the family trust that is speculated around with media, held in an Alberta corporation.

Where things look odd is when I look at his profile on SEDI (profile ID WMORNEA001) – He ceased to be an insider on October 26, 2015. According to SEDI filings, filed on various dates in 2015, he owned/controlled long term incentive plan shares and deferred share units, but there is no evidence on SEDI that he owned or controlled any common shares of MSI, which I find very odd and mysterious as it does not reconcile at all with the April 2, 2015 management information circular.

My big question: is the non-disclosure of the family trust an Ontario Securities Act violation? If Morneau had control over a larger number of shares than declared on his SEDI disclosure, is that not a non-disclosure that would be subject to penalties? A competent securities lawyer or somebody better versed in this section of law than I am would be able to answer this.

(Addendum, October 26, 2017: Turns out I totally missed the entry for his numbered Alberta corporation’s holdings of 2 million shares – so this was disclosed – back in 2011)

Also I’m cynically concluding that given the over-valuation status of MSI, the Finance Minister is also conveniently choosing this moment to unload shares.

Bombardier ran out of money

There is no way to explain Bombardier selling out a 50.01% stake of its C-series jet (leaving it with a minority 31% stake, with the Government of Quebec with a 19% interest) to Airbus for zero other than the simple fact that they ran out of money. They couldn’t keep things going for a few more years while all of the trade dispute issues played out.

With airbus fully incentivized to starting marketing the C-Series (and acquiring most of any industrial secrets contained within the aircraft design), they will be better positioned than Bombardier was with respect to the upcoming Boeing trade dispute (which will be a multi-year bloody battle, especially since Boeing has the full support of the US Government). One question internally for Airbus is how they will reconcile selling Airbus 319’s instead of CS300’s with this arrangement. Or are they just doing this to shut down the aircraft entirely?

The key paragraph is:

At closing, there will be no cash contribution by any of the partners, nor will CSALP assume any financial debt. It also contemplates that Bombardier will continue with its current funding plan of CSALP and will fund, if required, the cash shortfalls of CSALP during the first year following the closing up to a maximum amount of US$350 million, and during the second and third years following the closing up to a maximum aggregate amount of US$350 million over both years, in consideration for non-voting participating shares of CSALP with cumulative annual dividends of 2%, with any excess shortfall during such periods to be shared proportionately amongst Class A shareholders.

So Bombardier’s downside is US$700 million over the next couple years.

Long term, assuming this isn’t an agreement by Airbus to effectively shut down the C-series program, this should bode well for the C-Series program, which should remain in Canada and will have a more powerful marketing partner, but this is a negative for any upside to Bombardier – the promise of a wildly profitable commercial jet program will have now shrunk down to a 31% stake.

If I was going to use an analogy here, it is “Would you like 31% of something, or 100% of nothing?”. Bombardier seems to have taken the first option.

Bombardier has plenty of other cash-positive business units (Transportation and smaller-scale aircraft) that will be bringing in cash flows, but most of the upside in the business (via the promise of significant C-Series jet revenues) is gone.

I continue to hold a much-diminished stake of BBD.PR.C and BBD.PR.D shares, of which I am tepid on valuation and still do not see any imminent (I added in this word a couple hours after making this post!) dividend risk despite this deal.

Yellow Media – Senior Secured notes debt re-financing

Yellow Media (TSX: Y) managed to refinance its 9.25% senior secured notes due November 30, 2018 to November 1, 2022. According to the press release, the new notes are priced at 98 cents on the dollar and will give out a 10% coupon. This works out to roughly a 10.6% effective yield (assuming payout at maturity of par value).

The original senior secured notes had a payment provision where the company had give out a large percentage of its free cash flow to redeem the notes at par. It is not known whether that covenant will be in place for the new notes issuance.

My question is – why are the unsecured debentures (TSX: YPG.DB) (due November 30, 2022 and about $107 million principal value) trading at a value that is comparable to the 10.6% yield of the newly issued senior secured notes? The conversion option at $19.07/share is over double out-of-the-money and these holders don’t have security. It would seem to me that the unsecured debentures should be trading lower.