Mortgage changes and Genworth MI valuation

By now the whole nation has heard of the proposed changes to mortgage financing and insurance requirements for Canadian mortgages.

Genworth MI (TSX: MIC) evaluated the impact of these changes and the payload of this was in the following paragraphs in their press release issued 4 minutes after the market opened yesterday:

Based on year-to-date 2016 data, we estimate that a little over one third of transactionally insured mortgages, predominantly for first time homebuyers, would have difficulty meeting the required debt service ratios and homebuyers would need to consider buying a lower priced property or increase the size of their down payment.

Furthermore, approximately 50% to 55% of our total portfolio new insurance written would no longer be eligible for mortgage insurance under the new Low Ratio mortgage insurance requirements.

The market proceeded to take MIC down from about $34 to $30 in short order, presumably on the basis that a third of their mortgage insurance market is going to get knee-capped due to customer income requirements.

mic

It is important for the reader to understand the difference between transaction insurance (which the typical retail investor is familiar with) and portfolio insurance (which is where a financial institution purchases insurance on its own behalf for the purpose of assembling mortgages and securitizing them for selling in the secondary marketplace).

I am generally of the belief that despite these regulatory changes, Genworth MI is very much undervalued at present pricing. There are quite a few variables at play in this space, which I will go over as follows:

1. On the basis of premiums written, portfolio insurance was 13% of Genworth MI’s business in 2015. There was a regulatory change (dealing with mortgage substitutions and time limitations for portfolio insurance) that is effective July 1, 2016 which caused a one-time spike in portfolio insurance demand in Q2-2016. The portfolio insurance market was already effectively squelched by regulatory change and this further change will dampen it further.

Because portfolio insurance is written on low-leverage mortgages, they are akin to selling significantly out of the money put options on mortgages. In Q2-2016, Genworth MI insured $26 billion in mortgages via portfolio insurance, but this only generated $78 million (0.3%) in premiums (the median loan-to-value was 65-70%).

I would anticipate that portfolio insurance will be a very small part of the future mortgage insurance market – I’d be surprised to see more than $10 million in premiums each quarter going forward.

2. Transactional insurance is the bread and butter of the business. The question is how much of consumer demand for insurance will be eliminated because consumers failed to pass the affordability test (due to using the Bank of Canada posted rates) versus these consumers simply choosing to downsize their financing requirements to fit with the new mortgage insurance parameters.

My initial estimate would be that transaction insurance would slow down by about 1/6th of ambient levels instead of the 1/3rd backward-looking estimate given in the release. The past four quarters had $686 million in transactional premiums written. Going forward, I’d expect this to decline to around $570-ish.

3. Clearly these changes are going to result in less premiums written for Genworth MI (and also CMHC). However, this will not impact the existing mortgage insurance portfolio. If Genworth MI decided to stop underwriting all business and decided to run off its mortgage book, shareholders would still be looking at north of their Q2-2016 book value of $38.23/share as the company recognizes revenues. In a relatively normal environment, the company’s projected combined ratio should be around 45-50% (which is above what it has typically been) and the unearned premiums (currently of $2.08 billion) would likely amortize to another billion in pre-tax income if the book were to be run off.

The terminal value of the operation, with the assumption they decide to shut everything down, would be very well north of the existing book value, and most of this capital would be freed up completely after 5 years (customers would have their mortgages amortized to a point where mortgage losses would virtually be impossible).

There are various ways to value companies, but they all generally depend on a function of income expectation and how much cash can be liquidated from the balance sheet if operations were to cease. In Genworth’s case, there is a huge margin of error between current market value, current book value, and a reasonable expectation of performance in future years.

Simply put, the market is valuing Genworth MI as if it is going to lose money in the future. I do not believe this is a reasonable assumption even though this Canadian government appears hell-bent on pushing us into a tax-induced recession.

4. OFSI has released a draft proposal concerning the capital requirements of mortgage insurance companies, and in general this will require Genworth MI to retain more capital for its existing mortgage insurance portfolio. The reason is that the new capital requirements introduce a supplemental capital requirement for housing markets that are “hot”, which is determined by a price to income ratio. It is likely that mortgage insurers are going to raise premiums in 2017.

Genworth MI’s policy has been to keep its capital base above a certain level above its internal minimum (in the new proposal, the fraction will be above 150% of the revised minimum capital test) and distribute the rest of it in buybacks and dividends. Although the future rate of premium collection will be less, the company will be in a position to repurchase shares at a considerable discount to book value.

5. These changes in capital requirements force mortgage insurance companies to heavily err on the side of conservatism, both in terms of balance sheet strength and insuring customers that are quite strong (via the posted rate interest test).

6. The parent company (Genworth Financial) has stabilized considerably since last year and I still believe a low probability scenario is for them to exit the Canadian mortgage insurance market through a sale of the entity. They could certainly fetch more than CAD$30/share, but the question would be who the buyer would be – there are not a lot of obvious well-capitalized candidates, but I would think of Fairfax or even the CPPIB or a Canadian pension fund doing so.

7. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the government announcement of October 3, 2016 would be negative for transactional and portfolio insurance volumes, yet the market only reacted when Genworth announced the retrospective impact of the changes. Yes, I should have been there on the morning of October 4th and pounded the bid, but I was asleep at the switch and I would have expected the negative market reaction to be on October 3 and not a day after!

8. In relation to the rest of the financial entities trading on the TSX, Genworth MI is very much undervalued and the market has over-applied the negative effects of the regulatory change on the company by weighting its impact on future premiums written too heavily. Genworth MI could easily give its shareholders a boost by announcing a wind-down of operation and a release of capital as mortgage insurance policies amortize, but they will not do this simply because Canadian mortgage insurance is still too profitable. In the first half of 2016, they make approximately a 60% profit of every dollar of premium they recognize. Why give this up?

Where should Genworth MI be trading? Higher than what the market is currently valuing it. This is a fairly strong buy on my radar, despite the fact that it has been a long-term core holding since 2012 when I first invested.

Dredging the market for corporate debt

I’ve been doing an exhaustive examination of the available publicly traded debt from US corporations. I am specifically looking for debt that has maturity lengths of between 2-8 years, and the underlying issuer is relatively solvent. The actual parameters I used for the screen I’ll leave aside, but there were a lot of issuers to do some quick research on to see whether they were worth further investigation.

The “relatively solvent” criterion allows me to exclude companies that are basically operating entities that are encumbered with a gigantic amount of debt relative to tangible book value. These entities typically exhibit goodwill and intangibles far in excess of what the stated equity is, which means that the entity was likely a result of a previous leveraged buyout or some sort of financial restructuring to extract the maximum capital of the entity.

A good example of this is Toys R Us, a completely leveraged mess of a financial entity as a result of a leveraged buyout years ago. If you like anti-depressants, please take them while you read their last quarterly report. I would not go anywhere near their unsecured debt. Somehow this entity actually warrants a market value of an 11% yield to maturity on their 2-year debt. Amazing.

I am not interested in these entities unless if they were generating a sufficient amount of cash in relation to their debt, and in most cases they do not. This means that refinancing risk is going to be crucial for these entities – while today they might get the financing, tomorrow they might not. It is at those moments where an investor will make the optimal risk/return ratio. Today an investment will just result in a mediocre risk/return.

There were a lot of offshore drillers that are clearly in trouble, and a lot of energy-related entities in trouble. In general, I am not interested in these (in addition to having enough exposure to energy bonds via Teekay debt).

Finally, anything that did seem to be a reasonable candidate had a chart resembling this:

twi-debt

I picked Titan International (NYSE: TWI) just as an example and not something I am interested in purchasing (at current prices). It is an automobile parts manufacturing company and is fairly easy to analyze – $200 million cash in the bank, a $60 million debt issue due in January 2017 that they will pay off, and $400 million due October 2020 (which you see in the chart above). The coupon is 6.875% and the debt is senior secured, and trades at a YTM of about 8.5% at present. The corporation in the first half of this year generated about $11.6 million in free cash flow. Historically they seem to be a cash generation vehicle for management teams.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D in finance to realize that they will likely have to refinance the debt when it comes to maturity in four years. They will probably be able to do this, but who knows?

This same bond traded at nearly a 19% YTM back in February when the whole market was going haywire.

Just because the bond is trading at higher levels (lower yields) doesn’t mean that they are valuable today. But if you did buy today you’ll get a high single digit return in the compensation for the risk that you’ll be dealing with the Chapter 11 proceedings of an auto parts manufacturer that doesn’t have the capacity to generate a huge amount of cash in a very low-margin industry.

Is it worth 19% to take this risk? Absolutely. Is it worth 8.5%? Probably not. Today you can get that debt for about 94 cents on the dollar, but if you got the same debt for 80 cents a year from now, you will get a much better return (assuming the aforementioned default does not occur).

The other question I ask myself is whether we’ll likely see something in the next couple years that will resemble a bond refinancing crisis. While the future is always difficult to predict, there will always be something that will cause panic in credit – and it is in these times that one must dive in deep, just like I did back in January and February.

There are numerous examples like this littered in the bond markets today – lots of mediocre companies with bonds trading at single digit yields to maturity. Even worse are the over-leveraged messes that are just asking for recapitalization when the market sneezes.

So overall, the pickings of my bond market research have been very slim.

The results are quite depressing – out of looking at approximately a hundred issuers, I’m only interested in doing a deep research session on one corporation. Also, my initial take on this entity wouldn’t be for their debt – it would be an equity investment. My initial instinct says that their equity could double in a year, while their debt yields 7.6%. I’m eager to start the research process.

Looking at this whole exercise, I realize this following statement might be the biggest piece of confirmation bias about my own portfolio, I believe the pieces of corporate debt that I currently own represents the best risk/reward available on the publicly traded markets today. I just don’t see anything else out there worth putting capital in the corporate debt markets. It’s a classic case of doing a lot of work but achieving no tangible results for the portfolio.

Difference Capital

Difference Capital (TSX: DCF) was the venture capital corporation created by Michael Wekerle in 2012 (done via reverse merger of an existing corporate entity). It invested in a whole bunch of private entities in the hopes of making superior returns. While the going was initially good, it has steadily eroded in value as demonstrated by the five year chart.

dcf

In its modern incarnation, it has about $79 million invested (mostly in equity, and the rest of it in debentures and real estate) along a smattering of mostly private entities. They did employ some leverage in the form of a convertible debt offering and they did get in a bit of financing trouble as a result of the debt issuance, but for the most part they cleaned this up in 2015-2016 through buying back the debt at a discount, from $47 million outstanding at the beginning of 2015 to $32 million on June 30, 2016. The debt has an 8% coupon.

They also have $16 million in cash, and an extra $3 million in receivables if some of their prior asset sales do not incur claims by the end of 2017.

The math is simple – can they cover the $32 million in debt over the next couple years? Assuming there are no material claims, they have $37 million to pay off in interest and principal (interest expense assuming no buybacks), which leaves them about $18 million short if you completely dedicate their existing cash and receivables against their debt. Their burn rate is also about $3 million a year, excluding interest, offset by about $1 million in investment income.

The equation then becomes a matter of raising $22 million over the next couple years to service their debt, or to obtain an extension of their debentures (with some sort of sweetener). I view the latter to be the more likely scenario, but it is quite conceivable that they could cash out an investment or two and partially chip away at the $22 million figure. The other option is to equitize the debt at maturity, but this would be done at a significant discount to their proclaimed NAV.

The debt is trading at 97 cents on the dollar and given everything I have seen, I would view it as over-valued at present. The market is weighing the probability of a clean maturity to be too high.

No positions.

Petrobakken / Lightstream Resources bites the dust

Lightstream Resources (TSX: LTS), formerly known as Petrobakken (TSX: PBN), was formerly a subject of analysis on this website. Despite the company having excessively high yields and posting (and boasting) about huge cash flows through operations, I remained very skeptical of them. Then the oil price cratered at the end of 2014, and then all the excess leverage the company held came to bite it.

The senior unsecured creditors failed to reach an agreement with the company, and as a result they will be going into CCAA proceedings.

I have never held shares of this company. The entity, once restructured, should be mildly profitable in the current oil price environment, but they need to shed a healthy quantity of their debt. It is a classic case of using too much leverage when the times are good.