Little activity to report

This quarter is looking to make records for low activity on my part. I’ve been attempting to scan the markets for various opportunities but have been coming up with blanks.

In general, most of the debt markets out there are trading out of proportion for risk. Blow-ups on unsecured debt like Toys R Us continue to be a reminder that something can go from 95 cents to 30 in short order.

The fossil fuel industry (specifically natural gas production) appear to have headwinds, and despite rumblings of a recovery in the crude oil market, I still do not see anything on the equity side that appears to warrant action at this point.

Retail has also been killed, but in many cases there is a lot of substance to the story – there is a generational shift occurring for physical shopping, similar to the digitization of newspaper media.

Indeed, it appears that two industries have been dominating the mind-share for investment capital: Marijuana and Blockchain technologies, neither of which I have any interest. I note with amusement that Village Farms (TSX: VFF) appears to be attracting disproportionate interest due to its announcement that it is preparing to grow marijuana in its greenhouses (presumably in British Columbia and not Texas!). I have no idea how far up the market can take these stocks (similar to Bitcoin itself), but it can always be father than one can believe is possible, let alone rational.

The good news is that when a few sectors dominate the allocation of capital, it usually means that other sectors do not receive the same attention and these can be scoured for opportunities.

Despite my antagonistic view on the general marketplace, most of my cash is deployed in cash-parking vessels and are earning incremental yields while I wait for higher risk/reward opportunities. Although I do not think a market crash is imminent, if one did occur, I would not mind.

Genworth MI’s slow ascent

Genworth MI (TSX: MIC) reports their third quarter earnings on Thursday.

The stock has been on a mild uptrend as of late:

I suspect in absence of anything material in the Canadian real estate market, that the upcoming quarter will be financially positive and the market has already anticipated this.

Genworth MI is also likely to announce an increase in their quarterly dividend. They also executed on a modest share buyback in the previous month.

Probably the biggest amount of uncertainty would come from the parent company, Genworth Financial (NYSE: GNW) where it is not apparent whether their merger will receive sufficient authorization from the federal government authorities to proceed or not. Because they have an upcoming US$600 million debt maturity in May 2018, things are getting a bit tight financially – while their holding company does have around $800 million to work with, an analogy after $600 million of that goes to pay the debt would be like running the automobile with no bars of gasoline left on the tank gauge.

Their 10-Q states, “In the absence of the China Oceanwide transaction or in the event we are unable to refinance our debt maturities, we expect we would be required to pursue asset sales, including potential sales of our mortgage insurance businesses in Canada and Australia and/or a partial sale of our U.S. mortgage insurance business to service our holding company debt.”

Will Genworth MI be sold? It would be an easy US$1.6 billion for them or more depending on how much of a premium they receive…

ROOTS IPO – Completely over-valued

Roots (TSX: ROOT) went public today. Look at the chart!

The only shock I have at today’s market reaction (it is trading down $2 from its initial price of $12/share) is how the institutions managed to find enough buyers at $12 to actually complete the sale. That was one heck of a sales job considering that anybody that is able to read a financial statement (do any financial institution managers ever read these prospectuses anymore??) would steer clear of this one. It isn’t even close in my estimation.

Conclusion: Another money-losing, negative book-value entity that has a huge uphill climb if it is to ever return any dividends to shareholders. I even love the $20 million distribution on May 2017 that Searchlight took out of the company before going public even though they were pushing the top of their credit limit (which was expanded on April 19, 2017). Will Roots go into creditor protection in a couple years?

There are some IPOs that make me think and wonder whether they’re worth purchasing (at least they’re worth the research). This one is an easy, easy pass.

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:

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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.

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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.