Canada – Page 42

First Uranium gets whiplashed

I have written earlier about First Uranium’s woes – they had an environmental assessment permit that was critical to their business venture pulled.

Today they announced that they have it back.

This is what I was referring to the political instability risk concerning investing in companies that have major operations overseas – judging how burdensome the local government is very difficult unless if you are living there and have a “feel” for them.

First Uranium equity today jumped by 39% and closed the day at $1.81/share. This gives them a market capitalization of $300 million. Before this fiasco began, their equity was valued at about $2.50/share. I suspect their equity is under-valued, but I am not interested in the equity – I am interested in the debt. The equity still has other risks (dealing with governance, management compensation, composition of the near-majority shareholder, etc.) that I am not interested in taking. In addition, there still is the operational risk of actually being able to get the gold refining project up assuming anybody wants to finance the operation. The operation will likely be financed with some combination of equity and debt. Future dilution is something equity holders will face, but this is already baked into the relatively low share price.

The debentures are trading at bid/ask 68/71. Now with their business prospects significantly enhanced (providing that they can raise $100 million of capital that would be require to get the project going), I believe there is a material chance that these debentures ($150M par value) will be paid off at par in 2.3 years to maturity. I am guessing that once the project gets established and the revenues come in as projected (which will be substantial) that sometime in 2011 or early 2012, the cost of capital for the company will be considerably lower and I will get paid off at par. At 69.5 cents, the debt has a 23% annualized combined yield-capital gain for an acceptable risk.

Physics always trumps marketing

One reason why Robert Rapier is such a powerful writer (and a wonderful one to read) is that he rarely strays into dogma and talking points (and the times he does so, he usually signals it); his articles are quite analytical and verifiable. In his latest post, he rips into Range Fuels and Cello Energy, and also states that venture capitalist Vinod Khosla had no idea what he was investing in.

In summary, I will point out that the two primary sources of cellulosic production being counted on by the EPA for 2010 were Range Fuels and Cello Energy. Both are Vinod Khosla ventures, and neither has come remotely close to delivering despite lots of funding and taxpayer assistance. I don’t think these are isolated cases. I think they are a symptom of things to come. We have gotten a lot of overpromises, because face it, that has worked to secure funding. But what this leads to are completely unrealistic expectations regarding our energy policy, and numerous bad decisions regarding where tax dollars should be spent.

Finally, I want to make one thing crystal clear. I am not criticizing failure here. That is normal and expected. Failure is a part of what it takes to learn and move forward. What I am criticizing is the nature of the failure; that it was primarily because inexperienced people were making claims they shouldn’t have made, and taxpayers are going to get stuck with the bills. Personally, I have a problem with my tax dollars being squandered away by smooth-talking salesmen.

The underlying science (mainly the first law of thermodynamics – not even process engineering is required to understand the issue) will show that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a net energy return on the production of alcohol-based (methanol/ethanol) fuel. Essentially, such fuels require energy inputs far greater than their desired output, so why not just use the input directly in whatever application you require the energy for?

There are some applications where energy conversion will be desirable anyway, despite a net energy loss – for example, the conversion of a diffuse source of energy (corn) into a concentrated source (ethanol), but if you are using a source of energy with even higher energy concentration and equal portability (natural gas), what is the point?

The government and a lot of people in the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) got sold a bill of goods, and they took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Here in Canada, provincial governments are enacting legislation to blend in ethanol into fuels, which is a grave mistake. Also, the emphasis of hydrogen as a fuel to eventually replace gasoline is misguided; my thoughts are that hydrogen’s potential lies with energy storage rather than replacing conventional fuels.

Politicians get sold a bunch of fancy marketing and great promises in the hope that taxpayers’ dollars will get allocated toward whatever special interest of the day is being pitched at them (in this case, “less reliance on oil” is the message, although in the case of ethanol-blended gasoline “clean fuels to prevent global warming” is the message). The politicians and staff do not have the scientific capability of properly analyzing the proposals, and they get slick marketing pitches to sell them. Next thing you know, millions of dollars of taxpayers money are wasted with inefficient proposals and the end-consumer will pay for it when governments inevitably have to raise taxes to recover their losses on the project.

In the end, physics trumps marketing, but not after a lot of money is wasted once people scale up operations are realize they have no chance of delivering what they promised.

Canadian exchange traded debt statistics

There are 168 issues of exchange-traded debt available over the TSX. A lot of these issues are illiquid – 58 issues today did not trade.

None of these issues are trading below 60 cents.

There are 5 issues (3 issuers) that are trading between 60 and 69.9 cents.

There are 8 issues (6 issuers) that are trading between 70 and 79.9 cents.

There are 9 issues (8 issuers) that are trading between 80 and 89.9 cents.

There are 23 issues (21 issuers) that are trading between 90 and 99.9 cents.

The rest of the issues (123) are trading at 100 cents or greater.

If you compared these statistics with the same statistics one year ago, it would have been significantly different – there were lots of issues that were trading well below 80 cents.

The exchange traded debenture market on the TSX right now is mostly a done deal and investors should not look toward them to provide disproportionate returns beyond coupon payments. I have thoroughly analyzed the various issues that are trading cheaply, and there is limited value.

The events that occurred in late 2008 and early 2009 was likely a once in a decade opportunity in the corporate debt market. Time to start looking at equities again once everything matures.

Replacing ING Direct

The place where I normally park cash is in ING Direct, which has been a mainstay financial institution for myself for a very long time. When they first opened, they were by far and away the best place to park cash. Now they are a mediocre offering of the many online products that are available out there. I am guessing that they achieved their desired level of deposits and have achieved their desired debt-to-equity ratio with their residential mortgage offerings.

ING Direct hasn’t contaminated their customer experience by spamming their customer base with too many useless services, but this encroachment to simplicity has been eroding at a faster pace as of late – see my post about RSP loans, for example. It is simplicity that has caused me to stick around with ING Direct instead of shopping for other services. However, that time has now come.

So today I sent in a cheque to Ally, which used to be known as GMAC. Obviously since GM tarnished their brand with their bankruptcy filing and investing money in an institution that shares the same name with a bankrupt entity doesn’t inspire much confidence, they changed their name in 2009. In Canada, they are run by a firm called ResMor Trust Company, which otherwise does mortgages. In any event, they are CDIC insured and this means that the taxpayers of Canada will be picking up the guarantee for deposits up to $100,000.

Since I will not be depositing more than $100,000 in Ally, the safety issue of the institution is more or less mitigated.

Their peak offering is a savings account which delivers 2% interest (which is subject to change at anytime), but since this is significantly higher than ING Direct’s offering at 1.2%, it is a trivial process to click a few mouse buttons and transfer the money. Every dollar counts.

As interest rates rise, it will be interesting to see the spread between these two institutions since they are competing for the same bucket of capital from Joe Saver.

Canadian Interest Rate Projections

The financial media is catching wind that interest rates are going to be increasing. Although I believe the Bank of Canada is fairly firm in holding their overnight rate at 0.25% until the end of June, the question remains how much they will raise rates in July. I thought that it was going to be an evolutionary 0.25% increase over the next scheduled meetings of the central bank, but there might be a larger jump.

Futures markets are signaling the following compared to the same time last month (January 2009):

Month / Strike	Bid Price	Ask Price	Settl. Price	Net Change	Vol.
+ 10 MR 0.000	99.545	99.550	99.550	-0.005	4412
+ 10 AL 0.000	0.000	0.000	99.510	0.000	0
+ 10 MA 0.000	0.000	0.000	99.460	0.000	0
+ 10 JN 0.000	99.400	99.410	99.410	0.000	16860
+ 10 SE 0.000	99.030	99.040	99.030	0.000	19502
+ 10 DE 0.000	98.630	98.640	98.630	0.000	17457
+ 11 MR 0.000	98.240	98.250	98.250	0.000	2335
+ 11 JN 0.000	97.900	97.920	97.910	0.000	1360
+ 11 SE 0.000	97.550	97.620	97.600	-0.010	175
+ 11 DE 0.000	0.000	97.350	97.300	-0.050	56
+ 12 MR 0.000	97.000	97.090	97.050	0.000	0
+ 12 JN 0.000	96.740	96.870	96.810	-0.040	7
+ 12 SE 0.000	96.530	96.670	96.600	-0.030	7
+ 12 DE 0.000	96.320	96.500	96.370	0.030	7

We can see the projected interest rate for December 2010 is 1.36%, while December 2011 is around 2.7%.

Another metric to look at is long term bond rates – 5-year bond rates (which determine how expensive 5-year fixed rate mortgages will be) are currently trading at 2.56%, but this has not changed too much over the past half year. If the markets were anticipating significant amounts of inflation, they would most likely hit the longer term bond markets first.

The expectation theory states that long term rates are a representation of the short term rates that will existing throughout the maturity of the debt. As such, the markets are expecting an average of 2.56% over the next five years – since rates for the next 5 months will be at 0.25%, it hints there will be a period of time where we will see short term rates at or around 3%. Interest rate futures say this will be around March and June of 2012.

My financial crystal ball suggests that the markets are pricing this in correctly.

Since the yield spread (between the 10 year and 2 year bond) is around 2.1%, it does suggest that there will be some sort of economic recovery – my sense in terms of how to play this is to load up on commodities until the yield curve flattens. When the yield curve flattens, the party is over.