Category: Equity

Manulife valuation

I have spent many hours, spread over about a week, understanding and performing a valuation on Manulife Financial (TSX: MFC).

Readers that track TSX 60 stocks should know that Manulife (and its chief peers, Sun-Life, and to a lesser degree Great West) has gotten hammered over the past year (-40%) and two year (-65%) interval.

Lower equity valuation is not a sign that the stock is worth purchasing – it could perhaps reflect the fact that the equity was over-valued in the first place. Or maybe it is a signal to purchase.

Unfortunately, I have done enough work on the matter that I won’t be giving too much away (i.e. what my “price range” would be for the equity), but I would suggest to people that get into a similar endeavor to realize that Manulife is not solely in the insurance business.

The other point that people should be aware of is that accounting treatment is crucial in properly understanding the line items listed on the consolidated and segment data. This may make comparisons to US-based businesses not an apples-to-apples procedure.

Finally, investors should realize what implicit “macroeconomic” assumptions they are making before investing in the equity. It is similar to making an implicit bet on the price of oil when you purchase shares in Suncor – obviously you won’t be investing in oil companies if you believe the price of oil is going down.

Cinram International Valuation

I notice that Susan Brunner is doing a brief on Cinram (TSX: CRW.UN). It is in the very boring and low-margin business of printing and distributing physical media such as CDs and DVDs.

I did some fairly serious research on this company earlier this year, and came to the conclusion that while they were likely to continue to be cash flow positive, there was no way that they would overcome their debt situation without a significant recapitalization.

The primary hit in the past year was on February 1, 2010 when 28% of their revenue stream announced they were terminating a contract. The units dove about 2/3rds and got my attention when I did research.

Their big problem is that the company, as of June 30, 2010 has a $379 million bank loan (secured) and only $125 million in cash, with a business that is not generating a whole lot of cash. The bank credit facility expires on May 5, 2011. It is more than likely that the secured creditors will take over the equity, which implies that the current value of $1.00 per unit (total market capitalization about $54 million) is vastly overpriced.

I would only start looking at the company more seriously if they traded below 20 cents, and with the recognition that the catalyst for an equity purchase would be a bank giving them a sweetheart extension deal that wasn’t too punitive to unitholders. At this point you are really gambling as opposed to investing, which is why I am not really going to look at Cinram in the future other than as a curiousity to see how their story resolves.

Why I will never invest in China

John Hempton has a classic story of his research on an “online” travel agency.

My rule of “Never invest in a jurisdiction that does not have English as its primary language” holds very, very true. I am sure there are a lot of wildly profitable companies in China, just that you can be absolutely sure that minority shareholders’ interests (i.e. the suckers that buy a few hundred shares to have a “China play”) will never be in alignment with the board of directors or management. In this particular case, UTA looks great on paper, but is likely their accounting and reporting is completely crooked.

In their last 10-K filing, you even had the auditors (a firm I’ve never heard of in New Jersey) saying in their audit letter the following:

A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the company’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. The following material weaknesses were identified:

The Company’s policy documentation of all controls identified during their assessment and remediation process was incomplete.

Lack of technical accounting expertise among financial staff regarding US GAAP and the requirements of the PCAOB, and regarding preparation of financial statements.

These material weaknesses were considered in determining the nature, timing, and extent of audit tests applied in our audit of the 2009 consolidated financial statements of the Company as of and for the year ended December 31, 2009.

Translation: “We have no idea whether these guys were lying to us when they provided us with alledged ‘proof’ of the revenues, expenses and balance sheet items you see here. Good luck!”

Suffice to say, I wonder if Hempton (who has probably made a small fortune shorting this thing earlier when the stock was trading higher before writing this huge article on the company) will be able to single-handedly get the stock delisted when his 2,200 readers (at least according to Google Reader) eventually hammer the stock down to the zero it probably deserves.

Just for full disclosure, I am not long or short the stock, nor do I plan on trading the stock. Trading from other people’s research is a great way to lose money – capturing real value in the market is done by performing independent research when nobody else is watching.

LuluLemon’s second quarter

Headlines are being made that Lululemon (Nasdaq: LULU) beat earnings expectations and raised income estimates for the year. Their common shares were up about 13% today after their second quarter report.

Most of what I wrote about Lululemon, in terms of share valuation back in June 10, 2010 (when they announced their first quarter results) applies today – the company will have to execute high growth perfectly in order to justify their existing valuation.

It should be pointed out that despite their second quarter surprise, their valuation around the same ($2.8-$2.9 billion) as it was when I wrote my June 10 article, or about USD$40/share. They will need to continue achieving rapid growth in order to grow into the existing valuation. If not, you will see a significant haircut in the stock price.

Lululemon is a classic case of a well-run company that you do not want to own stock in.