Tag: BBD

There was an article on the Globe and Mail regarding my declaration that I had invested in Bombardier preferred shares (TSX: BBD.PR.B / BBD.PR.C).

I’m going to look very smart or very stupid at the end of this ordeal.

I will emphasize this is a high risk, very high reward-type opportunity. With high risk goes the chance for permanent capital loss, so the position size is appropriately small.

At current market prices, BBD.PR.B trades at a 12.6% yield, while BBD.PR.C trades at a 16.5% yield.

Other than the obvious business execution risk entailed within their aircraft division (specifically the execution of the C-Series project), there is another huge risk for investors: they will suspend preferred share dividends.

If this happens, BBD.PR.C will trade significantly lower (percentage-wise) than BBD.PR.B. The conversion risk is another component of the yield differential.

The comment about bond yields was accurate as of the middle of November, where after the government equity injections the short-term maturity bonds traded at reasonable yields. Today, however, yields have significantly widened, which also accounts for why the preferred shares are trading at such blowout yields.

Below is a graph of various yield to maturity curves of Bombardier debt (note these are NOT “yield to maturity” curves, I use a current yield + capital gain calculation which is non-standard but a more intuitive measurement for high yield debt I prefer using):

The near-term maturities have risen to the 10% yield levels, which puts the corporate entity in the refinancing danger zone.

Considering how much equity was injected into the company (US$2.5 billion) over the past few months, this is not exactly an enthusiastic market for debt, especially their March 2018 issue which matures in just 2.25 short years from now (albeit this specific issue’s last trade was 98 cents on the dollar – but go back another 6 months and that one traded at 90 cents!).

Part of this is likely because of year-end dumping for tax reasons, and the embarrassment factor of any fund managers that are holding onto this – they don’t want those shares to appear on their year-end financial statements to clients!

However, there is also a very deeply political component to my investment thesis. The Quebec investments are part 1 of the story. I’m waiting for part 2 to resolve itself (and this does not involve a federal government investment – if it happens, it will be icing on the cake).

Based on the slides on their investor day, looking at their 2020 financial roadmap, if the corporation is seriously able to reach $25 billion in revenues and 7-8% in EBIT, the quick calculation is the following:

$25 billion revenues
* 0.075 EBIT margin
= $1.875 billion EBIT
Less: $750 million interest expense (Assume $10 billion debt at 7.5%);
= $1.125 billion EBT
Less: $298 million (15% Federal + 11.5% QC = 26.5% taxes)
= $827 million net income

At this point they would likely have around 2.3 billion shares outstanding, so this would equate to about 36 cents a share. Just picking a P/E out of the cloud (15) and multiplying gives a $5.40 share estimate, or about 4.2x above existing market value, or about 33% CAGR if we use the full five years starting today.

Of course, for this to happen, a lot of execution risk (technical, marketing) has to be resolved, but management did a fairly good job solving the immediate financing risk – investors and customers no longer have to care whether the company is going belly-up or not (they are not).

I stress this is a total paper napkin exercise. Actual valuations under a more rigorous process can vary by a factor of 10!

Today’s big news is that Bombardier is selling 30% of its transportation division to the Quebec Pension Plan (CDPQ) for $1.5 billion.

The quick analysis is the following:

1. BBD will have received a cash injection of US$2.5 billion as a result of selling 49% of its C-Series aircraft interest and 30% of its transportation division; this will alleviate any short-term solvency concerns (from the September 30, 2015 balance sheet, they will have over CAD$5 billion liquidity to deal with). This capital is obtained with zero interest cost and some potential dilution of shareholders if the common share price ever gets above the US$1.66 exercise point (which one would hope it does in the recovery scenario!). Near-term bond yields (2018 maturities) are trading at 6.8%, while mid-range debt (2022 maturity range) is between 10-11%. The market is still skeptical of the financial recovery of the corporation.
2. BBD issues another 106 million warrants at an exercise price of US$1.66 on their subordinate voting shares. This is in addition to the 200 million they issued with the previously announce US$1 billion investment from the Quebec government.
3. BBD is required to maintain a cash balance of US$1.25 billion otherwise control on the board will start to erode.
4. This will save BBD from the hassle of doing an IPO (i.e. going through a regulatory quiet period, doing an institutional investor road-show, etc.), but noting that the CDPQ will have rights to trigger an IPO after 5 years of investment. CDPQ will also have significant minority shareholder rights.
5. If the Government of Canada wishes to tag along with some sort of contingent financing offer or backstop, BBD is in a considerably better position to negotiate as they will have sufficient financial reserves to do so.

I view this generally as a positive for the corporation, although they will still need to execute on getting the C-Series jet out the door and be able to generate sales. However, they seemed to have tackled the immediate perception issue of financial trouble, and have shown the financial world that the Quebec government will do whatever it takes to ensure Bombardier’s survival. If the Government of Canada chips in some cash, it will be icing on the cake.

My assessment of the preferred shares is still the same – they will likely pay dividends for the foreseeable future. At CAD$6/share, BBD.PR.B gives off a 11.25% yield, while BBD.PR.C is sitting at around 16%, with the risk that they’ll be force-converted to 12.5 shares of BBD.B – something I doubt management will do, but financially speaking it would make sense to issue 118 million shares to save CAD$14.7 million/year cash flow – with the way they are treating their equity holders, they might as well eliminate this headache off the books. This is the most likely reason why there is such a yield spread between the preferred share series.

Bombardier reported their financial results on October 29, which were ugly as expected – they bled through about $315 million cash on the operating side and a gross $500 million on the investment side for the 3 month period.

This and the next quarter should be the the worst of it.

There are a few tail-winds now that will make an investment in their preferred shares likely to pay off beyond the receipt of dividend coupons.

I did not mention this in my July 29th post, a strong component of this investment is due to the political factor – the Government of Quebec, and now by extension by virtue of the Liberal Party’s recent victory nationally, the Government of Canada is not going to let Bombardier fail due to the political connections existing between the controlling shareholder and the government apparatus.

In other words, the company will not fail due to liquidity concerns alone – it may fail due to simply being unable to produce a jet, but it won’t be for financial reasons.

Bombardier took a billion dollars from the government of Quebec for a half equity interest in the liabilities of the new jet they are producing. They also issued 200 million warrants to purchase Class B shares at a strike price that is a premium of approximately 50% above the existing market rate – which would dilute shareholders in the event that things went well.

Examining the market reaction (which on net was rather mute), the BBD.PR.C issue, in particular, is trading at an increased yield, presumably due to conversion threat (they can be converted into BBD.B shares at the higher of 95% of market value or $2/share – and at current market prices, this means 12.5 Class B shares per preferred share).

The short end for Bombardier’s bond yield curve also came down – with their new term issue (March 2018) suddenly trading at par from about 94 cents a month earlier.

The new federal government is sworn in on November 4, 2015. It is virtually certain the new government will table an interim budget measure that will announce the easy to implement campaign platforms during the past election campaign – ratcheting down TFSA contribution limits, adjusting marginal tax rates for middle income earners, creating a new tax bracket for high income earners, etc. But one of the early decisions the new government will face is whether they wish to throw some money at Bombardier. I do not believe a federal investment is likely right now (just simply due to transition and the lack of immediate political necessity), but it remains a distinct possibility in the 2016 budget which will probably be tabled around February or March.

The Quebec investment is on the equity side – and preferred shareholders should benefit from this transaction.

I find it very difficult to believe at this juncture that Bombardier will suspend dividends on their preferred shares and they will muddle their way through what has been a financially disastrous investment in the C-Series jet.

The preferred shares continue to be a high risk, very high reward type investment if things proceed to fruition.

Back on July 29th, I posted I had purchased preferred shares in Bombardier. I wish I had started my averaging a couple weeks later (did pick up a few on the dip), but nonetheless what I expected to happen has happened over the past week, especially over the past couple days.

The catalyst (or rather the assumed story to cause all the excitement) was that a “crown corporation” in China was interested in purchasing lump-sum the rail division for a huge amount of money (enough to pay off nearly all the debt the company had).

While this may be the cited story, the reality is that sentiment was horribly depressed in the marketplace for a company, while clearly having operational issues, that was punched well below what should be a fair valuation range. It took a catalyst event for the mindsets of the traders, investors and institutions to re-value the company in-line to something that was more reasonable.

There will likely be a few slip-ups in the preferred share pricing between now and over the next year, but anybody picking up preferred equity is likely to receive their stated cash flows for quite some time to come.

While in general I think the market is still not showing many investment opportunities (at least from my eye), this was a rare opportunity in a very well-known Canadian TSX 60 issuer in the large-cap space (or at least they were large cap before this all began!). I very rarely dip my toes into the large cap sector.

The bond yield curve has also taken a similar descent.

If my nominal scenario comes through you’ll see the preferred shares at around a 7.5-8.0% yield range in a year. This will be about $20 for the BBD.PR.C and $9 for the BBD.PR.B series (interest rates are still projected to be very low going forward), which represents another 50% capital appreciation or so for much less risk (albeit slightly less reward) than the common shares.

I remain long Bombardier preferred shares.