Tag: small caps

Why is Santova so cheap?

(Disclaimer – as at the time of posting this article, I own shares in Santova)

When determining a growth rate in your valuation of a stock, there are essentially two ways in which a company can grow. Through investing into new assets (e.g.: acquisitions) or through improving efficiencies on existing operations. In times of economic slow-down (such as that being experienced globally), cost cutting and improving efficiencies is your go-to option. One such way of doing this is looking at your company’s supply chain. And who can help you do this? Santova.

What is it that Santova does? Amongst other services, they primarily co-ordinate the movement of goods across the entire supply chain for clients from transportation to storage by making use of third-party providers. For example, they will get DHL to move your products from Johannesburg to Durban via truck, put them on a DSV ship to go to Australia and then employ the likes of Aramex to take it from the harbour to your warehouse in Perth. But why use Santova instead of doing this yourself? Santova can achieve economies of scale which individual companies cannot. The process of moving goods across the supply chain is also considerably time consuming which detracts from you being able to focus on your core business.

Santova is also non-asset based. They don’t physically own any trucks/warehouses/ships etc that are used in transporting goods. They make use of third-party providers. This means that their cost structure is almost entirely variable. So, in tough times, there’s very little fixed costs which they have to cover. This allows them to run a lean business, better enabling them to weather most storms.

I also like entities where management have a large stake in the equity. Management hold 19% of Santova’s shares. This means that the decisions they make are probably aligned with those of the shareholders and long-term value creation is at the top of their priorities instead of cutting corners to inflate short term results to meet profit/bonus targets.  

With all the shenanigans going on in South Africa from corrupt politicians to load shedding, many investors are looking to buy into shares which act as a hedge against Rand volatility. You could invest in an offshore ETF, or you could buy shares in Santova. Over 50% of Santova’s revenue is earned in foreign currencies from their operations in the UK, Australia, Europe and Hong Kong.

With a very low debt to equity ratio, being significantly geographically diversified, showing consistent growth and providing a niche service, it’s difficult to see why they’re trading at a PE of 5.21.

So, what is it worth? When doing a valuation, it’s difficult to remain objective and keep your emotions out of it when you go into a valuation with a pre-conceived notion about the company being good or bad. To avoid this, I like to do a bit of a sensitivity analysis/sense check by calculating a ‘worst case scenario’ value to make sure that I’m not getting too carried away. I try being as prudent as I can be and assume the worst. My worst-case scenario value for Santova is R5.28. It’s currently trading at R2.45. This would suggest that it should be at a PE of 11.7, which to me doesn’t seem unreasonable at all, or perhaps I’ve completely lost the plot.

Why is it so cheap? As I mentioned with AdaptIT (see here: https://what-the-finance.com/2019/02/21/why-is-adapt-it-so-cheap/) I believe it boils down to small cap stocks being ‘too risky’ for investors’ appetite in the current market conditions.

With that said, Santova is one of my favourite stocks and I’m trying to pick up as many shares as I can at this price. If you think otherwise, drop me a comment or if you want to see how I got to this value, let me know!

(And a thank you to Michael Casey for the input)

Maybe Motus…?

Motus is a company that was unbundled from Imperial Holdings and operates in the automotive industry. To give my valuation a bit of context, here some background on them:

They have four main business segments, namely:

  • Import and distribution –

They’re an exclusive importer/distributor of Hyundai, Kia, Renault and Mitsubishi. This also means that you’re at the whim of the car manufacturers. You have zero control if they make a car that customers like or not. In addition to that, despite having long standing agreements with these manufacturers, the potential of losing the right to import/distribute their cars could have a huge impact. As an example, Honda just closed their facility in Swindon which has been operation since 1989. Regardless of whether it was due to Brexit or a struggling car industry, these things do happen.

  • Retail and rental –

This segment is the largest contributor to revenue. Motus has 356 dealerships in SA, 112 dealerships in the UK and 30 dealerships in Australia. This all sounds very grand, but also means high fixed costs. One also doesn’t even have to even mention the threat to the retail and rental industry from the likes of Uber, We Buy Cars and Mobility as a Service.

  • Financial services –

Motus is manager and administrator of service, maintenance and warranty plans to 730 000 clients. Whilst this is fantastic annuity income, the entire division makes up less than 5% of total revenue. It is also highly dependent on the performance of the retail and rental division.

  • Aftermarket parts –

Motus is the distributor, wholesaler and retailer for parts for out of warranty vehicles. Whilst I do like this business (especially for parts for Renault), it also makes up a significantly small portion of total revenue.

From the above, you can start to see that Motus basically operates the full value chain. However, I still have some qualms about the entity.

South Africa has a considerably immature parc. But with recent economic conditions and unemployment rates in South Africa, I don’t see the motorisation rate changing any time soon. South Africa’s average car parc for passenger and commercial vehicles is roughly 9.5 years, which is fairly old for any vehicle. This is great for short term results, but in the long term waiting on each replacement cycle to put out decent results is hardly a growth strategy.

Motus faces a significant forex risk associated with importing vehicles and parts. Hedging forex risk is complex and expensive, especially when your reporting currency is as volatile as the rand.

I’m rather adverse to entities that take on large amounts of debt. Yes, debt is cheap financing and arguably necessary to achieve decent growth but taking on too much poses massive financial risk. The pre-listing statement mentions a targeted net debt to equity ratio of 55% to 75%. This is quite a vast range and, in my mind, a net debt to equity ratio of 75% is high for any company.

I could go on about the multitude of risks they’re exposed to. Highly competitive market, rental market is heavily dependent on tourism, disruption risk of alternate business models (like we buy cars, Uber, Mobility as a Service as mentioned previously), development of public transport infrastructure (perhaps a bit farfetched in South Africa) a global movement to more eco-friendly transport (perhaps more applicable to UK market), increase fuel costs make owning a car less affordable, etc, etc.

Based on the above, I’ve already got a negative feeling towards Motus and thus performed a bit of a napkin DCF just to get a feel of whether or not I think the share is over/under valued. Instead of valuing each segment separately, I’ve taken a simplistic approach and assumed that they’re all subject to similar risk (i.e.: if consumers don’t like the new Renault Sandero, Motus won’t sell as many, people won’t want to hire them, there will be less consumers to finance, and thus less aftermarket parts to provide as less cars will be around that need them). I ended up at a figure of R85 a share, which approximates the value of R80.5 it’s currently trading at.

I feel like I may have gone on a bit of tangent, but to conclude, would I buy it? No. This doesn’t mean that it’s not a good stock to invest in; it’s just not my cup of tea.

Let me know what you think!

Why is Adapt IT so cheap?

Disclaimer – As at the time of writing this article, I own shares in Adapt IT.

During times when we’re facing economic downturn, it’s not easy to stick to your investing strategy and one starts to doubt their valuations. With that said, I’m going to write down my thoughts and opinions on my valuation of Adapt IT and reflect back on this a couple of years down the line to (hopefully) prove that I haven’t gone insane and that investing in value rich companies is not a thing of the past.

In a nutshell, Adapt IT is a specialised software business, with a large chunk of that being in-house developed software. The biggest advantage of this? Scalability. Once the software is developed and ready for use, the costs to implement said software at a new customer would be relatively small. This also largely mitigates the reliance risk placed on entities such as Microsoft cancelling their license agreement with you (think EOH).

How often do you hear about a company switching IT Systems? From IT to finance to operations, it’s an absolute nightmare. So how often would you expect existing customers to switch from using Adapt IT’s software? Once a contract is tied down, it’s almost guaranteed annuity revenue. Regardless of what economic conditions are, revenue should be fairly constant. Furthermore, their software is highly customisable and thus brings about a niche offering to their clients. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any other big ICT players in the market who are able to provide this offering.

After considering the above, I’ve started plugging in the figures into my DCF and got to a value R13.26 a share, which seems like a bit of a stretch seeing as the share is currently trading at R5.6….but hear me out. I’ve applied a very conservative growth rate of 6% (CAGR in revenue adjusted to account for the economic recession and the fact that it is a small cap which implies higher risk) and applied a cost of equity of 15%. With a gearing ratio of 29% and the entity being highly cash generative, one could perhaps even argue that my above assumptions are overly prudent? With a PE ratio of 7.45 and interim results showing 4% growth in revenue during a technical recession, I‘m struggling to see the downside here.

So why is the share trading at a 142% discount? Your guess is as good as mine, however, assuming my valuation is correct, my guess is that it boils down to negative market sentiment over small-caps in the current market conditions (and SA Inc. as a whole) and Adapt IT being constantly labelled as ‘another EOH’. Unless something fundamentally changes, I continue to hold shares in Adapt IT.