China Paper

by April 26, 2009
The next candidate for my cash rich portfolio and testing of Graham's Cash rich firm theory, China Paper comes to met these requirements.
Company :China Paper

General information:

The Group currently produces two main categories of products, namely paper products and paper chemical products. Paper products are its core business and this category is split into four types:
I) Printing paper – Used for general printing of books and reading materials.
II) Lightweight packing paper – For wrapping and packaging of clothes, clothing accessories, shoes etc.
III) Newsprint paper – Used in printing newspapers, flyers or brochures. Iv) Semi-finished toilet paper – Sold to customers requiring further treatment to produce finished toilet paper

Reward
  • Price Advantage-Current market share price ranges within 0.12-14 as @ 26April 2008 give significant margins to...

  • Net cash value is 17cents which gives me a 28% pure discount margin of safety.
    Intrinsic value is 30cents which gives me a 58% discount to intrinsic value (average)

  • EPS of 7 SG cents for FY 2008 /ROE of 0.15%-0.13% on average

  • Strong cash flows/Strong balance sheet

  • Industry looks resilient and business model resembles more of a need then that of a want

  • Cash rich company which is expanding, in times such as these. Indication of good management decisions

  • Deal with recent problems such as environment water treatment plants, swiftly and efficiently.

  • Possible to receive high dividends this year.

  • Growth:

Development of new products:
The construction of the production facilities for coated paper by subsidiary Linyi Zhenyuan Paper Co. Ltd. Using $210million RMB which is funded by internal funding coated paper is generally used for printing a broad range of materials, including high quality magazines, leaflets, advertisements, brochures and educational materials.

Expansion in capacity:
Expand the production capacity of its existing paper chemical products facility using $80million RMB funded by internal funding

Huge untapped market potential: In the Shandong Province alone, there are just 22 players left from the previous 320 due to such regulations. Hence the industry trend can play nicely into China Paper’s hands.

Risks
Biggest risks involving S-shares are governance, as such the following have to be take noticed of:

  • Should not be taking extra loans due to high amounts of cash in it’s cash balances as of FY 2009

  • Take note of the usage of the cash reserves, they either have to declare dividends or expand.

  • Take note of more fund raising (done it twice so far), twice once in IPO the other in addition of 42million as at Aug 22nd 2008, possible red flag here.

  • Take note of sudden changes to independent directors

  • Ensure that receivable do not spike without a proper reason. Current total receivables are 108m RMB relative low when compared to 300m+ RMB in cash.

  • Low liquidity, share price might stay stagnant for quite some time.

  • Competitors are unknown. Future IV will depend on how they expand and how prudent the management is.

  • Company might lack economic moat, despite resilience of industry, not much is known about its competitors. Or how easy it is for others to compete its profits away

What others say:
In light of the economic crisis in China, sectors that have been flagged out to be
relatively resilient are paper production, printing, tobacco and health care, just to name a few.
China Paper’s growth is also strongly supported by the rampant education sector in China,
which can be said to be recession-proof in some ways. Moreover, in China today, there is a
strong demand and a general under supply for printing paper. This was mainly due to
environmental regulations causing the shut down of smaller uncoated printing paper players
since mid-2007, leading to a drop in supply of 6.5m tonnes/annul. In the Shandong Province
alone, there are just 22 players left from the previous 320 due to such regulations. Hence the
industry trend can play nicely into China Paper’s hands.


China HongXin

by April 11, 2009
China HongXin Ltd is one of the many cash rich S-shares, which im very interested to look at and possiblily include in my portfolio...the share price as of this writing is $0.13. Their Net cash value per share (using only cash less off all liabilities then dividing the dearrived figure by the total amount of issued shares) is $0.10 and Net current asset per share is $0.23. What these data means is..if i buy into China Hx at a share price of $0.13, i should get back at least$0.10 in cash, another $0.06 in value and get their business for free! In addition (according to them) their business is doing well with strategic plans and contracts being established, opening 100 new sport stall, having a consistent history of earnings, strong cash flow (barring this FY 2008) expected to bring in higher profits and revenue. Wow, sounds very attaractive hor.. but whatever sounds too good, it usually is!


Soo i took the liberty to research on a few thing, with regards to the company.
I believe the following factors are the reasons why China Hx is trading at such an attractive or (disgusting) share price to some investors.

Reasons are as follows :
· Fear of fraud, inflated cash and accounts related beacuse we are dealing with an S-share!
· Fear of poor internal control and governace
· Is the cash really there?
· What have they been doing with the cash if its really there? Huge jump in recievables.
· Business of selling Sports apparels not that attractive or resilent in a sense, plus their industry is very competitive as well.


So to address the following concerns and risks, this is what i found out.

To answer the first question ->Does China HX have proper Governance in place?

I looked at their Cooperate Governance report which indicates
· No signs of directors or independent ones leaving the company soo far
· Board Composition and Balance.
The Board consists of five (5) directors of whom, three (3) are independent.

The list of directors are as follows:
Executive Directors Wu Rongguang (Appointed 28 April 2005/ Chairman of the Board)

Wu Rongzhao (Appointed 6 May 2005/ Chief Executive Officer)
Non-Executive DirectorsBernard Tay Ah Kong (appointed 20 September 2005/Independent)Chan Wai Meng (appointed 20 September 2005/Independent)

Alfred Cheong Keng Chuan (appointed 20 September 2005/Independent)

· A bit about the independent directors
-Mr Bernard Tay Ah Kong is currently the Non-Executive Chairman of Horwath First Trust, which is a Certified Public Accountants firm. Mr Tay is also an Independent Director of several public companies listed on the SGX Mainboard and Catalist. He is the Senior Advisor to the Government of Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province of the People’s Republic of China. The President of the Automobile Association of Singapore and Vice-President of the Singapore Productivity Association


Then i look at who chairs the committee's of the company.
· People in the Nomittee/Audit/Remuneration committee
Mr Chan Wai Meng (Nominating Committee Chairman)
Mr Alfred Cheong Keng Chuan
Mr Bernard Tay Ah Kong
All three committee’s are chaired by independent Directors

· Foo Kon Tan Grant Thornton have expressed their willingness to accept re-appointment.
· Update: RSM Nelson Wheeler and Tan Grant Thornton have expressed their willingness to accept reappointment their verdict for FY 2008 accounts "A true and fair view will established".
In addition China Hx was listed 166th position on the governance and transparency index (march 2009) which is quite high relative to 679 positions in the index.

Next question: Is cash really there? Did they inflate their cash holdings?

Research shows that in FY 2006 , their cash balances were 545,442k rmb

in 2007, this figure jumped to 2.6billion rmb, the reason...
There was an Issue of shares on placement 2,376,959 on FY 2007
Latest FY in 2008
Share premium: 2,645,397
Retained profits: 997,480 increase from FY 2007 of 598,192

· Basically the fear of created cash figures should have subsided due to the glaring fact that 2.3billion RMB were raised from SGX IPO listing on 2007.


However.. the worry that net profit for FY 2008 was inflated 448,515k increase 7.7% from FY 2007 or through out the years cannot be deal with , just by simply looking at their annual reports. The reason why i think China Hx Net profit of 2008 should be lower then in 2007 is due to terrible economic conditions and stiff competition in the industry, yet one can argue that it could be that the Olympics last year helped with it’s increased sales?

The next Question to ask is, having received 2.3billion, what exactly did the company do with it after 2 years?

Their accounts stated on their Balance Sheet's assets are as follows
-1.98billion in Cash
-1.159billion in Receivables
Equity
-Share premiums of 2.6billion
-Retained profits of 900million

As mentioned by some analysts, they were not comfortable with the high recieveables and they indicated that the risks here is that the amount stated in Cash is not actually there, but in other accounts like inventories or receivables (account manipulation) etc.

The cash amount is place in
China Construction Bank
Zhanlan Branch
1st floor, Mingfa Hotel
Nanhuan Road
My take is that, they indeed have cash , whether or not there was manipulation in the accounts i also cannot tell.. that's why the FY 2008 auditors opinions are vital in my deduction of whether China Hx is honest in their accounts. Having a "true and fair view" should more or less prove that China Hx is honest? Some more got two auditors appointed, should be enough.. i think..i don;t expect them to issue any more shares to gain capital or establish any more loans in the future though.

Proceeding to the next question:
Why a huge jump in prepayments/receivables?

------SGX questions to China Hx management--------

Prepayments, deposits and other receivables increased from RMB278.7 million as at 31 December 2007 to RMB1,159.2 million as at 31 December 2008. Approximately RMB1,155.5 million (2007: RMB277.5) was advanced to distributors to facilitate the setting up of approximately 358 (2007: 100) new stores in 21 (2007: 20) provinces/cities during the year ended 31 December 2008. The RMB277.5 million advanced to distributors in 2007 was fully collected in 2008.

Please disclose the terms of the advances to distributors (ie. repayment period, penalties).
The advances to distributors are unsecured, interest-free and repayable within one year. In the
event of a default in repayment by a distributor, the Group will take over the distributor’s operating rights to the store and its assets in accordance with the advance agreement made with the distributor.

Please provide an indication if there are any difficulties in recovering the advances
particularly given the current market conditions.

As at to date, the Group has recovered up to an aggregate amount of RMB50.3 million from the distributors. The distributors have kept up with the repayment schedule and we have not encountered any collection problems from the distributors.
As at 1 January 2009, the Company has ceased to provide such advances to the distributors. The Company will continue to pursue collection of the outstanding advances from distributors and will provide updates of the repayment of advances from distributors in its quarterly results.

Why keep soo much cash?
The cash will be used to support the Group’s operations in the current financial year.

Why don’t declare dividends for final part of the year?
In addition, the Board would like to clarify that in view of the uncertain economic environment, it
was deemed prudent to maintain its cash position and not declare a final dividend for the year.

Quickly, i ran thru my "spotting the red flags" screening test for China Hx
Checking Red Flags in balance sheet of China HX.

1) Is there a growing gap between cash flow from operation activities* and earnings (total cash flow has to be higher then net earnings for refinancing purposes ), the important thing is cash flow from operation have to increase as much as NPAT
2008 (‘000) and 2007 (‘000)
Operational Cash flow: (357,503) and 79,991
Net income: 448,515 and 416,453
Problem here, failed test.

2) Net Earnings grown faster then sales? No

3) Disproportionate increase in account receivable vs Sales increase
Sales: 2,889,000 and 2,046,000
Accounts receivable: 1,159,152 and 278,665
Problem here as well.

4) Unusual increase in inventories vs. sales increase
Not a problem here

5) Any Large assets write off? (No)

6) Quality of the earnings
-Did they include profits from the past periods? (No)
-Under provide for future expenses with current sales, bad debts? (Possible)
-Increase in reliance of earnings sources apart from main business? (No)
-Cutting pay in workers, employees, R&D etc? (No)
Important point to take note, because company has already bleached two of my screens, I must take note that every quarter I must see that receivables top drop and operational cash flow to increase.

Insider data reviews that
Overlook Partners fund bought 25million shares on March 4th @9.5cents
Chairman bought 1million at 19cents in November 2008
Wasatch fund sold at 6cents @ 28.9million 12th March 2009

Summary of good and bad points
+ Governance is alright, no directors have quit
+ Nomittee/Audit/Remuneration committee all chaired by independent director
+ Cash is there, in FY 2007 IPO was established, 2.3billion RMB was collected
+ Net Cash is 0.17cents, still give a decent margin when comparing to a share price 0.10-12
+Don’t foresee any borrowing, as the IPO issues are more then enough, high liabilities incurred by the company is not visible as of now.
+With respects to the questions asked by SGX, I don’t see how the Chairman could have answered any of them better, the company just IPO in 2007,of course Capital cash is need to kept with them, to expand and to support operations!
+ Share price advantage at 0.09-0.11 give significant margin to target price of 0.25cents NCAV. 66%!
+Positive new and forecast by the company

The bad
-Question about it’s net profit sustainability, fact or inflated?
- Question as to whether what exactly they did with the cash, are the components reflected correctly in the accounts?
-Their receivables are super high which gives raise to bad debts, but $0.17 is the Net cash per share so it still worth it to invest at $0.13 do take note.
- Questions asked by SGX and replies from Chairman not those satisfactory, sounds fishy especially the part about not declaring dividends.
-Business model might not be resilient in this crisis, despite optimistic forecast for the company, possibility is high for the company to bleed cash this year and the next.

Scenarios
Scenario 1: Pure and out alright fraud
China HX Management really did inflate accounts, possible higher amounts in receivables and lesser of cash. Share price cannot sustain 0.13cents (buying level), however if liquidation of company is activated, confident to get back more then 0.17cents per share.

Scenario 2: Running away
This is the worse possible outcome. CEO runs away with cash, lawsuits plus investigation, might result in the loss all invested capital.

Scenario 3: Deterioration of share price
As time goes by, receivables are denied or written off as bad debts, company yield in huge net loss because of huge expanding. But confident that share price would’t vary much at 0.09 cents.

Scenario 4: Honest accounting
Share price will raise drastically, back to 0.23 or more, yielding a 200-300% return.

Comments:
"Well, you are a vested shareholder in this company thus you will know more about the workings of this company.I am referring to the loans given to distributors from a standalone point of view. What you said is true since such a good loan given to distributors can indeed build goodwill between the company and them. From the standalone point of view, I find it to be strange that the company lends money to distributors and the guarantors are the significant shareholders and the executives of the company. The guarantor of any loan is not supposed to be the lender itself. Now let us think of the risk. In the event that the company is unable to recover the loan from the distributors, it will recover the loan from the guarantors of the loan instead. However, the guarantors of the loan are the significant shareholders of the company. So what can they do to prevent themselves from paying this loan ? Since they are the significant shareholders and the executives of the company, can they write off this loan ? In short, there is a potential for the abuse of power for this scenario.The scenario that I am suggesting may seems to be far-fetched and I'm trying to evaluate the risk of this arrangement of loan with the distributors. There is no right or wrong actually as I'm trying to raise this point up for discussion. I hope this helps". -Moneytalk.sg

Questions with (Answers) to value investors updated*

by April 07, 2009


Notion 1 (Fundamental pain of holding)
Lets say you've studied and researched and analysed as much as you can about a particular company in doing so believing that the company currently in your watch list is worth at least 0.70cents per share, based on current and past data you used for your analysis, you determine the strength company's economic moat, strength of balance sheet and future growth. The share price now is 0.40 which give you a perceived discount of 40%. You buy into the stock , setting cut loss at 0.20.

After a few monthers, the company posted good quarterly results , yet despite these achievements the share price continues to drop, you constantly tell yourself , i will hold the stock because the fundamentals haven't change?
Q:Now after more few months, you realised that the share price have already fallen to 19cents, what will you do?
Q:Do you cut loss because you already set a stop loss limit?
Q:Or do you hold on or buy more, because the fundamentals are still there?

Q: How does one set a stop loss in the first place? Based on dropping fundamentals then sell? Wouldn't that be too late already? or set an absolute amount?
Notion 2 (Technical advantage over you)

You have many friends, whose does investments as well. They however are not rooted in value investing and thus are traders affected by short daily movements of the market. One afternoon on msn, there was a commotion among your investment friends. The commotion was about a rumor/ or technical revelation that strongly suggest this particular stock will raise drastically due to this and that. Your friends insist you buy NOW, before you miss the chance to make a profit. You took a quick look at the stock, a quick glance of the company's balance sheet, profit and loss account and cash flow statements, you realise that its a blue chip with an alright earnings history, decent balance sheet and strong cash flow.

Q: Do you straight away jump in and buy, just only having a quick glance?

Q: Will you feel bad and envious , should the share price rise but you didn't buy because you did;t have enough time to study proper the fundamental?

Notion 3 (Keep a constant look out?)

The balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statements are important data capsules for investors to base their determine value on a particular company. But because these capsules of information are only capture at that point in time, anything from management's decisions to economic/industry happenings, will change these accounts and the deemed value will likewise change.

Q: So a true value investor is one that constantly is on a constant look out for any development with regards to the companies that he/she holds?
Q:So what if the company you re holding loses it's fundamentals? Will this fact force you to sell? What happen if next year the fundamentals improve or become even better? This will result in a buy action ? If so, isn't this a result of trading and not value investing?


Notion 4 (The problem with valuation)

Discount cash flow model, the favourite technique used by Buffet and many value investors out there to derive a value of a company. But upon closer look, the discount cash flow requires a lot of guess work, from guessing the company's operation this year to the next, estimating discount rates to forecasting weighted average cost of capital. Other valuation techniques like Dividend discount model to relative ratio comparison, likewise requires one to guess guess and guess.
Q: Since valuation is a big part of value investing, isn't it somewhat similar to Technical analysis? Both school of thought revolves around guessing. Some will argue that one school of thought requires more effort and thinking then the other, then the next question is , who are you to judge which school of thought is better then the other? Based on your perceptive thoughts?

Q: Some investors feel that valuation is pointless and problematic as well..which leaves me even more bewildered and confused, if valuation is pointless, then what for invest on a company in the first place? Since there is no determined value, wouldn't every stock in the exchange seem extremely overvalued too you?

Q: What other valuation techniques is used besides the ones already mentioned?
Notion 5 (How big is BIG?)
Gross and net profit margins, return of equity (ROE), operational cash flow margins discount to intrinsic value, discount to price to book value and even discount to net cash value are some of the ratios used to determine whether the stock price gives the investor this so called margin of safety.
Many analysts will report statements like, company A has a healthily profit margin of 15%, a ROE of 12% which indicates this and that..

Q: What determines a healthy margin? 15%? What if its 14% then its consider not healthy? Who or what factors were used to determine that this number "15%" is deemed as a healthy implication for the company?

THE ANSWERS

Some possible answers are (subjective to ones opinons and own thinking if it's ture of false)

My answer to all the questions would be :-

1) to select fundamentally sound companies and use trend lines to determine when to get in and when to get out.

2) you will miss a lot of high flyers but you will also avoid permanent capital impairment due to financially unsound companies being suspended or forever becoming penny stocks.

-by focus1974

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1) I will sell if the fundamentals of the company has changed or the stock is overvalued. If the stock price has fallen though the fundamentals are still sound, I will buy more. Patience is the key here.

2) I will not jump in and buy straightaway. You have to decide which plan are you going to follow i.e. investing or trading or a combination of both or buy on news ?How about I rephrase your question in another way. Will you feel lucky and good, should the share price drop but you didn't buy because you didn't study proper the fundamental ?

3) Fundamentals don't change overnight. It is better to sell if the fundamentals have changed. You can't predict what will happen in the future but you can control what you wish to do presently.

4) I don't exactly use a discount rate. I define it as my required rate of return. If I want my counter to return 20% annually, I will use this number as my discount rate and put into the model to see what price should I buy. I would prefer to use P/E personally.

5) You can compare it with the leading companies regarding these financial ratios and numbers.

-by moneytalk.sg his blog is at http://www.moneytalk.sg/

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Relating to 1, 4 amd 5

I guess:"But having a margin of safety will make very sure that you will not lose your shirt. Even if you are damn wrong on your intrinsic value, you may lose a bit of money, the stock may tank 20%, below your buying price but quite unlikely to tank 80% below your buying price. And chances are after it tanked it will creep back up again, it will not bankrupt you. That's the strength if you have a huge margin of safety."

-by whatdoing367, his blog http://8percentpa.blogspot.com/2009/

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Just trying to answer some of the questions

1) on fundamental grounds, you dont sell because of some stop loss price you set. you sell, if the outlook changes. in fact, you should be buying more because it is cheaper now. or stop buying more if you already have a substantial holding in the same stock. diversification still plays an important part

5) the absolute number in % does not mean anything. you need to compare among companies in the same industry

-by MikeDirnt78 his blog http://sti-stocksinfo.blogspot.com

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1)I do not practise the cut loss strategy. however, i will sell if the fundamental that i buy into is beginning to fade. fundamental can mean different things to different ppl. for me, the business landscape of the sector that the company is in must have existing potential (theres alot to be elaborated on this but juz imagine selling steam locomotive today in singapore).the board should be reliable in making their statements. you can check this by referring to previous annual reports and see if they meet the KPI they set. i think it is quite fool proof that if insiders are buying or theres a buyback by the company, its a strong buy signal to average down ur existing holdingsometimes, id just leave a small holding to remind myself of my folly

2)I will not jump in. i do not have sufficient confidence and knowledge to handle speculation. lol without enough knowledge, i am only increasing my risk for speculating the same stock with someone who knows what he is doing. anyway, if someone is very good in trading, i think hes probably earning more trading derivatives with all the leverage

3)Yeah, like what the other poster has said. fundamentals do not change that quickly unless you can somehow change the board of directors and kicks the founder or ceo out overnitebut yeah, if wat u believe in no longer exists... sell

4)I do not think warren buffett's method is very applicable to me. so gotta be selective to pick from this techniquelike u said, sometimes it can get very operational and he absolutely has no prob knowing those infohe buys companies in double digit % holding and able to get 10% P.shares from GM i think!theres no way retail investor like me can do thati prefer phillips fisher style of valuation.

5)Yeah, financial ratios are sector specific, you can use industry avg or leading firms' ratiobut nowadays... its harder to determine nowtoo many companies are in many different sectors, its almost impossible to have a good gauge.unless u really dig for info and find out the revenue/cost distribution and break down into ratios againfor example, msft.... how much of their revenue are in serverware, services, entertainment, database software, desktop software, etc ??if u want to compare it with oracle or EA or ibm.... how can it be accurate when the revenue composition in all these companies are different ?if revenue composition cannot be determined, how is it possible to determine a fair profit margin at corporate level ? lol maybe product level margin is easier.as long as we are comparing orange to durian, we are nt goin to get accurate ratios or numbers imopaisae for the unstructural answers lol but i tink the qns are worth answering

-By Jarlaxle

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