The diamond dust story.
There was a story that happened back in the late 1990 s, depicts of a young man who got hired as a maintaince worker (cleaner in short) in a diamond refine factory in Japan. His daily job scoop was to make sure, the factory was clean and free of dust before and after the factory closes.
Diamond refinery operations back in those days were still somewhat medieval, there were no machines, no proper cutting tools, everything from the unloading of raw diamond rocks to the crafting of diamonds where done by hand.
Because the factory was huge, everyday the young man would sweep for hours upon hours and carry tons of plastic black bags, filled with dirt and dust to throw into the nearby dumping container. But there was one evening he noticed that one of the bags he was about to throw into the container, had a small cut underneath and shinning dust was flowing out, in small gentle amounts on the ground.
There was a story that happened back in the late 1990 s, depicts of a young man who got hired as a maintaince worker (cleaner in short) in a diamond refine factory in Japan. His daily job scoop was to make sure, the factory was clean and free of dust before and after the factory closes.
Diamond refinery operations back in those days were still somewhat medieval, there were no machines, no proper cutting tools, everything from the unloading of raw diamond rocks to the crafting of diamonds where done by hand.
Because the factory was huge, everyday the young man would sweep for hours upon hours and carry tons of plastic black bags, filled with dirt and dust to throw into the nearby dumping container. But there was one evening he noticed that one of the bags he was about to throw into the container, had a small cut underneath and shinning dust was flowing out, in small gentle amounts on the ground.
Sensing an opportunity, the young man took one of the bag of dirt, home and started sifting through the dirt , painstakingly separating dirt from diamond dust. Eventually after 68 days of doing so, he managed to come out with a bag of diamond dust, that was eventually sold to a underground dealer. This resulted in a huge inflow of cash for him that was enough to get him through his university education.
Came across a bag of diamond dust.
It was a Wednesday evening; the sky was heavily burdened by dark clouds, threatening to rain at any moment. I just came back from camp and was in dire need to do something fun on my lap top. As I was about to scroll my mouse towards the Warcraft Icon, my friend on msn nudged me. He asked me whether this company trading on SGX, whether is it a good buy? He quickly linked me to the website, which was http://www.sunshine-holdings.com/investor.html. I was initially surprise to hear him say he wanted to invest, because, just like many of my friends, they have no interest what so ever in investing, some even go as far as saying stocks are from the devil. Regardless, I took a quick look at the website and was pleasantly surprised that this company “Sunshine Holdings” was trading at a disgusting low of 3 cents (18th Nov 2008).
My mind quickly project these words in my mental frame, “Penny stocks-High risk....good buy?-Maybe-maybe not.....go study it-find what’s left over” . So I took the liberty of researching quickly through their company’s website to see first if I understand what they are doing , their business model and most importantly what’s left over in the company. What invoked my interest further is that the company has assets amounting to 2,188,968,000 RMB and Liabilities at 1,135,704,000RMB as of September 2008 in their annual report.
Simple Theory of NAV
So common sense depicts, in order to find what’s left over in the company one has to take total assets (what the company owns) subtract liabilities (what the company owes) and then you get the NAV as known as Net asset value. The NAV for sunshine which I calculated was $SG0.24, the company share price is trading at 3cents, so in theory , if I was as rich as Paris Hilton who can spend $26 million on shoes/clothes/bags , I would have used the money to buy up the entire share holdings at $0.03, delist the company, pay off their debts by selling away all their assets , the left over, which in theory is 0.24-0.03 = 0.21 multiply by the total no. of shares which is around 890 million, I would have pocketed $186million Sing dollars in cold hard cash. Sounds good? Of course, who doesn’t want to earn $186million just by doing simple primary school maths and applying simple financial theory? But like all things in this world (especially in Singapore), nothing is that simple and straight forward.
Questioning NAV
If one wants to profit from the above theory, one has to research even further and ask vital questions and make assumptions like
1) How can a company’s share price be trading at such a huge discount to their NAV? Is the stock market that stupid?
2) Does the company’s Net Asset value really worth $0.24?
3) Because majority of the stocks are held by their own people and private entities (CEOs,CFOs, Banks, Mutual Funds etc ), by buying all the shares traded on the market, would not mean you have the power to command the company to delist.
4) And if you cannot delist the company, means you also cannot sell away all the assets or pay of the liabilities and get the leftover amount.
Because of this lack of power, due to the inability to buy up all the shares and force a delist notion now, give raise to risks like what will happen in the future? If the management decides to use their cash holdings (one of the most important assets) and invest in stupid things/ machines/ventures that doesn’t bring much profit or even worse, negative returns to the company?
What if they borrow even more loans from the bank, enter new businesses that, if turn out to be disastrous, will definitely eat into the NAV of the company. Remember because loans have interest attached to them, any management decision regarding the company’s new ventures/acquiring new assets/expanding have to have at least a return that can cover the established loan cost or the raise of equity or both. This then is known as COC (Cost of capital) which I will not go further explaining.
Rolf Banz's view
What is important now is, can a normal retail investor buying into these super cheap stocks like Sunshine Holdings , hold it for long term able to profit once or should the market realise their real NAV and price it as such?
Rolf Bnaz 's research shows that in the in 1981, he formally introduced the concept of a small-cap risk premium into the academic literature. For the 43 years through 1974, the small cap performance left large cap stocks in the dust his studies found. Because Small cap stocks are mainly compromise stocks that are trading below their NAV.
Why is this so?
While the markets are pretty efficient in certain areas, such as large-cap stocks, they are far from perfectly efficient, he believe, in the micro cap space. While this may not provide much opportunity for institutional money, it may be beneficial for individual investors.if the assets have value, and the company is not insolvent--two big ifs in net/net land--the stock may be dirt cheap, says Rolf Banz.
A better and safer way of measuring NAV
* A market cap that's below net current asset value, defined as: current assets less current liabilities, and then subtracting all the other long-term liabilities, including preferred stock and minority interest where applicable.others will recover. In that case, either business conditions improve, the company's acquired, or the market wakes up to the overlooked value in the firm. What’s difficult to do in some cases, however, is tell the difference between who will survive, and who won’t.
According to Ms Tey H.ling CFA, BBA , NUS graduate.
Of course, if the company has no intention to return the cash to shareholders and its operations are bleeding cash, then the share price may well have reason to be trading below the cash net of liabilities per share, (this is the real danger i emphasised earlier).
Auric's cash net of its total liabilities worked out to 99.7 cents a share. Its share price at the time was 90 cents. General Magnetics' net cash per share was 13 cents versus its share price of 14 cents. And k1 Ventures' net cash was 18.4 cents per share, compared with a share price of 20.5 cents.
United Food. Take into consideration other assets like inventory, accounts receivable, properties and land use rights, and the net asset value per share for the stock came to 40.7 cents. But have poor management strategy.
considered whether the company is currently generating positive cash flow, and whether the management is positive about the immediate future. Presumably, if both are positive, and yet the stock is trading at a deep discount, then perhaps the stock deserves a closer look.
The other two stocks which are trading at a discount, and yet have a positive operating cash flow as well as a positive management outlook, are Plastoform and China Powerplus
Now as of Nov 19 2008
K1: 14 cents
General Magnetics: 8cents
Auric: 55 cents
United Food:5cents
Plastoform:3cents
China Powerplus:5 cents
China Flexi Pack:17 cents
So to summarise when buying companies trading below their NAV
-Adjust your NAV caculation, take note of asset accounts like receivables, inventories,deferred taxes and especially Intangibles. Ask yourself, if you were to liquidate the company, how much does these assets worth now? Usually for me i discount 10% for receivables/inventories to factor in bad debts and inventory decay , 50% for tax deferred and 100% for intangibles to be extra conservative.
-Even better still, use Net current asset value calculation as stated above, if the share price trades , even below that figure, it supposed to be very safe liao.
-Preferably look for cash rich companies
-Companies with good management and business model, this can be since through their historical good ROE figures, the increasing sales and Net profit after tax. This rule is applied to all value investing practices though.
Came across a bag of diamond dust.
It was a Wednesday evening; the sky was heavily burdened by dark clouds, threatening to rain at any moment. I just came back from camp and was in dire need to do something fun on my lap top. As I was about to scroll my mouse towards the Warcraft Icon, my friend on msn nudged me. He asked me whether this company trading on SGX, whether is it a good buy? He quickly linked me to the website, which was http://www.sunshine-holdings.com/investor.html. I was initially surprise to hear him say he wanted to invest, because, just like many of my friends, they have no interest what so ever in investing, some even go as far as saying stocks are from the devil. Regardless, I took a quick look at the website and was pleasantly surprised that this company “Sunshine Holdings” was trading at a disgusting low of 3 cents (18th Nov 2008).
My mind quickly project these words in my mental frame, “Penny stocks-High risk....good buy?-Maybe-maybe not.....go study it-find what’s left over” . So I took the liberty of researching quickly through their company’s website to see first if I understand what they are doing , their business model and most importantly what’s left over in the company. What invoked my interest further is that the company has assets amounting to 2,188,968,000 RMB and Liabilities at 1,135,704,000RMB as of September 2008 in their annual report.
Simple Theory of NAV
So common sense depicts, in order to find what’s left over in the company one has to take total assets (what the company owns) subtract liabilities (what the company owes) and then you get the NAV as known as Net asset value. The NAV for sunshine which I calculated was $SG0.24, the company share price is trading at 3cents, so in theory , if I was as rich as Paris Hilton who can spend $26 million on shoes/clothes/bags , I would have used the money to buy up the entire share holdings at $0.03, delist the company, pay off their debts by selling away all their assets , the left over, which in theory is 0.24-0.03 = 0.21 multiply by the total no. of shares which is around 890 million, I would have pocketed $186million Sing dollars in cold hard cash. Sounds good? Of course, who doesn’t want to earn $186million just by doing simple primary school maths and applying simple financial theory? But like all things in this world (especially in Singapore), nothing is that simple and straight forward.
Questioning NAV
If one wants to profit from the above theory, one has to research even further and ask vital questions and make assumptions like
1) How can a company’s share price be trading at such a huge discount to their NAV? Is the stock market that stupid?
2) Does the company’s Net Asset value really worth $0.24?
3) Because majority of the stocks are held by their own people and private entities (CEOs,CFOs, Banks, Mutual Funds etc ), by buying all the shares traded on the market, would not mean you have the power to command the company to delist.
4) And if you cannot delist the company, means you also cannot sell away all the assets or pay of the liabilities and get the leftover amount.
Because of this lack of power, due to the inability to buy up all the shares and force a delist notion now, give raise to risks like what will happen in the future? If the management decides to use their cash holdings (one of the most important assets) and invest in stupid things/ machines/ventures that doesn’t bring much profit or even worse, negative returns to the company?
What if they borrow even more loans from the bank, enter new businesses that, if turn out to be disastrous, will definitely eat into the NAV of the company. Remember because loans have interest attached to them, any management decision regarding the company’s new ventures/acquiring new assets/expanding have to have at least a return that can cover the established loan cost or the raise of equity or both. This then is known as COC (Cost of capital) which I will not go further explaining.
Rolf Banz's view
What is important now is, can a normal retail investor buying into these super cheap stocks like Sunshine Holdings , hold it for long term able to profit once or should the market realise their real NAV and price it as such?
Rolf Bnaz 's research shows that in the in 1981, he formally introduced the concept of a small-cap risk premium into the academic literature. For the 43 years through 1974, the small cap performance left large cap stocks in the dust his studies found. Because Small cap stocks are mainly compromise stocks that are trading below their NAV.
Why is this so?
While the markets are pretty efficient in certain areas, such as large-cap stocks, they are far from perfectly efficient, he believe, in the micro cap space. While this may not provide much opportunity for institutional money, it may be beneficial for individual investors.if the assets have value, and the company is not insolvent--two big ifs in net/net land--the stock may be dirt cheap, says Rolf Banz.
A better and safer way of measuring NAV
* A market cap that's below net current asset value, defined as: current assets less current liabilities, and then subtracting all the other long-term liabilities, including preferred stock and minority interest where applicable.others will recover. In that case, either business conditions improve, the company's acquired, or the market wakes up to the overlooked value in the firm. What’s difficult to do in some cases, however, is tell the difference between who will survive, and who won’t.
According to Ms Tey H.ling CFA, BBA , NUS graduate.
Of course, if the company has no intention to return the cash to shareholders and its operations are bleeding cash, then the share price may well have reason to be trading below the cash net of liabilities per share, (this is the real danger i emphasised earlier).
Auric's cash net of its total liabilities worked out to 99.7 cents a share. Its share price at the time was 90 cents. General Magnetics' net cash per share was 13 cents versus its share price of 14 cents. And k1 Ventures' net cash was 18.4 cents per share, compared with a share price of 20.5 cents.
United Food. Take into consideration other assets like inventory, accounts receivable, properties and land use rights, and the net asset value per share for the stock came to 40.7 cents. But have poor management strategy.
considered whether the company is currently generating positive cash flow, and whether the management is positive about the immediate future. Presumably, if both are positive, and yet the stock is trading at a deep discount, then perhaps the stock deserves a closer look.
The other two stocks which are trading at a discount, and yet have a positive operating cash flow as well as a positive management outlook, are Plastoform and China Powerplus
Now as of Nov 19 2008
K1: 14 cents
General Magnetics: 8cents
Auric: 55 cents
United Food:5cents
Plastoform:3cents
China Powerplus:5 cents
China Flexi Pack:17 cents
So to summarise when buying companies trading below their NAV
-Adjust your NAV caculation, take note of asset accounts like receivables, inventories,deferred taxes and especially Intangibles. Ask yourself, if you were to liquidate the company, how much does these assets worth now? Usually for me i discount 10% for receivables/inventories to factor in bad debts and inventory decay , 50% for tax deferred and 100% for intangibles to be extra conservative.
-Even better still, use Net current asset value calculation as stated above, if the share price trades , even below that figure, it supposed to be very safe liao.
-Preferably look for cash rich companies
-Companies with good management and business model, this can be since through their historical good ROE figures, the increasing sales and Net profit after tax. This rule is applied to all value investing practices though.
-Look at past NAV per share value, a good bargain is one with a stable increase in NAV through out the years of listing in the market.
-Consider also past and present positive operational cash flow.
- Because NAV figures keep changing , from one quarter to the next, it's best to take note of what the companies that you bought are spending on, whether is it in line with their company's main business, what reasons for spending soo much etc.
- Because NAV figures keep changing , from one quarter to the next, it's best to take note of what the companies that you bought are spending on, whether is it in line with their company's main business, what reasons for spending soo much etc.
.jpg)
