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债务上： 巨额债务的公司在2008次贷危机中的教训绝不可小视。这个是关键。
回报上： 太低已是事实
管理上： 骨子里的国营企业管理
风险上： 煤炭，相对有点点不可预测性
市场可比性股票，比如 AIO， 以前的Patrick， TOLL中的Pacific National。
。。。。当然，目前大盘环境上市，短期内很很难见其风险。三思，只是希望它不是第二个Telstra
随便找个评论，供参考：
QR National off the rails
By James Greenhalgh
James Greenhalgh really wanted to like the QR National float. But financial engineering, soon-to-balloon debt levels and feeble cash flow derailed his enthusiasm. This is a poor quality, over-priced offer.
Reading time: 6 minutes
The front cover of QR National’s prospectus shouts ‘BE PART OF SOMETHING BIG’. Size, the promoters should be informed, is not a sensible investment criterion. If it were, we’d have recommended Babcock and Brown and ABC Learning Centres in 2007 when they boasted market capitalisations greater than QR National (for the record, we didn’t).
Key points
QR National’s hunger for cash means returns to shareholders are likely to be low
Without a government subsidy and dubious accounting policies, the forecasts would look much worse
Despite the hype, this float is poor quality and overpriced to boot
But when you’re selling something as fundamentally unattractive as QR National you need a pitch, a narrative around which the parties selling out can talk a few people into buying in. For this float, size happens to be it.
Why? Simple. There’s not much else on which to make a case.
Let’s start with QR National’s astonishing hunger for capital. Top quality businesses produce prodigious cash flow. QR National consumes it in a way only bad businesses can manage. There will be $7.2bn in capital expenditure between 2008 and 2012, a figure dwarfing the $3.4bn in operating cash flow the company expects to produce over the same period (see Chart 1). Remember that’s before deducting interest and tax.
Yes, building tracks and acquiring locomotives and wagons to haul coal is an expensive business. But when said business consumes a lot more cash than it produces, that’s a big red flag.
Management, naturally, will argue that the capital expenditure will deliver profit growth and there’s some substance to that claim. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) are forecast to rise from $417m in 2008 to $1,101m in 2012. But focusing on EBITDA is a bit like saying ‘earnings before costs’; all that capital spending means depreciation and amortisation—vital costs to consider—will also rise from $318m to $523m over the same period.
Then there’s the financial engineering, something the Queensland government was keen to avoid after float shockers like RiverCity Motorway. But the tricks are there nonetheless, chief among them the capitalisation of interest on assets under construction.
Dubious accounting
Here’s how it works. Based on an assumed interest rate of 7% (and it could well be higher), QR National will be paying out an annualised $203m of cash interest from 2012. And yet, page 107 of the prospectus indicates that only $53m of interest expense will be recognised in that year. Some of the difference relates to timing, but a significant part of it relates to interest capitalisation. It’s legal but far from conservative. The effect is to make the profit look better, at least in the short term. It’s all part of the narrative.
QR National looks conservatively financed. The current debt of $500m compares favourably to the market capitalisation of $6.8bn (at the maximum retail price of $2.80 a share). The trouble is it won’t stay that way. By the end of 2012, QR National’s capital expenditure program means it will have drawn down additional debt of $2.4bn, giving it about $2.9bn of debt by the end of 2012. That’s a huge increase that puts the company on a fundamentally different footing, especially if business conditions deteriorate.
Finally, there’s the ‘will they, won’t they?’ government subsidy. QR National has three divisions, only two of which are profitable. The third, QRN Freight, lost $96m in 2010. Quite by magic, the freight division will become profitable in 2011 and 2012. The government will wave its subsidy wand to the tune of $150m in 2011 and $148m in 2012. There’s no guarantee the subsidy will persist after 2015 when QR National’s contract with the Queensland government ends.
The debt levels, heavy capital expenditure program, government subsidy, and aggressive accounting treatments demand a circumspect eye. We’d look past these shortcomings—or at least try—if we could purchase at the right price a monopoly business like this one.
Not worth book value
At $2.80, you’re acquiring QR National at book value. But sometimes capital-intensive businesses, as this one surely is, aren’t worth even that.
Certainly, the forecast return on equity is well below par at 5.4%. Neither do we have much confidence in management’s capital allocation skills. QR’s managing director Lance Hockridge is a former executive of the equally capital intensive BlueScope Steel, a company we’ve long disliked, while its chairman John Prescott was responsible for BHP’s Magma Copper fiasco in the 1990s.
Key information
Retail offer closes
12 Nov.
Institutional bookbuild
18-19 Nov.
Listing date
22 Nov.
No. of shares (m)
2,440
Indicative price range ($)
2.50-3.00
Maximum retail price ($)
2.80
Market capitalisation* ($m)
6,832
2012 PER* (x)
18.5
2012 Div. yield* (%)
3.0
Franking (%)
0
* Based on $2.80
Other metrics fail to excite. At $2.80, QR National will be trading on a 2012 forecast PER of 19—very high for a capital-intensive business. Its 2012 forecast unfranked dividend of 8.3 cents implies a paltry yield of 3.0%, which is why the float is pitched as a growth story; a story, in effect, that’s a play on coal volumes going up.
The Queensland government is fortunate that the market is willing to price QR National on similar multiples to Asciano, another capital intensive company we’ve also had cause to avoid (see Asciano deserves a wide berth). Of course, it’s in the Queensland government’s interest to price this float keenly. A ‘stag profit’ on listing may help to pacify unhappy voters, and the government fully intends to sell its remaining stake (somewhere between 25% and 40%) after 2012. The fact that QR National’s coal company customers were prepared to pay more than $5bn for its best bits before the float may also put a floor under the stock.
But it’s a dangerous game to look for short-term profits in difficult or overpriced businesses. In this case, QR National is both. After the disappointment that was the Myer float, we were hoping QR National might be a more interesting proposition. If anything, it’s worse. AVOID.
[ 本帖最后由 woody 于 2010-10-17 08:44 编辑 ] |
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发表于 2010-10-12 19:43
