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Posts Tagged ‘Darwin’s darlings’

Which price ratio best identifies value stocks?

Posted in Enterprise Multiple, Enterprise Value, Stocks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2012| 26 Comments »

Which price ratio best identifies undervalued stocks? It’s a fraught question, dependent on various factors including the time period tested, and the market capitalization and industries under consideration, but I believe a consensus is emerging.

The academic favorite remains book value-to-market capitalization (the inverse of price-to-book value). Fama and French maintain that it makes no difference which “price-to-a-fundamental” is employed, but if forced to choose favor book-to-market. In the Fama/French Forum on Dimensional Fund Advisor’s website they give it a tepid thumbs up despite the evidence that it’s not so great:

Data from Ken French’s website shows that sorting stocks on E/P or CF/P data produces a bigger spread than BtM over the last 55 years. Wouldn’t it make sense to use these other factors in addition to BtM to distinguish value from growth stocks? EFF/KRF: A stock’s price is just the present value of its expected future dividends, with the expected dividends discounted with the expected stock return (roughly speaking). A higher expected return implies a lower price. We always emphasize that different price ratios are just different ways to scale a stock’s price with a fundamental, to extract the information in the cross-section of stock prices about expected returns. One fundamental (book value, earnings, or cashflow) is pretty much as good as another for this job, and the average return spreads produced by different ratios are similar to and, in statistical terms, indistinguishable from one another. We like BtM because the book value in the numerator is more stable over time than earnings or cashflow, which is important for keeping turnover down in a value portfolio. Nevertheless, there are problems in all accounting variables and book value is no exception, so supplementing BtM with other ratios can in principal improve the information about expected returns. We periodically test this proposition, so far without much success.

There are a variety of papers on the utility of book value that I’ve beaten to death on Greenbackd. I used to think it was the duck’s knees because that was what all the early research seemed to say (See, for example, Roger Ibbotson’s “Decile Portfolios of the New York Stock Exchange, 1967 – 1984,” Werner F.M. DeBondt and Richard H. Thaler’s “Further Evidence on Investor Overreaction and Stock Market Seasonality”). Josef Lakonishok, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny’s Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation and Risk, which was updated by The Brandes Institute as Value vs Glamour: A Global Phenomenon reopened the debate, suggesting that price-to-earnings and price-to-cash flow might add something to price-to-book.

A number of more recent papers have moved away from book-to-market, and towards the enterprise multiple ((equity value + debt + preferred stock – cash)/ (EBITDA)). As far as I am aware, Tim Loughran and Jay W. Wellman got in first with their 2009 paper “The Enterprise Multiple Factor and the Value Premium,” which was a great unpublished paper, but became in 2010 a slightly less great published paper, “New Evidence on the Relation Between the Enterprise Multiple and Average Stock Returns,” suitable only for academics and masochists (but I repeat myself). The abstract to the 2009 paper (missing from the 2010 paper) cuts right to the chase:

Following the work of Fama and French (1992, 1993), there has been wide-spread usage of book-to-market as a factor to explain stock return patterns. In this paper, we highlight serious flaws with the use of book-to-market and offer a replacement factor for it. The Enterprise Multiple, calculated as (equity value + debt value + preferred stock – cash)/ EBITDA, is better than book-to-market in cross-sectional monthly regressions over 1963-2008. In the top three size quintiles (accounting for about 94% of total market value), EM is a highly significant measure of relative value, whereas book-to-market is insignificant.

The abstract says everything you need to know: Book-to-market is widely used (by academics), but it has serious flaws. The enterprise multiple is more predictive over a long period (1963 to 2008), and it’s much more predictive in big market capitalization stocks where book-to-market is essentially useless.

What serious flaws?

The big problem with book-to-market is that so much of the return is attributable to nano-cap stocks and “the January effect”:

Loughran (1997) examines the data used by Fama and French (1992) and finds that the results are driven by a January seasonal and the returns on microcap growth stocks. For the largest size quintile, accounting for about three-quarters of total market cap, Loughran finds that BE/ME has no significant explanatory power over 1963-1995. Furthermore, for the top three size quintiles, accounting for about 94% of total market cap, size and BE/ME are insignificant once January returns are removed. Fama and French (2006) confirm Loughran’s result over the post- 1963 period. Thus, for nearly the entire market value of largest stock market (the US) over the most important time period (post-1963), the value premium does not exist.

That last sentence bears repeating: For nearly the entire market value of largest stock market (the US) over the most important time period (post-1963), the value premium does not exist, which means that book-to-market is not predictive in stocks other than the smallest 6 percent by market cap. What about book-to-market in the stocks in that smallest 6 percent? It might not work there either:

Keim (1983) shows that the January effect is primarily limited to the first trading days in January. These returns are heavily influenced by December tax-loss selling and bid-ask bounce in low-priced stocks. Since many fund managers are restricted in their ability to buy small stocks due to ownership concentration restrictions and are prohibited from buying low-prices stocks due to their speculative nature, it is unlikely that the value premium can be exploited.

More scalable

The enterprise multiple succeeds where book-to-market fails.

In the top three size quintiles, accounting for about 94% of total market value, EM is a highly significant measure of relative value, whereas BE/ME is insignificant and size is only weakly significant. EM is also highly significant after controlling for the January seasonal and removing low-priced (<$5) stocks. Robustness checks indicate that EM is also better to Tobin’s Q as a determinant of stock returns.

And maybe the best line in the  paper:

Our results are an improvement over the existing literature because, rather than being driven by obscure artifacts of the data, namely the stocks in the bottom 6% of market cap and the January effect, our results apply to virtually the entire universe of US stocks. In other words, our results may actually be relevant to both Wall Street and academics.

Why does the enterprise multiple work?

The enterprise multiple is a popular measure, and for other good reasons besides its performance. First, the enterprise multiple uses enterprise value. A stock’s enterprise value provides more information about its true cost than its market capitalization because it includes information about the stock’s balance sheet, including its debt, cash and preferred stock (and in some variations minorities and net payables-to-receivables). Such things are significant to acquirers of the business in its entirety, which, after all, is the way that value investors should think about each stock. Market capitalization can be misleading. Just because a stock is cheap on a book value basis does not mean that it’s cheap 0nce its debt load is factored into the valuation. Loughran and Wellman, quoting Damodaran (whose recent paper I covered here last week), write:

Damodaran shows in an unpublished study of 550 equity research reports that EM, along with Price/Earnings and Price/Sales, were the most common relative valuation multiples used. He states, “In the past two decades, this multiple (EM) has acquired a number of adherents among analysts for a number of reasons.” The reasons Damodaran cites for EM’s increasing popularity also point to the potential superiority of EM over book-to-market. One reason is that EM can be compared more easily across firms with differing leverage. We can see this when comparing the corresponding inputs of EM and BE/ME. The numerator of EM, Enterprise Value, can be compared to the market value of equity. EV can be viewed as a theoretical takeover price of a firm. After a takeover, the acquirer assumes the debt of the firm, but gains use of the firm’s cash and cash equivalents. Including debt is important here. To take an example, in 2005, General Motors had a market cap of $17 billion, but debt of $287 billion. Using market value of equity as a measure of size, General Motors is a mid-sized firm. Yet on the basis of Enterprise Value, GM is a huge company. Market value of equity by itself is unlikely to fully capture the effect GM’s debt has on its returns. More generally, it is reasonable to think that changing firm debt levels may affect returns in a way not fully captured by market value of equity. Bhojraj and Lee (2002) confirm this, finding that EV is superior to market value of common equity, particularly when firms are differentially levered.

The enterprise multiple’s ardor for cash and abhorrence for debt matches my own, hence why I like it so much. In practice, that tendency can be a double-edged sword. It digs up lots of little cash boxes with a legacy business attached like an appendix (think Daily Journal Corporation (NASDAQ:DJCO) or Rimage Corporation (NASDAQ:RIMG)). Such stocks tend to have limited upside. On the flip side, they also have happily virtually no downside. In this way they are vastly superior to the highly leveraged pigs favored by book-to-market, which tends to serve up heavily leveraged slivers of somewhat discounted equity, and leaves you to figure out whether it can bear the debt load. Get it wrong and you’ll be learning the intricacies of the bankruptcy process with nothing to show for it at the end. When it comes time to pull the trigger, I generally find it easier to do it with a cheap enterprise multiple than a cheap price-to-book value ratio.

The earnings variable: EBITDA

There’s a second good reason to like the enterprise multiple: the earnings variable. EBITDA contains more information than straight earnings, and so should give a more full view of where the accounting profits flow:

The denominator of EM is operating income before depreciation while net income (less dividends) flows into BE. The use of EBITDA provides several advantages that BE lacks. Damodaran notes that differences in depreciation methods across companies will affect net income and hence BE, but not EBITDA. Also, the McKinsey valuation text notes that operating income is not affected by nonoperating gains or losses. As a result, operating income before depreciation can be viewed as a more accurate and less manipulable measure of profitability, allowing it to be used to compare firms within as well as across industries. Critics of EBITDA point out that it is not a substitute for cash flow; however, EV in the numerator does account for cash.

The enterprise multiple includes debt as well as equity, contains a clearer measure of operating profit and captures changes in cash from period to period. The enterprise multiple is a more complete measure of relative value than book-to-market. It also performs better:

Performance of the enterprise multiple versus book-to-market

From CXOAdvisory:

  • EM generates an annual value premium of 5.8% per year over the entire sample period (compared to 4.8% for B/M during 1926-2004).
  • EM captures more premium than B/M for all five quintiles of firm size and is much less dependent on small stocks for its overall premium (see chart below).
  • In the top three quintiles of firm size (accounting for about 94% of total market capitalization), EM is a highly significant measure of relative value, while B/M is not.
  • EM remains highly significant after controlling for the January effect and after removing low-priced (<$5) stocks.
  • EM outperforms Tobin’s q as a predictor of stock returns.
  • Evidence from the UK and Japan confirms that EM is a highly significant measure of relative value.

The “value premium” is the difference in returns to a portfolio of glamour stocks (i.e., the most expensive decile) when compared to a portfolio of value stocks (i.e., the cheapest decile) ranked on a given price ratio (in this case, the enterprise multiple and book-to-market). The bigger the value premium, the better a given price ratio sorts stocks into winners and losers. It’s a more robust test than simply measuring the performance of the cheapest stocks. Not only do we want to limit our sins of commission (i.e., buying losers), we want to limit our sins of omission (i.e., not buying winners). 

Here are the value premia by market capitalization (from CXOAdvisory again): Ring the bell. The enterprise multiple kicks book-to-market’s ass up and down in every weight class, but most convincingly in the biggest stocks.

Strategies using the enterprise multiple

The enterprise multiple forms the basis for several strategies. It is the price ratio limb of Joel Greenblatt’s Magic Formula. It also forms the basis for the Darwin’s Darlings strategy that I love (see Hunting Endangered Species). The Darwin’s Darlings strategy sought to front-run the LBO firms in the early 2000s, hence the enterprise multiple was the logical tool, and highly effective.

Conclusion

This post was motivated by the series last week on Aswath Damodaran’s paper ”Value Investing: Investing for Grown Ups?” in which he asks, “If value investing works, why do value investors underperform?” Loughran and Wellman also asked why, if Fama and French (2006) find a value premium (measured by book-to-market) of 4.8% per year over 1926-2004, mutual fund managers couldn’t capture it:

Fund managers perennially underperform growth indices like the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index and value fund managers do not outperform growth fund managers. Either the value premium does not actually exist, or it does not exist in a way that can be exploited by fund managers and other investors.

Loughran and Wellman find that for nearly the entire market value of largest stock market (the US) over the most important time period (post-1963), the value premium does not exist, which means that book-to-market is not predictive in stocks other than the smallest 6 percent by market cap (and even there the returns are suspect). The enterprise multiple succeeds where book-to-market fails. In the top three size quintiles, accounting for about 94% of total market value, the enterprise multiple is a highly predictive measure, while book-to-market is insignificant. The enterprise multiple also works after controlling for the January seasonal effect and after removing low priced (<$5) stocks. The enterprise multiple is king. Long live the enterprise multiple.

Buy my book The Acquirer’s Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market from on Kindle, paperback, and Audible.

Here’s your book for the fall if you’re on global Wall Street. Tobias Carlisle has hit a home run deep over left field. It’s an incredibly smart, dense, 213 pages on how to not lose money in the market. It’s your Autumn smart read. –Tom Keene, Bloomberg’s Editor-At-Large, Bloomberg Surveillance, September 9, 2014.

Click here if you’d like to read more on The Acquirer’s Multiple, or connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Check out the best deep value stocks in the largest 1000 names for free on the deep value stock screener at The Acquirer’s Multiple®.

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Buyout targets

Posted in About, Stocks, Value Investment, tagged , on September 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Street has an article Companies That Serve as Buyout Targets advocating a Darwin’s Darlings / Endangered Species-type strategy for buying stock:

When evaluating small-cap stocks, individual investors would do well to emulate private-equity professionals.

Focusing on balance sheets and private-market valuations of small companies cuts through the noise sounded by volatile stock markets like today’s. After all, price isn’t always indicative of value. The difference between the two can mean big profits for discerning investors, says Mark Travis, chief executive officer of Intrepid Capital Funds.

Travis uses such a strategy to determine the price that a rational buyer, paying cash, would offer for a company. Many companies he follows are growing fast and generating a lot of cash, but retail investors know very little about them because they fly under Wall Street’s radar.

…

Travis says companies that generate cash consistently attract suitors, either larger companies in their industry or private-equity firms. If neither comes forward, Travis is happy knowing the investment will continue to grow as the company’s cash builds up.

Stable businesses with little debt tend to be winners, Travis says.

“That makes them durable when you go through some of the bumps we’ve been through in the last three to five years,” he says. “We’re not trying to front-run Steve Schwarzman at Blackstone (BX). We just happen to like the characteristics of cash generators.”

Three of the companies on Travis’s list are as follows:

  • Tekelec (TKLC):

Travis’ Take: “This is an off-the-radar pick. It’s an example of a company that has a really beautiful balance sheet and a share price trading at a low multiple. This trades at 12 times earnings. There’s no debt and there’s $226 million in cash. Almost a quarter of the market cap is in cash. You’re able to buy it at a little over five times pretax cash flow. We think those shares are worth in the high teens.”

  • Aaron’s (AAN)

Travis’ Take: “People don’t realize with the financial-regulation bill that credit won’t be more available; it’ll be less available. This company has 1,700 stores with about 1,000 of those franchised and about 700 corporately owned. At $16, it has a 12 multiple and a beautiful balance sheet. It has $54 million in debt but $85 million in cash, so they have net cash on their books. It’s a good business and could trade in the mid-20s.”

  • Tidewater (TDW)

Travis’ Take: “They service offshore oil rigs, which certainly have gotten a lot of negative press. But they have a clean balance sheet, with $300 million in debt and cash of $122 million. Less than 10% of revenue comes from servicing rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. It trades at less than 10 times earnings and you get a dividend of 2.4%. We think the shares are probably worth $53 or $54.”

Read the rest of the article.

Long TDW.

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Darwin’s darlings in practice: Accretive uses “Take Private” tactic

Posted in About, Catalysts, Stocks, Value Investment, tagged , on August 25, 2010| 3 Comments »

One of my favorite strategies is the Endangered Species / Darwin’s Darlings strategy I discussed in some detail earlier this year (see Hunting endangered species and Endangered Species 2001). The strategy is based on a Spring 1999 Piper Jaffray research report called Wall Street’s Endangered Species by Daniel J. Donoghue, Michael R. Murphy and Mark Buckley, then at Piper Jaffray and now at Discovery Group, a firm founded by Donoghue and Murphy. The premise of the report was that undervalued small capitalization stocks (those with a market capitalization between $50M and $250M) lacked a competitive auction for their shares and required the emergence of a catalyst in the form of a merger or buy-out to close the value gap.

The NYTimes.com has an article, Accretive Uses “Take Private” Tactic In Equities, discussing hedge fund Accretive Capital Partners, which uses a strategy described thus:

Accretive Capital’s strategy is to buy long-only stakes in small- and micro-cap stocks that [founder Rick] Fearon believes would be attractive “take private” companies. The benefits of being public just don’t add up for such companies, he said.

Years ago when Fearon was a principal at private equity firm Allied Capital, he was struck by the wide gap in value the public and private equity markets assigned companies.

In private equity, companies were valued at six to seven times their cash flow, while public companies, especially the smallest businesses, were valued at almost half that, he said.

Fearon believes that market inefficiency, where prices often fail to reflect a company’s intrinsic value, and the $400 billion or so that pension funds and endowments currently have committed to private equity, will help spur returns.

Fearon is fishing in waters where, because the market capitalization of the smallest companies is less than $100 million, Wall Street research fails to adequately cover their operations. In addition to helping create an inefficient market, it has eroded the benefits of being a public company.

With an undervalued stock, stock options are never in the money, erasing the use of stock as a motivator for management and employees; cash becomes preferable to stock for acquisitions, and management holds on to undervalued shares.

“Management teams that have a strategy of A, B, C and D for creating shareholder value may in the back of their minds be thinking, ‘Well, maybe strategy E is the take private transaction, or we sell the company to a strategic buyer, because we’re not recognizing any of the benefits of being public,'” Fearon said.

In essence, the strategy is Endangered Species / Darwin’s Darlings. How has Accretive Capital performed?

Accretive Capital has been involved in 19 take-private transactions, or about one-third of the positions it has closed over the past decade.

Fearon has managed to take the $2 million in capital he started with from mostly high-net worth friends and family to about $20 million on his own. His fund plunged in 2008, but returned 132 percent last year and is up about 20 percent as of July.

Assuming no additional outside capital, turning $2M into $20M in ten years is a compound return of around 25%, which is impressive. [Update: As Charles points out in the comments, the article clearly says he’s returned 4x, not 10x, which is a compound return of around 15%, which is still impressive in a flat market, but not as amazing as 25%.]

Says Fearon of the investment landscape right now:

“We’re not lacking investment ideas or opportunities, our primary restraint is capital right now.”

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Return of big LBOs

Posted in About, Stocks, tagged on April 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Reuters Breakingviews has an article, Big Leveraged Buyouts May Soon Make a Comeback (via NYTimes.com), on the potential for a return of big LBOs. Breakingviews attributes the possibility to the availability of capital:

The money certainly has become available. In addition to dry powder held by the biggest private equity firms, banks are eager to lend again — even without demand from collateralized loan obligations to stoke the buyouts. Bubble accoutrements, including prearranged financing packages and loans with fewer restrictions, have re-emerged to make deals easier and more tempting for buyout firms. Interest rates also remain near record lows, and fixed-income investors have rediscovered an appetite for risk.

Debt multiples are also swiftly on the rise. After surpassing 10 times Ebitda in the heady days of 2006, banks beat a hasty retreat. But they’re again offering more than six times Ebitda. In return, they’re requiring buyout firms to provide 40 percent of a leveraged buyout price as equity, more than during the earlier exuberance.

What would the anatomy of a big LBO look like?

Consider a hypothetical $10 billion deal using rough-and-ready figures. A private equity firm could borrow about $6 billion for a company with $1 billion of annual Ebitda and well under $1 billion of existing debt. To write the accompanying $4 billion equity check, buyout firms could team up — in another replay from yesteryear — or bring co-investors in. Then, of course, the buyout price would have to deliver a premium to the target company’s market value.

Breakingviews has a few “plausible” candidates:

The online educator Apollo Group, the engineering group Fluor, the navigation technology maker Garmin, the discount retailer Ross Stores and the hard-drive manufacturer Western Digital are among firms that fit the bill, at least on paper. The $10 billion buyout may not become a regular occurrence again anytime soon. But what was recently unthinkable now looks in the realm of the possible again.

WDC is worthy of further investigation. Prima facie, it’s not an LBO candidate because it’s a technology stock. That said, Silver Lake Partners’ $2b buy-out of Seagate Technologies, Inc. in 2000 would suggest that it’s possible to take a hard disk drive maker private and succeed. Here’s a nice case study on the Seagate buy-out (.pdf). The caveats are well covered in this post by The Fallible Investor, which, coincidentally, skewers Garmin (see also Bronte Capital’s post for further general background).

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Endangered Species 2001

Posted in About, Activist Investors, Audiovox Corporation (NASDAQ:VOXX), Catalysts, Dataram Corporation (NASDAQ:DRAM), Ditech Networks Inc (NASDAQ:DITC), Stocks, Value Investment, tagged , , , , , on April 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

In the Spring 1999 Piper Jaffray produced a research report called Wall Street’s Endangered Species by Daniel J. Donoghue, Michael R. Murphy and Mark Buckley, then at Piper Jaffray and now at Discovery Group, a firm founded by Donoghue and Murphy (see also Performance of Darwin’s Darlings). The premise of the report was that undervalued small capitalization stocks (those with a market capitalization between $50M and $250M) lacked a competitive auction for their shares and required the emergence of a catalyst in the form of a merger or buy-out to close the value gap.

In the first follow-up, Endangered species update: The extinct, the survivors, and the new watch list, from Summer 2000, Murphy and Buckley (Donoghue is not listed on the 2000 paper as an author) tested their original thesis and provided the “Darwin’s Darlings Class of 2000,” which was a list of what they viewed as “the most undervalued, yet profitable and growing small cap public companies” in 2000.

In the Fall of 2001, Donoghue, Murphy, Buckley and Danielle C. Kramer produced a further follow-up to the original report called Endangered Species 2001 (.pdf). Their thesis in the further follow up should be of particular interest to we value folk. Putting aside for one moment the purpose of the report (M&A research aimed at boards and management of Darwin’s darlings stocks to generate deal flow for the investment bank), it speaks to the very fertile environment for small capitalization value investing then in existence:

In the last few of years, many small public companies identified this [secular, small capitalization undervaluation] trend and agreed with the implications. Executives responded accordingly, and the number of strategic mergers and going-private transactions for small companies reached all-time highs. Shareholders of these companies were handsomely rewarded. The remaining companies, however, have watched their share prices stagnate.

Since the onset of the recent economic slowdown and the technology market correction, there has been much talk about a return to “value investing.” Many of our clients and industry contacts have even suggested that as investors search for more stable investments, they will uncover previously ignored small cap companies and these shareholders will finally be rewarded. We disagree and the data supports us:

Any recent increase in small-cap indices is misleading. Most of the smallest companies are still experiencing share price weakness and valuations continue to be well below their larger peers. We strongly believe that when the overall market rebounds, small-cap shareholders will experience significant underperformance unless their boards effect a change-of-control transaction.

In this report we review and refresh some of our original analyses from our previous publications. We also follow the actions and performance of companies that we identified over the past two years as some of the most attractive yet undervalued small-cap companies. Our findings confirm that companies that pursued a sale rewarded their shareholders with above-average returns, while the remaining companies continue to be largely ignored by the market. Finally, we conclude with our third annual list of the most attractive small-cap companies: Darwin’s Darlings Class of 2001.

Piper Jaffray’s data in support of their contention is as follows:

Looking back further than just the last 12 months, one finds that small-cap companies have severely lagged larger company indices for most periods. Exhibit II illustrates just how poorly the Russell 2000 compares to the S&P 500 during the longest bull market in history. In fact over the past five, seven and ten years, the Russell 2000 has underperformed the S&P 500. For the five, seven and 10 year periods, the S&P 500 rose 82.6 percent, 175.6 percent and 229.9 percent, respectively, while the Russell 2000 rose 47.9 percent, 113.4 percent, and 206.3 percent for the same periods.

The poor performance turned in by the Russell 2000 can be attributed to the share price performance of the smallest companies in the index. Our previous analysis has shown that the smallest companies in the index have generally underperformed the larger companies (see “Wall Streets Endangered Species,” Spring 1999). To understand the reasons for this differential, one must appreciate the breadth of the index. There is a tremendous gap in the market cap between the top 10 percent of the companies in the index, as ranked by market cap (“the first decile”) and the last 10 percent (“the bottom decile”). The median market capitalization of the first decile is $1.7 billion versus just $201.0 million for the bottom decile. There is almost an 8.0x difference between what can be considered a small cap company.

This distinction in size is important, because it is the smallest companies in the Russell 2000, and in the market as a whole, that have experienced the weakest share price performance and are the most undervalued. Exhibit III illustrates the valuation gap between the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 indices. Even more noticeable is the discount experienced by the smallest companies. The bottom two deciles of the index are trading at nearly a 25 percent discount to the EBIT multiple of the S&P 500 and at nearly 40 percent below the PIE multiple on a trailing 12-month basis.

This valuation gap has been consistently present for the last several years, and we fully expect it to continue regardless of the direction of the overall market. This differential is being driven by a secular trend that is impacting the entire investing landscape. These changes are the result of:

• The increasing concentration of funds in the hands of institutional investors

• Institutional investors’ demand for companies with greater market capitalization and liquidity

• The shift by investment banks away from small cap-companies with respect to research coverage and trading

The authors concluded that the trends identified were “secular” and would continue, leading small capitalization stocks to face a future of chronic undervaluation:

Removing this discount and reviving shareholder value require a fundamental change in ownership structure. Equity must be transferred out of the hands of an unadoring and disinterested public and into those of either: 1) managers backed by private capital, or 2) larger companies that can capture strategic benefits. Either remedy breathes new life into these companies by providing cheaper sources of equity capital and shifting the focus away from quarterly EPS to long-term growth.

They recognized the implications for secular undervaluation which lead them to make an impressive early identification of the re-emergence of modern shareholder activism:

Unfortunately, many corporate executives continue to believe that if they stick to their business plan they will eventually be discovered by the financial community. Given the recent trends, this outcome is not likely. In fact, there is a growing trend toward shareholder activism to force these companies to seek strategic alternatives to unlock shareholder value. Corporate management is now facing a new peril – the dreaded proxy fight. Bouncing back from their lowest level in more than a decade, proxy fights have increased dramatically thus far in 2001 and are running at nearly twice the pace as they were last year, according to Institutional Shareholder Services. In fact, not since the late 1980s has there been such attention devoted to the shareholder activism movement.

As shown in our Darwin’s Darlings list in Exhibit XX, page 23, management ownership varies widely among the typical undervalued small cap. For those that were IPOs of family-held businesses, management stakes are generally high. In these instances in which a group effectively controls the company, there will be little noise from activist shareholders. However, companies with broad ownership (i.e., a spinoff from a larger parent) are more susceptible to unfriendly actions. In fact, widely held small caps frequently have blocks held by the growing number of small-cap investment funds focused on likely takeover targets.

Regardless of ownership structure, these companies typically have the customary defensive mechanisms in place. They are also protected because they are so thinly traded. In most cases it can take more than six months to accumulate a 5 percent position in the stock without impacting the share price. While we expect most of the successful acquisitions in this sector to be friendly, small-cap companies will have to increasingly worry about these unfriendly suitors.

There are several consistent factors that are driving the increased frustration among shareholders and, consequently, the increased pressure on Management and Boards. These factors include the aforementioned depressed share prices, lack of trading liquidity, and research coverage. But also included are bloated executive compensation packages that are not tied to share price performance and a feeling that corporate boards are staffed with management allies rather than independent-minded executives. Given the continuing malaise in the public markets, we believe this heightened proxy activity will continue into the foreseeable future. Companies with less than $250 million in market capitalization in low growth or cyclical markets are the most vulnerable to a potential proxy battle, particularly those companies whose shares are trading near their 52-week lows.

Here they describe what was a novelty at the time, but has since become the standard operating procedure for activist investors:

Given the growing acceptance of an aggressive strategy, we have noticed an increase in the number of groups willing to pursue a “non-friendly” investment strategy for small caps. Several funds have been formed to specifically identify a takeover target, invest significantly in the company, and force action by its own board. If an undervalued small cap chooses to ignore this possibility, it may soon find itself rushed into a defensive mode. Thwarting an unwanted takeover, answering to shareholders, and facing the distractions of the press may take precedence from the day-to-day actions of running the business.

So how did the companies perform? Here’s the chart:

Almost 90 percent of the 1999 class and about half of the 2000 class pursued some significant strategic alternative during the year. The results for the class of 1999 represent a two-year period so it is not surprising that this list generated significantly more activity than the 2000 list. This would indicate that we should see additional action from the class of 2000 in the coming year.

A significant percentage (23 percent of the total) pursued a sale or going-private transaction to provide immediate value to their shareholders. Others are attempting to “grow out of” their predicament by pursuing acquisitions and many are repurchasing shares. However, many of Darwin’s Darlings have yet to take any significant action. Presumably, these companies are ignoring their current share price and assuming that patient shareholders will eventually be rewarded through a reversal in institutional investing trends, or perhaps, in a liquidity event at some later date.

The actual activity was, in fact, even greater than our data suggests as there were many transactions that were announced but failed to be consummated, particularly in light of the current difficult financing market. Chase Industries, Lodgian, Mesaba Holdings, and Chromcraft Revington all had announced transactions fall through. In addition, a large number of companies announced a decision to evaluate strategic alternatives, including Royal Appliance, Coastcast, and Play by Play ‘Toys.

The authors make an interesting observation about the utility of buy-backs:

For many of Darwin’s Darlings and other small-cap companies, the share repurchase may still have been an astute move. While share price support may not be permanent, the ownership of the company was consolidated as a result of buying in shares. The remaining shareholders were, in effect, “accreted up” in their percentage ownership. When a future event occurs to unlock value, these shareholders will reap the benefits of the repurchase program. Furthermore, the Company may have accommodated sellers desiring to exit their investment, thereby eliminating potentially troublesome, dissenting shareholders. There are circumstances when a repurchase makes good sense, but it should not be considered a mechanism to permanently boost share prices.

Piper Jaffray’s Darwin’s Darlings Class of 2001, the third annual list of the most attractive small-cap companies, makes for compelling reading. Net net investors will recognize several of the names (for example, DITC, DRAM,  PMRY and VOXX) from Greenbackd and general lists of net nets in 2008 and 2009. It’s worth considering that these stocks were, in 2001, the most attractive small-capitalization firms identified by Piper Jaffray.

See the full Endangered Species 2001 (.pdf) report.

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Endangered species update: The extinct, the survivors, and the new watch list

Posted in About, Activist Investors, Catalysts, Chromcraft Revington (AMEX:CRC), Stocks, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2010| 1 Comment »

In March I highlighted an investment strategy I first read about in a Spring 1999 research report called Wall Street’s Endangered Species by Daniel J. Donoghue, Michael R. Murphy and Mark Buckley, then at Piper Jaffray and now at Discovery Group, a firm founded by Donoghue and Murphy (see also Performance of Darwin’s Darlings). The premise, simply stated, is to identify undervalued small capitalization stocks lacking a competitive auction for their shares where a catalyst in the form of a merger or buy-out might emerge to close the value gap. I believe the strategy is a natural extension for Greenbackd, and so I’ve been exploring it over the last month.

Donoghue, Murphy and Buckley followed up their initial Wall Street’s Endangered Species research report with two updates, which I recalled were each called “Endangered Species Update” and discussed the returns from the strategy. While I initially believed that those follow-up reports were lost to the sands of time, I’ve been excavating my hard-copy files and found them, yellowed, and printed on papyrus with a dot matrix 9-pin stylus. I’ve now resurrected both, and I’ll be running them today and tomorrow.

In the first follow-up, Endangered species update: The extinct, the survivors, and the new watch list (.pdf), from Summer 2000, Murphy and Buckley (Donoghue is not listed on the 2000 paper as an author) tested their original thesis and provided the “Darwin’s Darlings Class of 2000,” which was a list of what they viewed as “the most undervalued, yet profitable and growing small cap public companies” in 2000.

As for the original class of 1999, the authors concluded:

About half of the Darwin’s Darlings pursued some significant strategic alternative during the year. A significant percentage (19 of the companies) pursued a sale or going-private transaction to provide immediate value to their shareholders. Others are attempting to “grow out of” their predicament by pursuing acquisitions, and many are repurchasing shares. However, about half of the Darlings have yet to take any significant action. Presumably, these companies are ignoring their current share price and assuming that patient shareholders will eventually be rewarded through a reversal in institutional investing trends or, more likely, a liquidity event at some later date. The path chosen clearly had a significant impact on shareholder value.

Here’s the summary table:

There are several fascinating aspects to their analysis. First, they looked at the outstanding performance of the sellers:

The 19 companies that pursued a sale easily outperformed the Russell 2000 and achieved an average premium of 51.4% to their 4-week prior share price. The vast majority of transactions were sales to strategic buyers who were able to pay a handsome premium to the selling shareholders. In general, the acquirers were large cap public companies. By simply valuing the profits of a Darwin’s Darling at their own market multiple, these buyers delivered a valuation to selling shareholders that far exceeded any share price the company might have independently achieved. Note in the summary statistics below that the average deal was at an EBIT multiple greater than 10x.

Here’s the table:

Second, they considered the low proportion of sellers who went private, rather than sold out to a strategic acquirer, and likely causes:

Only three of the Darwin’s Darlings announced a going-private transaction. At first glance, this is a surprisingly small number given the group’s low trading multiples and ample debt capacity. With private equity firms expressing a very high level of interest in these transactions, one might have expected more activity.

…

Why isn’t the percentage higher? In our opinion, it is a mix of economic reality and an ironic impact of corporate governance requirements. The financial sponsors typically involved in taking a company private are constrained with respect to the price they can pay for a company. With limits on prudent debt levels and minimum hurdle rates for equity investments, the typical financial engineer quickly reaches a limit on the price he can pay for a company. As a result, several factors come into play:

• A Board will typically assume that if a “financial” buyer is willing to pay a certain price, a “strategic” buyer must exist that can pay more.

• Corporate governance rules are usually interpreted to mean that a Board must pursue the highest price possible if a transaction is being evaluated.

• Management is reluctant to initiate a going-private opportunity for fear of putting the Company “in play.”

• Financial buyers and management worry that an unwanted, strategic “interloper” can steal a transaction away from them when the Board fulfills its fiduciary duty.

In light of the final two considerations, which benefit only management, it’s not difficult to understand why activists considered this sector of the market ripe for picking, but I digress.

Third, they analyzed the performance of companies repurchasing shares:

To many of the Darwin’s Darlings, their undervaluation was perceived as a buying opportunity. Twenty companies announced a share repurchase, either through the open market, or through more formalized programs such as Dutch Auction tender offers (see our M&A Insights: “What About a Dutch Auction?” April 2000).

As we expected, these repurchases had little to no impact on the companies’ share prices. The signaling impact of their announcement was minimal, since few analysts or investors were listening, and the buying support to the share price was typically insignificant. Furthermore, the decrease in shares outstanding served only to exacerbate trading liquidity challenges. From announcement date to present, these 20 companies as a group have underperformed the Russell 2000 by 17.5%.

For many of the Darlings and other small cap companies the share repurchase may still have been an astute move. While share prices may not have increased, the ownership of the company was consolidated as a result of buying-in shares. ‘The remaining shareholders were, in effect, “accreted up” in their percentage ownership. When a future event occurs to unlock value, these shareholders should reap the benefit of the repurchase program. Furthermore, the Company may have accommodated sellers desiring to exit their investment, thereby eliminating potentially troublesome, dissenting shareholders.

One such company repurchasing shares will be familiar to anyone who has followed Greenbackd for a while: Chromcraft Revington, Inc., (CRC:AMEX), which I entered as a sickly net net and exited right before it went up five-fold. (It’s worth noting that Jon Heller of Cheap Stocks got CRC right, buying just after I sold and making out like a bandit. I guess you can’t win ’em all.) Murphy and Buckley cite CRC as an abject lesson in why buy-backs don’t work for Darwin’s Darlings:

I’m not entirely sure that the broader conclusion is a fair one. Companies shouldn’t repurchase shares to goose share prices, but to enhance underlying intrinsic value in the hands of the remaining shareholders. That said, in CRC’s case, the fact that it went on to raise capital at a share price of ~$0.50 in 2009 probably means that their conclusion in CRC’s case was the correct one.

And what of the remainder:

About half of the Darwin’s Darlings stayed the course and did not announce any significant event over the past year. Another 18 sought and consummated an acquisition of some significant size. While surely these acquisitions had several strategic reasons, they were presumably pursued in part to help these companies grow out of their small cap valuation problems. Larger firms will, in theory, gain more recognition, additional liquidity, and higher valuations. However, for both the acquirers and the firms without any deal activity, the result was largely the same: little benefit for shareholders was provided.

Management teams and directors of many small cap companies have viewed the last few years as an aberration in the markets. “Interest in small caps will return” is a common refrain. We disagree, and our statistics prove us right thus far. Without a major change, we believe the shares of these companies will continue to meander. For the 53 Darwin’s Darlings that did not pursue any major activity in the last year, 80% are still below their 1998 high and 60% have underperformed the Russell 2000 over the last year. These are results, keep in mind, for some of the most attractive small cap firms.

This is the fabled “two-tier” market beloved by value investors. While everyone else was chasing dot coms and large caps, small cap companies with excellent fundamentals were lying around waiting to be snapped up. The authors concluded:

The public markets continue to ignore companies with a market capitalization below $250 million. Most institutional investors have large amounts of capital to invest and manage, and small caps have become problematic due to their lack of analyst coverage and minimal public float. As a result, these “orphans” of the public markets are valued at a significant discount to the remainder of the market. We do not see this trend reversing, and therefore recommend an active approach to the directors and management teams at most small cap companies. Without serious consideration of a sale to a strategic or financial buyer, we believe these companies, despite their sound operating performance, will not be able to deliver value to their shareholders.

Tomorrow, the 2001 Endangered species update.

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