The CITIC Wind in the Chinese Tower – Brief Thoughts on Adapting the New Revenue Recognition Standard IFRS 15 in Asia
June 4, 2014 Leave a comment
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BAMBOO LETTER UPDATE | Jun 2, 2014 |
Bamboo Innovator Insight (Issue 36) |
Dear Friends and All,
The CITIC Wind in the Chinese Tower – Brief Thoughts on Adapting the New Revenue Recognition Standard IFRS 15 in Asia
山雨欲来,风满楼。 “Wind in the Tower warns of Storms in the Mountains.” – Tang dynasty poem by Xu Han, meaning coming troubles cast their shadows before them
400 of China’s brightest political minds were vigorously debating the nation’s future in smoke-clouded halls at a strategy meeting in a Beijing hotel. This was April 1989, a decade of economic transformation after paramount leader Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the outside world for business in 1978, two years after Mao Zedong’s death, when GDP per person was $165. Days later, protests erupted in Tiananmen Square – and escalated. A crackdown was ordered and tanks rolled into the Tiananmen Square on June 4, transforming the lives of the elites at the meeting and the millions more.
“Big Cannon” General Wang Zhen, one of the only two Chinese commanders authorized to carry guns when visiting Mao because he saved Mao’s army from starvation, was one of the “Eight Immortals” Party elders who led the Tiananmen charge. His son Wang Jun is now behind two of China’s biggest state-owned empires – CITIC Group and China Poly Group. Three children of the Eight Immortals – Wang Jun; Deng’s son-in-law, He Ping; and Chen Yun’s son Chen Yuan – headed or still run state-owned companies with combined assets of about $1.6 trillion in 2011, equivalent to more than a fifth of China’s annual economic output, according to Bloomberg findings. For backing his visionary economic reform in 1978, Deng gave his blessings to Chen Yun, the architect of China’s planned economy, who wanted to keep control of the state in the hands of Party veterans and their families because they were considered more trustworthy to run the new state conglomerates. This trust intensified after the Tiananmen incident as Deng and elders entrusted key assets of the state to their supporters and their descendants.
CITIC Pacific Vs Hang Seng Index and S&P500 – Stock Price Performance, 1986-2014 CITIC Group, China’s largest state-owned conglomerate by revenue, made news in March on plans to list in HK by reversing into its HK-listed unit CITIC Pacific (267 HK, MV $7.9bn) in a parent-to-child asset injection transaction worth $36bn, the biggest-ever public market asset transfer in Chinese history. Rather than relinquishing control, in the short term CITIC Group could raise its stake in CITIC Pacific from 57.5% to close to 90%. Sovereign wealth funds China Investment Corp and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings are said to be approached about buying into the offering.However, an alarming piece of news broke out in mid-May that cast a shadow on the back-door listing deal that the market loved. CITIC had invested more than $50bn in shadow banking products over the past three years. Its “maximum loss exposure” to wealth management products (WMPs) and other non-standard higher-yielding investments reached RMB322bn ($52bn) at the end of 2013, 36 times higher than its 2011 exposure of RMB9bn. CITIC Group is also an active conduit for the sale of WMPs and other non-standard credit instruments, selling RMB976bn on behalf of third-party issuers last year. China’s largest bank ICBC had sold RMB1.1tr. To understand the potential implications of the CITIC deal, perhaps we need to go back to the winds of history that were howling around Tiananmen and CITIC…
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One of the critical accounting insights of the GITIC failure was…
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Will the new revenue recognition standard be useful to gain insight into truthful top lines of Asian enterprises? After more than a decade of deliberation and effort, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have released their long-awaited converged standard on revenue recognition last week. Coming into effect in January 2017, IFRS 15 will require companies to use a new five-step model to recognize revenue that shows…
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To read the exclusive article in full to find out more about the story of CITIC, GITIC and the accounting insights, as well as the implications of the new revenue recognition standard IFRS 15 in Asia for value investors; please visit:
Value Unplugged 2014 and Value Investing Seminar in July in Italy Value Unplugged 2014 (www.valueunplugged.com) in Naples, Italy is now full. We’ll gather in a small, relaxed setting to learn and make friends. We’ll also attend Ciccio Azzollini’s sold-out Value Investing Seminar in July in Trani, Italy — the definitive summer conference for value investors – as one of the keynote speakers. http://www.valueinvestingseminar.it/content_/relatori.asp?lan=eng&anno=2014 |
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Our latest monthly issue for the month of June investigates the world’s #1 ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) and global #5 manufacturer of a consumer healthcare device product that is used frequently, even daily, thus providing the foundation for stable recurring cashflow. This company is also a hidden champion in a niche product segment (50-55% of group’s sales) that has become a high-growth fashion product currently accounting for less than 10% of the overall industry. The company is able to mass-manufacture this niche product, but not the giants, because of its unique process IP in flexible manufacturing system and know-how to handle large-scale complex orders. The manufacture of this product itself is difficult to replicate and requires FDA/CE licenses because of its medical device nature and the entry barrier is not capital but the know-how and R&D expertise. In particular, the manufacturing integrates different fields of science including polymer chemistry, physics, optics, engineering, materials control, process control, microbiology, and, injection molding. The firm has also developed a proprietary system of tracking the manufacturing process of different sets of product so that if a quality issue arose, when and where the problem set of products was being produced could be swiftly identified, thus diminishing the scale and cost of product recall. This system has helped the firm win the long-term trust of its ODM customers to place stable large orders. The Big Four giants do not have such a system and have to incur substantial losses from product recalls.The company also possess its own brand which has many loyal followers and support in its home market where it enjoys a 30% market share and contributes to 25% of group’s sales while sticky ODM customers account for 75% of group’s sales, mainly from the Japan market. As a result of its wide-moat advantages, the firm enjoys a consistently high ROE of 41%, double or triple that of the giants. From FY07 onwards, even during the depths of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007/09, the firm has not raised equity. Since listing in Mar 2004, the company has only done one rights issue in May 2005. Also, it is able to sustain a strong stable cash dividend payout (>70% with 3% yield) with its healthy net-cash balance sheet (net cash $30m; net cash-to-equity ratio 23%) and proven management execution in prudent capex expansion to support sustainable quality earnings growth. M&A deals in the healthcare and medical device sector has been growing due to their strong defensive nature and giants seeking growth to overcome their own patent cliff. The firm will always be an attractive takeover target by giants who wish to swallow it up to possess its valuable flexible manufacturing system and know-how to fill their own missing competency gap and hence will enjoy long-term downside protection in its terminal value. In the battle between “ODM vs Brand”, we find the story of the company to be quite similar to that of TSMC (2330 TT, MV $103bn), now the largest ODM foundry in the world. “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been,” as hockey legend Wayne Gretzky advised. In our view, the profit and valuation premium in the value chain will start to skate to the “Inno-facturers” who are the hidden ODM innovators (the brand behind brands) consolidating the industry, such as TSMC and this company. While its valuation is not cheap with EV/EBIT (FY13) at 20.6x, when we compare EV/EBIT relative to ROE, the company is relatively cheap, by as much as 130-220% when compared to giants and other comparables. When we compare EV/EBITDA relative to ROE, the valuation gap is 90-160%. This long-term valuation gap implies that the company, with its far superior and sustainable ROE, could potentially double to $2.4bn, as it continues to consolidate its niche product segment and enter into a new product cycle of an innovative product whose patents are expiring in 2014/15 (US/worldwide) to make ASP/margin improvements in sustaining quality profits and cashflow. Its share price has dropped 18% from its recent high and underperformed the index by 26% in the last six months. This will present a buying opportunity for long-term value investors who can penetrate beyond conventional valuation metrics because of a deep understanding of its business model and underlying source of its wide-moat advantages. In Asia, many firms break apart or become value traps due to shareholder conflict, envy and differences in opinion on the business direction of the company. The stable long-term corporate culture infused by the late founder, who established the company in 1986 with the current executive chairman and 2 other key shareholders, to combine the energy and ideas of everyone to work hard to keep the business running forever is underappreciated.
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Do find out more in how you can benefit from authentic and candid on-the-ground insights that sell-side analysts and brokers, with their inherent conflict-of-interests, inevitable focus on conventional stock coverage and different clientele priorities, are unwilling or unable to share. Think of this as pressing the Bloomberg “Help Help” button to navigate the Asian capital jungle. Institutional subscribers also get access to the Bamboo Innovator Index of 200+ companies and Watchlist of 500+ companies in Asia and the Database has eliminated companies with a higher probability of accounting frauds and misgovernance as well as the alluring value traps.
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Professional Development Workshops for Executives and Lifelong Learners |
Our 7th run of the series of workshop From the Fund Management Jungles: Value Investing Exposed and Explored – (Part 1) Moat Analysis, (Part 2) Tipping Point Analysis and (Part 3) Detecting Accounting Fraud – on 8 Mar 2014 has been well-received with serious value investors, professionals, and serious lifelong learners attending.
Our 8th workshop on Tipping Point Analysis will be held in June 14; we are taking a short break as our business partner Linda is delivering her new baby!
Thank you for your support all this while!
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Thank you so much for reading as always.
Warm regards, KB Kee Managing Editor The Moat Report Asia Singapore Mobile: +65 9695 1860
A Service of BeyondProxy LLC 1608 S. Ashland Avenue #27878 Chicago, Illinois 60608-2013 Other offices: London, Singapore, Zurich
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P.S.1 Here is a little more about my background: KB Kee has been rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as an analyst in Asian capital markets. He was head of research and fund manager at Aegis Portfolio Managers, a Singapore-based value investment firm. As a member of Aegis’ investment committee, he helped the firm’s Asia-focused equity funds significantly outperform the benchmark index. He was previously the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Mirae Asset Global Investments, Korea’s largest mutual fund company. He holds a Masters in Finance and degrees in Accountancy and Business Management, summa cum laude, from Singapore Management University (SMU). KB had taught accounting at his alma mater in Singapore Management University and had also published an empirical research paper Why ‘Democracy’ and ‘Drifter’ Firms Can Have Abnormal Returns: The Joint Importance of Corporate Governance and Abnormal Accruals in Separating Winners from Losers in the Special Issue of Istanbul Stock Exchange 25thYear Anniversary Best Paper Competition, Boğaziçi Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies, Vol. 25(1): 3-55. KB has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy, macroeconomic and industry trends in Singapore, HK and China.
P.S.2 Why do I care so much about doing The Moat Report Asia for you? My personal motivation in embarking on this lifelong journey has been driven by disappointment from observing up close and personal the hard-earned assets of many investors, including friends and their families, burnt badly by the popular mantra: “Ride the Asian Growth Story!” I witnessed firsthand the emotional upheavals that they go through when they invest their hard-earned money – and their family’s – in these “Ride The Asian Growth Story” stocks either by themselves or through money managers, and these stocks turned out to be the subject of some exciting “theme” but which are inherently sick and prey to economic vicissitudes. They may seem to grow faster initially but the sustainable harvest of their returns is far too uncertain to be the focus of a wise program in investment. Worse still, the companies turned out to be involved in accounting frauds. Their financial numbers were “propped up” artificially to lure in funds from investors and the studiously-assessed asset value has already been “tunnelled out” or expropriated. And western-based fraud detection tools and techniques have not been adapted to the Asian context to avoid these traps.
After a decade-plus journey in the Asian capital jungles, it has been somewhat disheartening as I observe many fraud perpetrators go away scot-free and live a life of super luxury on minority investors’ hard-earned money. And these perpetrators make tempting offers to various parties in the financial community to go along with their schemes. When investors have knowledge in their hands, we have a choice to stay away from these people and away from temptations and do the things that we think are right. With knowledge, we have a choice to invest in the hardworking Asian entrepreneurs and capital allocators who are serious in building a wide-moat business. |
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