Brief Equities Bottom-Up: EPG: Revenue from Auto Parts and EPP Buoyed Earnings to Grow YoY and more

In this briefing:

1. EPG: Revenue from Auto Parts and EPP Buoyed Earnings to Grow YoY
2. Robotics Earnings: Nabtesco and HDS Results Strong; Still No Reason to Own Fanuc
3. A War Between Netflix & Disney = $$$ for Studio Dragon
4. Muthoot Finance – Top ROA Lender, with 116 Tons of Gold!
5. Catch-Up Session with Intuch Group

1. EPG: Revenue from Auto Parts and EPP Buoyed Earnings to Grow YoY

EPG reports FY3Q19 net profit of Bt225m (+24%YoY,-14%QoQ). The FY9M19 result was in line with and accounts for 69% of our full-year forecast.

• A YoY increase in earnings was mainly caused by sales contribution from automotive segment (+28%YoY). While a QoQ fall in earnings was due to a seasonal drop in sales of thermal insulators segment and narrow gross profit margins due to rising raw material costs.
• We maintain our positive outlook toward its FY19-20E earnings driven by growth in every business units: 1) sales recovery from EPP segment (22% of total sales in FY9M19) from changing its product mix toward more on food packaging; 2) revenue contribution from Flexiglass after acquired it during FY1Q19, and, 3) consistent sales growth for Aeroflex (28% of total sales)

We maintain our BUY rating  with the target price of *Bt10.40 derived from its 2-years average trading range of 25xPE’19E.

*We make no changes to forecast, recommendation, and target price at the time of result announcement.

2. Robotics Earnings: Nabtesco and HDS Results Strong; Still No Reason to Own Fanuc

Following a long period of weakness, robotics related stocks are displaying stronger performance recently as 3Q results have come in weak, but generally done so with management reassurances that this is the bottom.

We had been negative on the sector for some time before turning more constructive in mid January following Yaskawa’s earnings. We concur with the general messaging that this is the bottom based on our analysis of order levels for the companies and regional trend breakdowns. We do not expect a particularly sharp rebound in orders and sales in the near future and believe there is still some risk of these stocks returning toward the lows over the course of the year. However, we believe that the next significant move should be upwards and longer term investors should be looking for entry timings.

3. A War Between Netflix & Disney = $$$ for Studio Dragon

• In this report, we provide an update on Studio Dragon (253450 KS), which has been one of the best IPOs in Korea in the past two years. We believe that the stock is well poised to resume its higher share price in the upcoming months driven by a strong line up of new original dramas & movies in 2019. Studio Dragon (253450 KS) is a key beneficiary of the ultra-aggressive push by major global powerhouses such as Netflix and Disney to expand their OTT streaming services and provide “original” Korean drama contents that have the potential to become globally popular. 
• One of the strong competitive weapons of Studio Dragon is that its main script writers including Park Ji-Eun, Kim Eun-Sook, and Kim Young-Hyun are considered some of the best ones in Korea. The top screenwriters at Studio Dragon are women. It is fair to say that an overwhelming percentage of the Korean TV dramas have women as their key target audience. As such, most of the Korean TV dramas tend not to include too much violence. Most of them have intricate relationship based story lines geared towards the female audience.
• Valuation of the company has become more attractive since the highs in the summer of 2018. Studio Dragon (253450 KS) is currently trading at P/E multiples of 35x in 2019E and 26x in 2020E. If we apply the same 35x P/E to next year’s consensus net profit estimate of 99.6 billion won, this would imply a market cap of 3.5 trillion won, which would be 35% higher than current market cap of 2.6 trillion won. Thus, we remain positive on this stock. 

4. Muthoot Finance – Top ROA Lender, with 116 Tons of Gold!

India’s non-banking finance company (NBFC), Muthoot Finance (MUTH IN; “MTF”), lends against gold, arguably the best collateral of all. Its gold jewelry kept as security is up from 147 tons to 166 tons, from December 2016 to December 2018. This may be one reason that the company’s bad loans are low, not only in an India context, but in Asia. Its stage three loans surged after demonetization peaking in December 2017 at INR21.5bn. Since then, figures have fallen sharply, to INR6.4bn as at December 2018. As a percentage of loans, stage three loans declined from 7.6% to 2.0% over this period. With credit costs and write-offs down 96% during 9M19 YoY, credit metrics appear healthy.

5. Catch-Up Session with Intuch Group

We caught up with Intuch Group this week to check how things were going on with them and their subsidiaries, AIS and Thaicom. It’s good to touch base, since it’s been a while, and many things have changed in the interim:

• Intuch self-congratulated themselves for a narrowing of their discount to NAV from 28% to 20% in 2018 while introducing three new investments and announced the breakeven of their shopping network, a joint venture with Hyundai.
• Wongnai, an online foodie guide and one of Intuch’s largest investments, underperformed our revenue forecast significantly, but managed to post impressive revenue growth nevertheless. While profitable, their rapid expansion also means they are unlikely to meet their own internal profitability expectations.
• Thaicom posted a loss in Q4 and almost non-existent earnings in 2018 largely due to asset impairments, but there is some hope in the future with the government’s various PPP (public-private partnership) schemes mentioned in the meeting.
• AIS, the Group’s flagship company, posted flat earnings of Bt30bn and is in the process of reversing a decline in revenue market share through aggressive push in enterprise and consumer services.