In this briefing:
- Japan Tobacco: No Dire Consequences Despite Late Entry to Heated Tobacco
- Tesla’s Plan B 2.0; Y Not
- Last Week in GER Event-Driven Research: Myob, Rakuten, Delta, Graincorp and Hopewell Holding
1. Japan Tobacco: No Dire Consequences Despite Late Entry to Heated Tobacco
- Late entry to Japanese heated tobacco market resulted in Japan Tobacco (2914 JP) losing market share to peers
- New product launches to give Japan Tobacco a fighting chance against IQOS
- Early maturity of heated tobacco in Japan: a blessing in disguise for Japan Tobacco
- Pricing power is expected to be back on track in future
- PloomTECH will soon be ready to compete with IQOS at a global level
- More product offerings targeting different customer needs in reduced risk products category
- International segment volume growth driven by global flagship brands and acquisitions
- Market unjustly penalising Japan Tobacco for the early maturity of heated tobacco segment
- Transformation of dividend yield from industry worst to industry best
- Undervalued at 10.09x EV/Forward EBIT: DCF target price yields 21.8% upside
2. Tesla’s Plan B 2.0; Y Not
Tesla Motors (TSLA US) has changed its mind, again, and now reportedly is putting on hold plans to close hundreds of its mostly newly opened stores and lay off thousands more employees–at least until the end of the month.
Employees, customers, suppliers, and investors still are reeling over Tesla’s startling decision, announced February 28th, to move immediately to online-only sales, a dramatic reversal of strategy still in place as of the 2018 10-K filing on February 19th in which the company had touted growth via recent store expansions and substantial additions planned globally going forward.
Tesla explained that even with now three substantial price cuts on all its cars and now three significant layoffs since last summer, it must slash costs even more to support the launch of its long overdue $35,000 base version of the flagship Model 3 (see my report Tesla’s New Plan: Buy Before You Try).
I warned clients that Tesla’s stunning strategy reversal seemed driven more by alarming cash consumption plus much weaker than expected sales and profit margins already apparent in what is shaping up to be a disastrous first quarter–troubling trends that may continue. However, as I noted, it also costs money to close stores, get out of leases (good luck with that), fire employees and redistribute remaining staff, and sell off fairly new equipment at steep losses.
Not to mention that shiny new Tesla stores suddenly going dark may appear ominously similar to retail stores going out of business seen increasingly all over the country–a bad look for Tesla, especially given customers already are spooked by its escalating quality, reliability, and service problems (see “Musk and Weird Q3 Developments Are Driving Investors to Telsa’s Rivals” and “Tesla – Dave’s Not Here, and Musk Won’t Leave” and “Tesla: Down to the Wire” and Tesla – Truth and Consequences).
Tesla probably hasn’t seen the light–it’s just received as of March 1st a desperately needed cash infusion by finally securing overdue funding for Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory 3 which has been under construction since January (see Tesla – Shanghai Surprise). Unfortunately, the four banks in Tesla’s new “China Loan Agreement,” which the company announced on Thursday with a rare 8-K filing, committed only to fund a one-year limited purpose loan for up to 3.5 billion yuan ($521 million). This is barely enough time or cash to get the Shanghai assembly plant up and running–much less also stave off the current cash crunch.
But Tesla must keep up appearances as well as bolster its liquidity through at least the end of the quarter as it gets ready to reveal Thursday evening the long-awaited Model Y–though I suspect this won’t result in a massive burst of cash from new reservations as Tesla hopes.
Years of robbing Peter to pay Paul hasn’t produced a sustainable growth model for Tesla, mostly because its business strategy still is better described as, “Wow, we didn’t see that coming.”
Continue reading for Bond Angle analysis.
3. Last Week in GER Event-Driven Research: Myob, Rakuten, Delta, Graincorp and Hopewell Holding
In this version of the GER weekly EVENTS research wrap, we contend that investors should cash out on the MYOB Group Ltd (MYO AU) deal and assess the NAV discount potential for Rakuten Inc (4755 JP) post the IPO launch of Lyft Inc (0812823D US) – of which Rakuten has a 13% stake. Moreover, we dig into the deals for Delta Electronics Thai (DELTA TB) , Graincorp Ltd A (GNC AU) and Hopewell Holdings (54 HK)
More details can be found below.
Best of luck for the new week – Rickin, Venkat and Arun
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