Brief Event-Driven: StubWorld: Can One’s Offer For Kian Joo Can; Mahindra At Possible Set-Up Levels and more

In this briefing:

1. StubWorld: Can One’s Offer For Kian Joo Can; Mahindra At Possible Set-Up Levels
2. Korean Stubs Spotlight: Close the Pair Trade Between BGF Co. & BGF Retail

1. StubWorld: Can One’s Offer For Kian Joo Can; Mahindra At Possible Set-Up Levels

This week in StubWorld …

• Can One Bhd (CAN MK)‘s gets shareholder approval to launch a Mandatory General Offer for 33%-held Kian Joo Can Factory (KJC MK). (note, both legs are illiquid)
• Curtis Lehnert sees Mahindra & Mahindra (MM IN)‘s discount to NAV at its widest since 2015.

Preceding my comments on Can One/Kian Joo, Mahindra and other stubs are the weekly setup/unwind tables for Asia-Pacific Holdcos.

These relationships trade with a minimum liquidity threshold of US$1mn on a 90-day moving average, and a % market capitalisation threshold – the $ value of the holding/opco held, over the parent’s market capitalisation, expressed in percent – of at least 20%.

2. Korean Stubs Spotlight: Close the Pair Trade Between BGF Co. & BGF Retail

On January 8th, 2019, we wrote a report on initiating a pair trade of going long BGF Co Ltd (027410 KS) and going short Bgf Retail (282330 KS). (Korean Stubs Spotlight: A Pair Trade Between BGF Co. & BGF Retail) This trade has worked out well and now we think this is a good time to close this trade.

The return on this pair trade was 7.5%. (This assumes no commission costs, pricing spreads, taxes, or borrowing cost) using closing share price as of January 8th to February 19th, 2019. This trade was made over a period of 42 days so the annualized returns would be nearly 65%. 

It appears that many traders and investors agreed that BGF was excessively undervalued versus BGF Retail early in 2019. Among the factors cited above, the excessive NAV discount to its intrinsic value as well as the market’s overt concerns about the size of the tender offer between BGF and BGF Retail in 2018 appear to be the key factors that drove the share prices of these two firms diverging excessively in 2H 2018 but then converging back to their norms so far in 2019.