Wednesday, 28 March 2012

IOI Corporation (IOI MK, SELL, FV RM5.38, Last Close: RM5.37)


THE BUZZ
According to Channel News Asia, Indonesian plantation company Bumitama Agri lodged its prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Monday for listing on the Singapore Exchange. The IPO could raise as much as SGD200m, which will be used for new planting. Indonesia's Harita Group and palm oil firm IOI Malaysia are two of Bumitama's controlling shareholders.

Separately, The Edge reported that IOI Corp is set to make a paper gain of USD226m from the dilution of its stake from 36.0% to 30.4%.

OUR TAKE
We  understand that  Bumitama has  a  nucleus planted area of  about 90k ha, with  an weighted average tree age of  about  5 years old. While we do not doubt Bumitama’s IPO could do well given its impressive list of cornerstone investors, we do not think the IPO will have any positive impact on IOI Corp’s stock price. This is because the  offering  will be priced at around 11-12x PE compared to IOI’s own PE of around 16x.

Bumitama is poised  to show strong production growth given its  abundant newly matured areas, which will  see fresh fruit bunch (FFB) production accelerate in the next 5–6 years. However, we do believe that  the  yield drag factor will be  quite significant and  could undermine its near-term profitability. Hence, investors buying into Bumitama’s IPO will need to take a longer term investment horizon. Bumitama’s young tree age profile nicely complements IOI’s aging tree profile. Hence, if IOI were to raise its stake in Bumitama from one-third to above 50%, it could be very positive for IOI’s stock price as this will significantly boost its FFB production growth going forward.

We are maintaining our Sell call on IOI in  view of its rich valuation relative to other purer and bigger plantation names, most of which can be bought at the low teens CY12 PE. We also do not think the market will be excited about the USD226m one-off gain arising from the deemed disposal in Bumitama. 

Source: OSK188 

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