OptsyEagle Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 BNN made a news bleep this morning that Scotiabank downgraded FTP to "SELL" from "NEUTRAL" with a price target of $4.80. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 First, rbc and now this. Bottom must be near. I am already over allocated to this gem. Any one adding? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obtuse_investor Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 Today, I am considering opening a new position with the debentures instead of the commons. My risk aversion tendencies are keeping me away from the equity, even though the upside there could be huge. The 7% debentures are offering YTM of almost 20%, with a reasonable principal protection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted October 17, 2013 Author Share Posted October 17, 2013 I suppose we can expect almost all analysts to cluster around the same target. It reduces reputitional risk (safety in numbers). These are also often self-fulfilling prophesies; you say SELL, people sell, the price drops, and you can say "see, I was right to tell you to sell, the price dropped!". On the other hand, who knows, maybe FTP's streak of bad luck will last forever.... It's kind of funny in a way to look at the symmetry of the situation: A few years ago, they were years away from being fully ramped up, still had lots of hardware to build and test, DP prices were at historic highs, so likely to come down, and they didn't have that much cash on the balance sheet. Share price was in the stratosphere and analysts were bullish. Today, they have finally got the cogen running and are almost fully ramped up, they have lots of cash on the balance sheet, DP has been bouncing along bottom for a while but at least they have a plan B with NBHK, and landquart seems to be stopping the bleeding. Share price is lower than at IPO in 2007 and analysts are bearish. I know it's not quite that clear cut, but it's hard to imagine that risks are not better priced in now than they were then... Anyone has the Scotiabank report? Anything new? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECCO Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 I suppose we can expect almost all analysts to cluster around the same target. It reduces reputitional risk (safety in numbers). These are also often self-fulfilling prophesies; you say SELL, people sell, the price drops, and you can say "see, I was right to tell you to sell, the price dropped!". On the other hand, who knows, maybe FTP's streak of bad luck will last forever.... It's kind of funny in a way to look at the symmetry of the situation: A few years ago, they were years away from being fully ramped up, still had lots of hardware to build and test, DP prices were at historic highs, so likely to come down, and they didn't have that much cash on the balance sheet. Share price was in the stratosphere and analysts were bullish. Today, they have finally got the cogen running and are almost fully ramped up, they have lots of cash on the balance sheet, DP has been bouncing along bottom for a while but at least they have a plan B with NBHK, and landquart seems to be stopping the bleeding. Share price is lower than at IPO in 2007 and analysts are bearish. I know it's not quite that clear cut, but it's hard to imagine that risks are not better priced in now than they were then... Anyone has the Scotiabank report? Anything new? Well, I expect that you will have your questions answered when the next result will be released. I expect that most people will not like next results numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted October 17, 2013 Author Share Posted October 17, 2013 I don't expect Q3 to look very good, but Q4 has the potential to show the light at the end of the tunnel. Wildcard is Chinese gov't. Mr. Market doesn't seem to know quite what to do.. Down about 8% and then back in the green on 5x the average daily volume in half a day... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 guys, we have a tripple here only if this trades back to book. DP pricing is still very depressing but this company now has the resources and plan to go thru this irrational pricing and Chinese mess. The banks are putting 3x 4x based on abnormal pricing yet the downside is not far from here. Go figure. The E is already hurted by the pricing and the analysts give low multiple to reflect the risk and pricing, double discount. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 changed, the LT contract idea is dead, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jose Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 Some lessons for me so far: 1) This is playing out almost perfectly as Phil Fisher's classic new factory pattern. Time and cost-overruns should never be a surprise but always are. Price will be depressed for a long time, even after the new factory is up and running fine because market sentiment will be so negative. Nothing groundbreaking here. It's a little fascinating how susceptible we always are to best-case planning, aka Daniel Kahneman's "Planning Fallacy" - even Kahneman himself when he was planning the deadline for writing the book on planning fallacies!!! (as described in "Thinking, Fast and Slow") 2) I believe Fishers factory example was describing a company with a hi-tech product, not a commodity biz. Commodity cycle timing is the "x" factor to me. If we didn't see the huge drop in DP price, then the buy opportunity would not have presented itself as clearly. However, the clock is ticking and hopefully FTP does not run out of time before we see a rebound in DP. It's hard to establish a reliable margin of safety when so much depends on commodity cycle timing. Perhaps FTP equity should be thought of more like an option play because of the time sensitivity / binary outcome nature. 3) A long term contract doesn't mean much in terms of protection. It's just a biz-dev, customer-relations tool. It's probably a bit of a net negative at the tail ends because it does limit upside - had DP continued its climb upward, FTP would have found it difficult to ditch the contracts without hurting its reputation. I'm sure there will be more lessons up ahead, but hopefully less of the kind that hurt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 nice, when is the next CC? :'( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triedtestedand Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 The big "surprise" in upcoming quarterly results will be the amount of inventory they have (which will be other than "minimal" as in recent quarters), something they telegraphed in recent update ... owing to reducing # of shipments (fewer but larger in #, and at lower cost/unit) likely not timed to align w quarter end, and whatever 1-time skew it imposes on the headline sequential/YOY revenue/EBITDA #'s. What I want to see is what one full quarter of un-interrupted production at Thurso, with semi-reasonable utilization, does to getting closer towards full capacity and targeted cost-of-production costs. They have another planned shutdown next week (according to www.syndicatbois.com), so maybe there are some further incremental enhancements being planned to support such? We'll see soon enough ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 The biggest news near term that we know of will be the export tax ruling. Some say that it maybe out this month, if not, by year end. The market is obviously telegraphing high chance of such taxes with high rate 30%+. But is the price drop too far? Cash + receivable - 220m Debt - 230m Market Cap - 85m So, pretty much we are now paying ~100m for Lanquart and Thurso + option value for LSQ. Quick math: Assume Landquart worth zero. Option value of LSQ is another zero. Chad just treat all the debt as recourse debt. DP pulp is not economical anymore so Thurso's upside is gone with NBSK is the only way to go in the future with cost of $700 per ton and sale price of $800, so earning of 25 millions. Say 5-10 millions for other expenses. So net will be 15-20 millions, thus, we are paying about 5x-7x for earning at current price with the above assumptions. So the current price is not cheap if you are using the above as normalized earning but it's not expensive neither for such a pessimistic view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triedtestedand Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Alertmeipp ... I guess it depends on how you model the NBHK costs. Pre-conversion, I think Thurso was about $670/ton or so if I remember correctly (at least when they had a couple of quarters with reasonable production rates), and that was WITHOUT cogen ($15M to $20M). If so, that takes your net to $30M to $40M EBITDA ... which would be 2x - 3x at friday's price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Triedtestand, interesting info. I was purposely trying to be at least a bit conservative, so i just take around 10 percent off the projected DP cost, and about 10 percent of the market price as sale price . 670$ is as of when? Just wonder if the input cost is higher or lower now. also, on the supply side, do you know what is the percentage of North amercia and Brazil vs the rest of the world like Europe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 i was also assuming they will lower their debt significantly using their cash on hand. If they can retire their more expensive at 80 cents, would be even nicer. They guide that Thurso will be cash flow positive when cogen is on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triedtestedand Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 From FTP financials ... below are the 5 quarters they operated Thurso for full quarters (presumably some mtnc periods in each?) after purchasing it, and before conversion. The last two columns are a calculation ... For column 4 I've used operating income (which was reported) vs EBITDA (which was not, at least not on a segment level) ... but that makes things conservative. Quarter Prod (ton) Rev (,000) Op Income (,000) Implied cost of production {=(R-OI)/P} Implied Net Rev/Ton = (R/P) Q3/10 60,469 37,219 4,442 $542/ton $616 Q4/10 62,038 35,006 -266 $560/ton $564 Q1/11 56,361 35,586 -940 $648/ton $631 Q2/11 54,384 39,961 3,316 $673/ton $735 Q3/11 55,918 36,887 -859 $675/ton $659 - Their Q4/10 was closest they got to 100% of 250K/yr rating ... it was 99.2% ... so pretty good. Lowest was 87% (Q2/11). - I'm presuming higher production cost/tonne is more correlated against lower operational utilization % during later quarters, and not so much higher input costs, but didn't really check too hard. - I think the highest NBHK list prices (which they never realized themselves) during that period was around $800 ... but someone correct me there. My only guidepost is a graph of historical NBHK list prices from page 8 of the following PPT: http://www.fortresspaper.com/images/pdfs/investor_relations/Fortress%20Powerpoint%20May%2027%202013.pdf - They obviously got nowhere near list price, even if my calculated net revenue is undoubtedly exclusive of freight and commissions, but they were getting more per tonne later on (as they trended towards producing premium NBHK later on), even as trend of list prices for NBHK softened during the interval. - Current NHBK list price is around $880 USD. Anyways, this is all without COGEN and/or any other operational efficiencies that they've yielded with subsequent plant CAPEX and mtnc investments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtreeq Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 When all's said and done -- will it be Warren Buffett or Benjamin Graham? (1) When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. (2) Many shall be restored that are now fallen many shall fall that are now in honor. Graham borrowed it from Horace if my memory serves me right :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 From FTP financials ... below are the 5 quarters they operated Thurso for full quarters (presumably some mtnc periods in each?) after purchasing it, and before conversion. The last two columns are a calculation ... For column 4 I've used operating income (which was reported) vs EBITDA (which was not, at least not on a segment level) ... but that makes things conservative. Quarter Prod (ton) Rev (,000) Op Income (,000) Implied cost of production {=(R-OI)/P} Implied Net Rev/Ton = (R/P) Q3/10 60,469 37,219 4,442 $542/ton $616 Q4/10 62,038 35,006 -266 $560/ton $564 Q1/11 56,361 35,586 -940 $648/ton $631 Q2/11 54,384 39,961 3,316 $673/ton $735 Q3/11 55,918 36,887 -859 $675/ton $659 - Their Q4/10 was closest they got to 100% of 250K/yr rating ... it was 99.2% ... so pretty good. Lowest was 87% (Q2/11). - I'm presuming higher production cost/tonne is more correlated against lower operational utilization % during later quarters, and not so much higher input costs, but didn't really check too hard. - I think the highest NBHK list prices (which they never realized themselves) during that period was around $800 ... but someone correct me there. My only guidepost is a graph of historical NBHK list prices from page 8 of the following PPT: http://www.fortresspaper.com/images/pdfs/investor_relations/Fortress%20Powerpoint%20May%2027%202013.pdf - They obviously got nowhere near list price, even if my calculated net revenue is undoubtedly exclusive of freight and commissions, but they were getting more per tonne later on (as they trended towards producing premium NBHK later on), even as trend of list prices for NBHK softened during the interval. - Current NHBK list price is around $880 USD. Anyways, this is all without COGEN and/or any other operational efficiencies that they've yielded with subsequent plant CAPEX and mtnc investments. Thanks for the info. I wish I have more cash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tripleoptician Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 http://www.gurufocus.com/news/231982/jockey-angle-fortress-paper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRK7 Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 - They obviously got nowhere near list price, even if my calculated net revenue is undoubtedly exclusive of freight and commissions, but they were getting more per tonne later on (as they trended towards producing premium NBHK later on), even as trend of list prices for NBHK softened during the interval. - Current NHBK list price is around $880 USD. Anyways, this is all without COGEN and/or any other operational efficiencies that they've yielded with subsequent plant CAPEX and mtnc investments. My understanding is that actual cash transactions for NBHK/NBSK typically take place 25% below list price, so if you see $900 list NBHK, actual transactions might take place closer to $675. I'm not clear whether the 25% discount applies to spot market transactions only, or to contracted sales, but I think it's both--perhaps to a slightly different degree. Anyone have more info on this topic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 - They obviously got nowhere near list price, even if my calculated net revenue is undoubtedly exclusive of freight and commissions, but they were getting more per tonne later on (as they trended towards producing premium NBHK later on), even as trend of list prices for NBHK softened during the interval. - Current NHBK list price is around $880 USD. Anyways, this is all without COGEN and/or any other operational efficiencies that they've yielded with subsequent plant CAPEX and mtnc investments. My understanding is that actual cash transactions for NBHK/NBSK typically take place 25% below list price, so if you see $900 list NBHK, actual transactions might take place closer to $675. I'm not clear whether the 25% discount applies to spot market transactions only, or to contracted sales, but I think it's both--perhaps to a slightly different degree. Anyone have more info on this topic? From my recollection, CFX and even SFK gets quite a bit more than 75% of listed price. They discount their price in return of stable sales and volume Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted October 22, 2013 Author Share Posted October 22, 2013 Fortress Paper Ltd. ("Fortress Paper" or the "Corporation") (TSX:FTP) announced today that it intends to release its third quarter financial results for the period ended September 30, 2013 after the close of the market on Tuesday, November 12, 2013. In connection with the release of its results, Fortress Paper will host a conference call Wednesday, November 13, 2013 at 9:00 a.m. (PST) to discuss the financial results and the Corporation's operations. To participate in the conference call, please dial one of the following numbers: Dial In Numbers: 604-681-8564 Vancouver 403-532-5601 Calgary or International 780-429-5820 Edmonton 416-623-0333 Toronto 613-212-0171 Ottawa 514-687-4017 Montreal Toll Free Dial In Number: 1-855-353-9183 from Canada and USA Participant Pass Code: 15086# Conference Reference Number: 1053825# A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight, December 13, 2013. To access the replay, listeners may dial 1-855-201-2300 from Canada or the USA or dial 403-255-0697 from local Calgary or International. The conference reference number is 1053825# and the participant pass code to access the replay is 15086#. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lessthaniv Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Pulp and Paper Canada Article: http://www.pulpandpapercanada.com/news/dissolving-pulp-outlook-for-Canada/1002670107/?ref=rss&ctid=1002670107 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 why would these companies keep spending hundreds of millions to build DP plans? why not just spend some money to get Thurso right now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lessthaniv Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 If I understand you correctly, I think you're asking why a new player would spend money to build a new plant vs. buying one like Thurso? There is a big difference in the underlying cash costs between the various DP mills that are in existence today. According to Sappi's recent Investor presentation when considering 80% of world supply volumes roughly 45% of that supply has above average costs and 55% of that supply has below average costs and there is a 55% differential between the lowest cost producer and the highest cost producer. That's a big, big difference. The first quartile guys have a 20%-30% cost advantage over the average. The second quartile guys enjoy a modest 5%-20% cost advantage over the average. If you're investing in DP because of the Cellulose Gap Theory that most subscribe too, you're trying to have a plant in place to capture the increasing demand over the next 15-20 years. But this is a commodity and in a commodity business the low cost producers are the long term survivors. So, to answer your question: Plants that fall in the top two quartiles of cash costs are in great long term position to capture the benefits of the cellulose gap. Why would they want to sell? Plants that fall in the bottom two quartiles of cash costs have a significant competitive disadvantage. For someone who wants into this space, those assets are undesirable. However, because of the significant variance in current cash costs, an opportunity exists for a new entrant to enter the market with a more modern mill and below average cash costs and supplant the high cost producers supply. They're in essence, stealing the future cellulose gap growth. Over time, I expect the large variance in cash costs to narrow as cheaper supply comes on stream and supplants high cost supply. According to the article, 50% of global production is currently losing money at these levels. The market is currently oversupplied because the high cost producers haven't felt enough pain yet. They will. For example, The Tiger Group’s Huaihua mill was a 400,000 tonne-per-year paper pulp mill, but it switched to 300,000 tonne-per-year DP production in Q2 2012. It then switched back to paper pulp in Q2 2013. Too much pain. The industry participants are all jockeying for market share and position in the cost curve. It will settle out over time. Sappi Presentation Referenced: http://www.sappi.com/Investors/Documents/Deutsche%20Bank%20September%202013.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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