We visited Cosco recently and came away less upbeat on the company's prospects for an earnings recovery in the near term.
Lower expectations for Cosco stems from:
(1) Stockpile of steel at high locked-in prices;
(2) Inefficiencies in execution;
(3) Possibility of further order cancellations and delivery deferrals; and
(4) A drop in the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), which dampened earnings expectations for the group's bulk shipping segment.
Cosco will remained saddled by high costs for steel plates at over US$1,000/tonne until end 2010, which will be allocated to
30 new dry bulk carriers under construction. This will keep the group's shipbuilding margins under pressure until FY11F.
Thus far, Cosco has experienced order cancellations of 13 bulk carriers and postponements for delivery of 39 bulk carriers.
Management indicated that there is a possibility that order cancellations and delivery reschedulement would continue to occur
given the weak demand for dry bulk carriers.
We have reduced our FY09F-FY11F earnings by 19%-25% due to:
(1) Reduced EBIT margins for its shipbuilding, repair and marine engineering division – from 10%-12% to 5%-7%; and
(2) Decreased EBIT margin by 5 percentage points to 55% for FY09F and 60% for FY10F-FY11F.
Following this reduction in our earnings forecasts, Cosco currently trades at a FY10F PE of 17x, 15% below Cosco's three-year
forward PE average of 20x. As a China-play proxy, Cosco's valuations represent a premium compared to 13x for Singapore’s
oil & gas industry.
We have downgraded our call on Cosco from BUY to a HOLD with lower fair value of S$1.17/ share based on a FY10F PE of 17x.
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