Sunday, May 6, 2012

BMW preferred shares – should investors prefer?



Finally, after a long lazy time I motivated myself to write something.
So today I want to show you something what might (!) be a result of inefficiency of markets, a topic that always fascinates me.

This might-be anomaly is about the German car-manufacturer BMW (“Bayerische Motoren Werke AG”), a group with almost 70 Billion in Revenue in 2011.
In general I’m not very bullish about the automotive industry, but this, I think, is worth one or two looks in depth.

Its 602 Mio. common stocks (Bloomberg: BMW) are being traded internationally in greats volumes, thereby being highly liquid. Additionally the commons are listed in several indexes, among them the German blue-chip index DAX or the EURO-STOXX.
Additionally there are preferred shares (BMW3) around, some 52,2 Mio, what makes when compared to the commons quite a tiny proportion. Accordingly Volume traded is much lower.
In the week of 05.03.2012-09.03.2012 there were 18,2 Mio. Pref. shares traded, with an average of 3,6 Mio/day. In my opinion that makes still quite a lot and should be suffice for a market to function and build an appropriate price. During the same time volume of commons was 261,5 Mio, with an average of 52,3M/day.
Due to the strong link between common shares and indices, Beta should be higher with the commons, as indeed it is. During the last year BMWs Beta (DAX) was 1,15 over the past 5 years 1,11. BMW3 has had a Beta of 0,99 and 1,05 accordingly. 
Same reason will probably explain the reduced volatility, last year commons had a volatility of 40,7%, whilst BMW3 had some 36,1%. Interestingly the spread seems to increase in the more recent time, for 5 years the spread was some 0,1%, during the last month it went up to 7%.
On Image 1 and 2 you can see screenshots with the data mentioned above.



Now let’s go on to the core this: The price.
On the following Diagram you will see:
a) The daily adjusted closing price of the common stocks (in blue, labeled Stamm, left Scale, in EUR)
b) The daily adjusted closing price of the preferred shares (in pink, labeled VZ, left Scale, in EUR)
c) The daily spread between those two stocks (in read, labeled spread, right Scale, in percentage)
From The raw data was taken from yahoo finance and processed by myself.



As you can see, right now the Spread between the two shares is quite high again, however far from historic height in late 2009. Median Spread is 28,23%, average is 32,88%, correlation 0,8697.
Now let’s see the dividend of each type of share:



As you can see, difference is quite small, only 0,02 EUR, what might have been something in 2000, when there was only 0,46 EUR/Share to be given, but with 2,30 (proposed) for 2011, this 2 cents don’t make much of a difference. Also consider that you will give up your voting rights for this 2 cents.
So naturally there must be a discount for preferred shares, however some 55% are quite a lot.
This is the estimated dividend yield with closing prices from the 16.03.2012: 3,2% common, 4,9% preferred.
So to come to an end, in my opinion the preferred shares are a much better pick right now since the discount a discount of 45% is too much. Ownership is stable, there are no roomers of major shareholder trying to gather up common stocks (=voting rights) and thereby trying to take control over. The last buyback program was in 2006 (3% of commons), and I doubt there it will be renewed.

All in all, I see chances here by going long on BMW3.

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting article. The price difference between regular and preferred stocks has declined a bit since you wrote the article but it's still pretty large.

    What do you think about the price difference between owning Volkswagen shares directly or via Porsche? The discount is around 25%, and it seems to be related to law suits Porsche is still facing from some years ago (when lots of hedge funds lost a fortune speculating on Porsche's potential acquisition of Volkswagen). According to the following article (http://www.beyondproxy.com/booth-laird-presentation/) Volkswagen also looks interesting from a valuation point of view and without having done much research myself yet it looks like it's onto something. Thanks

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    1. Hi Jordi,

      thanks for you comment.
      yes, on BMW the discount window definitely got smaller.

      About Porsche: I think this is a very different situation than with BMW. There is legal risk involved on the Porsche side as you mentioned, also there is a complicated company structure.
      The key difference is that with Porsche/VW a reason for the discount can be clearly seen so maybe the discount is even explained by this.
      With BMW i don't see that kind of "simple" explanation f.e. due to higher risks.

      About the automobile industry I'm not very bullish, seeing that demand is decreasing not only in Europe. If I remember 2008/2009 how fast the financial position of big automobile companies here in Germany deteriorated to the extent that even government programs were set into motion I'm not very comfortable with investing in this industry.
      Current valuation levels across all industries seem very optimistic to me, however on the other hand investment opportunities are scarce.

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  2. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that the Porsche/VW case is much trickier. I don't think the legal risk is that high (so far all courts have ruled in favor of Porsche, plus the legal process is now taking place in Germany... and hedge funds don't have very good press). But I'm not a lawyer so I can't say much about it.

    Regarding the automobile industry, I agree that it's a very complicated industry and that if you invest in the wrong point of the cycle (like at the end of 2007) you can lose a lot of money. However, it really looks like VW has been making a lot of progress over the last years and it has relatively quietly achieved a position of dominance in markets like China and Brazil. Their market share over there is crazy. The pessimism about the EU and the sector might be giving us a great opportunity that in a normal situation would not be possible. I think that for the moment I'll wait but if there's another of those short EU crisis (Cyprus 2 or something) and the markets go down I will probably invest. It's not a short term investment, rather a type of company that in 5-7 years from now it's likely to be in an even better position.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Jordi,

      you are right when you say that the timing of an investment decision is of extreme importance. An entry at the wrong time and it will take a long time to recover your initial investment, even if there was a big discount to the "true" value of the company.
      In the current market environment it is very difficult to find attractive valued companies with such a discount.
      I'm not comfortable when the market is declining because of lower unemployment in the US. It's sick.
      For the future I hope the interest rates will normalize again, equity risk premiums sink.
      We will see, surely such a process will take time and be painful.

      It's also true that esp. German car-makers have a strong position in China/Brazil. Yet I think those countries are having a lot of trouble with their government investments. Also news from there recently don't seem so positive.
      We will see, to me it looks like a (little) US-comeback .

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