Share Investor Friday free for all: Edition 12

Fat Prophets

There have been some good company results out this week. Ryman Healthcare had a 20% rise in profit for the last half year and forecast another strong year in 2008, while Fisher and Paykel Health half year profit was down sharply because of repatriated funds in US dollars lower due to the weak US currency but sales and profitability before currency exchange were up strongly.


Part of a Ryman Healthcare Village

Earlier this week, Mainfreight half year profit rose around 9% before abnormals and future guidance gave investors positive encouragement for their investment in the company.

OK, OK, so I'm blowing my own trumpet because I own shares in all these companies? Well, Yes and No.

While individually these 3 companies are doing well, with rising sales, profits and good future profits indicated, as a group they show that New Zealand listed companies are still doing well, despite all the international drama of market turmoil, rising oil, mineral, commodity prices and Al Gore putting his carbon footprint in his mouth again.

Investing long term in good companies always beats the likes of trading carbon fairy dust!


I'll be baackk

The Loan Terminator, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is back in the news again this week, in a sequel to his Terminator movies that would have him eliminate Californian home loan debtors the pain of repaying their sub prime mortgages at normal interest rates by making the sweetheart deals they initially signed up for extend for a period of up to seven years.


The Governator terminates debt while
looking cool at the same time.

The bulk of these "sweetheart" deals at very low interest rates were due to be recalculated in several months time but 3 lending institutions who have exposure to 25% of sub prime loans, Countrywide Financial Corp, GMAC, Litton Loan Servicing and HomEq Servicing, seem to have convinced Arnie that eliminating the inevitable collapse of borrowers next year and putting it off till 2014 is a great idea.

As I have ranted on before, these individuals, as sad as it is, simply need to bite the bullet and face the music now, instead of slowly dragging down the rest of us with them.

Arnie needs to go back to Hollywood and fight the bad guys not Terminate borrowers' and lenders' responsibilities to face their own debt woes.

Terminator 4 anyone?


The carbon fairy has no clothes on

In what is clearly gearing up to be one of history's greatest financial explosions and implosion when it all inevitably collapses, is news today that the carbon trading "market" tripled in size to US$30 Billion last year.

With this market built on failed "science", lies and spruiking by the likes of wealthy green investors Al Gore and Leonardo Di Caprio, like all markets built on such flimsy backgrounds the money made, and there will be billions, will be made by those that get on the greenwagon first:

Since co-founding Climate Change Capital in 2003, James Cameron and his business partner Mark Woodall have turned their company into a powerhouse in the burgeoning global market in greenhouse gases. Driven by the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, an accord Cameron helped write, this corner of the derivatives arena is growing as never before.


Clearly, Cameron and Woodall are smart cookies but these self interested scam artists, who have written their own rules and now profit from them by "investing" other peoples hard earned cash into worthless carbon credits will be the first to withdraw their own funds when the climate change hysteria is revealed for what it is, that the sun simply getting hotter.


A Carbon footprint recently traded on Ebay for
US$1 Million.

I am old enough to remember similar things happening during the dot com era where mum and dad investors piled into worthless "businesses" and the big boys got out first before the truth about the bulk of silicon valley Internet companies hit the investment fan.

The same thing is going to happen with the carbon trading market.


Fletcher Building's got game



Artist impression of the new Eden Park

In a provisional decision, it has been announced today that Fletcher Building has been picked as the preferred builder for the new Eden Park revamp, valued at anywhere between NZ$190 million and north of $300 million, depending on who you speak to.

The stadium is to be rebuilt for the 2011 Rugby World Cup and construction is expected to start in August 2008.

If Fletcher's can negotiate a good deal for them, it is going to be good for the company. I'm mindful though that many stadiums built around the world have caused construction companies much grief, as changes to design, construction problems, and political meddling has put profits at stake and even put company futures at risk.

The new Wembly Stadium almost sunk the Australian builder Multiplex last year and the company building the new Vector Arena in Downtown Auckland lost big dollars on that project.

Grab your seat for the game, Fletchers could be in for a bumpy ride.


NZX Market Wrap



The benchmark NZSX-50 index, which yesterday ended below where it started the year, close up 16.8 points on 4071.0.

Turnover was light at $71 million.

"The over-riding theme was one of extreme caution," said ABN Amro broker Matt Willis. While value was starting to emerge, there was no rush to buy. Investors remained risk averse due to the US subprime mortgage crisis, which he said was a bi-product of weakening economy.

On the local scene, results of export stocks this week revealed the lagged impact of the high dollar was starting to hurt as currency hedges ran out. Companies were concerned about higher costs.

"Operating conditions are less than positive and that has followed through into sentiment."

However, retirement village operator Ryman Healthcare picked up 2c to 207 after reporting a 22 per cent lift in half year net profit after tax to $34.7 million.

The main factor in the market's rise today was a 7c rise in top stock Telecom, to 427. Rival Telstra rose 6c to 536.

No.2 stock Fletcher Building pared its morning loss to 5c, ending on 1175, after it was confirmed as the prime contractor to revamp Eden Park.

No.3 Contact Energy finished 4c up on 889.

NZ Oil & Gas eased back 2c to 110, having traded up to 113 in the morning, after gaining 11c yesterday on news estimated oil reserves for the Tui field had increased 30 per cent to 41.7 million barrels. That was worth an extra $200 million to NZOG, over time.

Sky City ended unchanged on 518 with possible bidders expected to show their hands early next week. However, share action suggests the market does not hold high hope for high offers.

Australian stocks mostly had a good session despite uncertainty surrounding tomorrow's election result.

Lion Nathan, which on Wednesday reported a strong result with good prospects for 2008, closed up 60 at 1100.

Goodman Fielder recovered some of its recent losses with a 9c gain to 230.

NZPA

NZ Dollar Wrap

Reuters currency rates

5pm today 5pm yesterday

NZ dlr/US dlr US75.62c US75.46c
NZ dlr/Aust dlr A86.25c A86.41c
NZ dlr/euro 0.5060 0.5074
NZ dlr/yen 81.60 82.10
NZ dlr/stg 36.47p 36.53p
NZ TWI 69.31 69.42
Australian dollar US87.64c US87.36c
Euro/US dollar 1.4942 1.4870
US dollar/yen 107.89 108.84

Disclosure: I own Fletcher Building, Ryman Healthcare, Fisher Healthcare and Mainfreight shares

C Share Investor 2007

Market Musings on the NZX

Market watchers in North America and Europe may well be asleep as I write this. If you were down in this part of the world you would be watching your portfolio drop once again after NZX investors took their lead from you who are asleep at present. The NZX is down 60 points as I write with the ASX down 165.



My portfolio is down almost 20% from this years highs and the bulk of that drop has been in the last two weeks.

Fear has gripped our market and our dollar cross with the US dollar has fallen from an all time high of over 81c to less than 70c as I write because foreign investors are moving their Kiwi investments offshore for "safer" risks.

I am not selling and will not sell but my main problem at the moment is when to buy more of what I already hold. There are 4 stocks out of the 11 that I hold that have fallen below their original purchase price but they seem to becoming cheaper and cheap by the day. I wait with my finger poised on the buy button on my computer screen.

One stock I am looking at more closely, now that the Summerset Retirement float has been cancelled today, is my holding in Ryman Healthcare (RYM) the Retirement home operator. It is looking tasty but could go lower.

Opportunities also abound in NZs Blue chips. Telecom New Zealand(TEL) is due a 14c dividend soon and is trading well down. Fletcher Building (FBU) has been given a right troweling as of late, with a 23c dividend due and Sky City Casino (SKC) has its chips down a few days before their full year announcement on Monday 21 August.

Auckland International Airport (AIA) has news that just over 6% of its shares have been purchased by Infratil (IFT) in conjunction with a Government Retirement fund, a potential blocker of a merger between AIA and Dubai International Aerospace. Strangely AIA shares are up today.

Steel and Tube (STU) the steel maker and supplier, have announced a 10% profit decrease today on increased business costs and increased revenue. A 14c dividend waits in the wings for STU shareholders.

Fisher and Paykel Appliances(FPA) has announced that they are moving their electronics division to Thailand. It will share a factory roof with the washer division that announced plans to move there earlier this year. 96 jobs will go from South Auckland with a saving to FPA of 6 million dollars.

Meanwhile the Labour Government is in trouble with its voters because the partially State owned and listed airline , Air New Zealand (AIR) has been carrying Australian troops to get them to theatres of war in the Middle East, something that cuts against the beliefs of Labour ministers and a minority of over vocal New Zealanders. The share price landed sharply.

On a much lighter and perhaps tasty note, for the third day in a row Burger Fuel(BFW) has failed to trade.



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  c Share Investor 2007

Time for Retirement?

Two new Retirement Home Village operators are going to list on the NZX in the next few months. Last week AMP announced the floating of their Retirement unit and today ING have announced that their two village's are on the block for a float to the public.

When these two operators are listed it will bring the number of listed retirement home operators to four.

These IPOs' are part of a wave of activity sweeping the retirement village sector.

CVC Partners said last month that it was looking at selling Guardian Healthcare and Goldman Sachs JBWere's private equity unit is rumoured to be looking to float, sell or raise new capital for its Vision Senior Living group.

The two IPO's also have a connection of sorts. NZ First Capital, who are floating Summerset and Forsyth Barr, who is floating ING's retirement unit, got together to float the abysmal IPO failure, Feltex, a few years ago. Reminders of overvaluations , high debt and creative accounting still resound in the investment community from that fiasco.

The ING groups' village's are by far the smallest by number of units at around 150 with only two properties, while AMPs' Summerset has 11 village's and over 1500 occupants.

ING are asking for $NZ100m while AMP are looking at 300m.

Ryman Healthcare [RYM.NZ], the biggest listed Retirement operator, has a market cap of over 1B and Metlifecare[MET.NZ]around 700m.

Ryman Healthcare has today just reiterated its profit growth for the current year at around 20%. It has been growing at this rate for many years and seems confident that it will grow at this rate for years to come.

At first glance AMP's Summerset looks like a great opportunity to get into this industry, which is growing rapidly as the population gets older. How good the offer really is will only become fully apparent as we get a look at the prospectus in a few weeks time. Until then we can reserve judgement.

On the other hand the ING offer I have some problems with. While ING is a highly reputable company, the track record of some of the participants may give cause for some restraint before plunking down your moola. Colin Reynolds was the head of the pyramid "property development" company Chase Corp which went bust in the 1980s, while Robin Congreve was involved with Fay Richwhite during the Winebox tax fiasco. Beware.

One of their villages is also 20 years old so may need some capital to fix up the paintwork and spruce up the surroundings and decor for the 21st century.

The retirement sector looks set for good growth for some years to come. With good margins and rapidly increasing and also affluent population. The baby boomers, when they do decide to relinquish their hold on the rest of us, will provide a mini-boom in this industry in 10-15 years.

The added bonus of consolidation as the players in this sector get more numerous is an added attraction. Currently the majority of retirement home living is being done by individual owners of villages, that is, operators owning just one village. Good assets are always up for sale.

Of course no investment is without risk and the retirement sector, like every other one, cannot continue to grow unabated the way it has. It will have its ups and downs.

Post prospectus of AMPs' Summerset, if the figures and management look good, I am going to buy as much as I can. If it is the golden egg that I think it is then demand is going to far outstrip supply.

Burger Fuel eat your heart out.

DISCLOSURE I own Ryman Healthcare shares

Related Share Investor Reading

Stocks on my Watchlist: Metlifecare Ltd
Why did you buy that stock? Ryman Healthcare

Related Amazon Reading


The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition by Robert G. Hagstrom
Buy new: $9.72 / Used from: $6.67
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c Share Investor 2007