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19

MEG Stock Review: Why I Invested In Megaworld Corporation?

meg case study

What makes stock market investing enjoyable for me is the job of valuing a company myself I’m interested in investing with.

Back then I don’t know anything about financial statements. If you’ll ask me to interpret a financial statement, I will be at a total loss.

But if you’ll ask me to design and build a structure’s electrical system, I can do it, and I’m good at it. But interpreting it isn’t that hard as I expected. I just read a book about Warren Buffet’s investing principles, applied it and now I feel that I’m more than confident enough to trust my own valuation rather than totally relying on an experts stock picks.

What I do is that I value a company myself then compare it to COL’s Investment Guide then I make a decision to buy it or not. Starting today, I’ll share how I do it.

I’m not an expert on these stuff. I’m just some guy starting out applying Warren Buffet’s investing principles so there might be errors which I’ll try to improve on the coming days.

Valuations

So to begin, I’ll start from the first company I invested in, Megaworld Corporation (MEG). Let’s see if MEG has a durable competitive advantage.

First of all, check the Revenue, Net Income, Retained Earnings, Inventory and Cash & Short Term Investments. Make sure that the figures are increasing in value every year. If not, then there’s no point in continuing through.

Historical Data (in Mil of PHP)

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Revenue

52,802

35,930

29,810

28,625

20,542

Net Income

21,220

8,971

7,299

8,032

5,026

Retained Earnings

62,470

42,457

34,486

28,023

20,590

Cash & Short-Term Investments

25,368

32,010

26,994

30,434

22,157

Total Inventory

69,299

44,817

37,508

28,251

10,085

In this example, you can see that all of the figures are increasing in value every year. This means that there is some kind of durable advantage working in the company’s favor. The Cash & Short Term Investments is erratic but it’s fine as long as it doesn’t show a consistent decline in value. The figures above tells me that these are good signs of a company that I should invest with in the long term.

Now let’s see the income statement and let’s compute and evaluate the ratios below;

Income Statement Ratios

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Gross profit margin

72%

64%

61%

64%

57%

SG&A to gross profit

11%

14%

15%

14%

10%

R&D to operating income

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

D&A to gross profit

3%

4%

4%

3%

4%

Interest expense to operating income

5%

10%

9%

7%

7%

Net income to total revenue

40%

25%

24%

28%

24%

Take note of this pointers:

  • Gross Profit Margin greater than 40% is best. Avoid companies with less than 20%.
  • SGA to Gross Profit less than 30% is best. Avoid anything higher than that.
  • The lower the R&D to Operating Income ratio, the better.
  • The lower the Depreciation to Gross Profit ratio, the better.
  • Interest Expense to Operating Income lower than 15% is best.
  • Net Income to Total Revenue of greater than 20% is best. Avoid anything lower than 20%. An exception to this are banks and financial companies since they are sometimes highly leveraged institutions.

As you can see, MEG passed all these indicators of a company with a durable competitive advantage. All the figures on the chart passed all the indicators above.

Now let’s see the Earnings Per Share or EPS.

Period

Earnings Per Share

2014

0.67

2013

0.31

2012

0.28

2011

0.32

2010

0.20

EPS should be on a constant upward trend. As you can see, it slightly dipped on 2012 but all in all it shows a continuous upward trend so that’s good.

Now let’s see the balance sheet and evaluate the ratios below.

Balance Sheet Ratios

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Receivables to gross profit

54%

78%

77%

94%

120%

Current ratio

3.14

3.80

3.17

3.35

2.69

Return on assets

10%

5%

5%

6%

5%

True return on equity

19%

10%

10%

13%

9%

Return on equity

19%

10%

10%

13%

9%

Take note of this pointers:

  • The lower the Total Receivables to Gross Profit, the better.
  • Current Ratio of greater than 100% is best.
  • Net Income to Total Assets must be high.
  • True Return to Equity of greater than 20% is best.

Total Receivables to Gross Profit shows a high percentage but it eventually goes to a downtrend so we can expect a lower percentage for the next couple of years if this continues.

The Current Ratio is good but the Net Income to Total Assets and True Return on Equity shows a low percentage but that’s still okay because all other indicators passed the minimum thresholds. In conclusion, MEG still passed this evaluation.

Now for the Cash flow Statement, we only need to evaluate the Net Income to Capital Expenditures for a 5-yr period. We are looking for a percentage lower than 25% or if it goes above 25%, it should not be greater than 50%. In MEG’s case, it’s 49% so it’s good.

We also need to look into the Issuance (Retirement) of Stock, Net. If you see negative figures on this column, it means that the company is buying back its shares and that is a good sign.

Now if the company is proven to have a durable competitive advantage based on the financial indicators above, then it’s time to know if the price of the stock is undervalued or not. We use the Equity Bond Theory.

We now compute for the %Rate of Return to know if it’s undervalued or not. A %RoR of greater than 10% is what we are looking for.

Assuming stock closing price of 4.85 Php today and a 5-Yr Gov’t bond yield of 3.8717%;

%RoR = (Net Income / Market Capitalization) x 100

%RoR = (21,220,000,000.00 / 156,324,468,853) x 100

%RoR = 13.57%

Final Thoughts

With this percentage, we now conclude that MEG is a much better investment if we were to compare it to a gov’t bond today. It is also undervalued because %RoR is greater than 10%.

To put it in a perspective, a stock price of 4.85 Php today can be approximately 9.16 Php five years from now.

So that’s it! It may sound so overwhelming but that’s a good start nonetheless. Definitely for newbies.

Have fun investing!

  • July 23, 2015

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  • PP says:

    I’m interested to learn how to get the future value of the company, I just wat to know how can I find the data that you have presented in this report, is it from COL? Thank you!

    • marfsalv says:

      Hi PP, i got my data on the financial times website. You have to signup for a free account to view the 5-yr financials. 🙂

      • PP says:

        Thanks for your reply, I hope you can also write about how company’s fair value is computed. Like for MEG TRC’s FV for that is 5.86.

        • marfsalv says:

          Computing for fair value is difficult because there’s no precise calculation as to how to compute it because a part of its calculations are based on what the future lies ahead. That means interpreting future forecasts, news, actual quarterly earnings and many other factors so I leave it up to COL’s analysts. 😀

  • li says:

    whoa! Im relieved!

  • Allan says:

    Sir,

    Very informative lalo na sa katulad kong newbie sa stocks…

    Keep it up.

    Thanks,

  • Ernie says:

    Wow ang galing naman dami ako natutunan, REE din ako from TIP batch 92 Newbie lang din sa stocks. Salamat ng marami Mark

  • Ruth F. Yap says:

    I want to start investing in stocks, how do i start? Thank you!

  • Kalvin says:

    Nice Read. Ok yung pagka explain mo ng Fundamental Analysis.. Thumbs UP

  • Diego Odchimar III says:

    I have invested on 1000 shares of MEG. This article was written 4 years ago. MEG value per share today is only 5.67. Will it ever go up to 9.16 as predicted?

    • It may or may not. Projections change periodically because of actual earnings reported. If it always meets above expectations, then we may expect higher stock prices as that translates slowly into value.

  • Grace says:

    Thanks a lot. I’ll share this with my friends.
    i’m your fan now. (giggle)

  • jac says:

    Php3.53 nalang sya ngayon ?

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