21 May 2013

Back on 14 February, when I wrote recommending Go-Ahead Group, I included summaries of my views on the other transport stocks, including this on FirstGroup: At 189p, FirstGroup has a market capitalisation of £911m but an enterprise value of £3357m due to £2446m of net debt (including pension liabilities). Its historic dividend yield of 12.5% tells us that the market expects the company to cut or skip its dividend (decision due in May). This would be a speculative investment and is too dangerous for my taste. With revenues of £6500m, this business is not going to disappear but the risk is that it will end up being mostly owned by creditors rather than current owners of the equity. And so, it came to pass, more or less. Yesterday equity owners were asked to put up a fresh £615m to defend the equity’s role in the company’s balance sheet against the creditor wolf pack: or as the rights issue press release coyly puts it – to “support the Group’s objective to remain investment grade”….Let’s hear it for investment grade! Yay! The poor shares swooned yesterday – down by 30% to 156p. It’s strange how bad news seems harder to predict than good, no matter, apparently, how explicit the evidence of publicly available facts. It may be that the terms of the rights’ issue – 3 new shares for every 2 existing shares at 85p each – were pitched at such a low level that the odour of desperation was repellent. In passing, fees of £30m (nearly 5% of gross proceeds) for an issue that surely does not need to be underwritten demonstrate that there are still bankers out there whose skills surpass mortal understanding. Never mind. It is not immoral to make a mistake, nor to be stupid, nor to wonder whether new investors might at some point take advantage of the pain of others. At today’s cum-rights price of 156p, FirstGroup has a market cap of £750m and net debt (including pension liabilities) of £2280m for an enterprise value of £3030m, or 0.44x revenues. These ratios will change after 11 June, when the shares trade ex-dividend but, on the face of it, the value...