It's nice to have a go-to place for consistently finding undervalued stocks. I've found mine.
Spinoffs. They are loathed, sold off by investors, and most importantly they are often undervalued. I love the smell of spinoffs in the morning. Anytime, in fact. And you should, too, if you like making money in the market.
Let me tell you how I stalked an undervalued Frontier Communications
The secret hiding spot
The field of special situations can be a happy hunting ground. As Joel Greenblatt details in his book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, special-situation investing led him to 50% annualized returns for a decade. That type of return transforms a $1 investment into $52 in just 10 years.
Such special situations are created by transactions that transform the business -- spinoffs, reorganizations, and recapitalizations, to name a few. But the value created by such transactions often isn't reflected in financial statements, and so agile investors can get a jump, and a good price, on these stocks before they appreciate to full value. These situations can be superficially complicated, but it's this transactional complexity that often creates value for agile investors.
Here's how it worked with Frontier.
The special transaction
In mid-2009, Frontier announced that it was buying a massive amount of access lines from Verizon, a move that would effectively triple the size of the company. To pay for this deal, Frontier agreed to take on several billion in debt and issue hundreds of millions of new shares of its stock, nearly 700 million, in fact. That move would more than triple the share count. Verizon received the stock as payment and agreed to distribute it to its own shareholders when the deal closed.
It took a little over a year for the deal to pass all the regulatory hurdles, and during that time Frontier's stock traded in a narrow range of between about $7 and $8 per share. In July 2010 the deal was officially consummated, Verizon dispensed the shares, and Frontier's price proceeded to drop as Verizon's investors sold the stock in droves.
But that price action was entirely predictable. Investors who wanted to own a megacap play on wireless telecom weren't likely to want to own a midcap wireline player. Also, Verizon stock was owned by index funds and mutual funds that have a mandated style and composition, so they were disallowed from owning Frontier, even if they thought it was an undervalued stock. They were forced to sell. With hundreds of millions of shares coming to the market in a short burst, the price was bound to drop.
As a result, the stock traded five to 10 times its average volume for about three weeks, but never closed below $7 per share. During that selling, Frontier shares were yielding at least a 10% dividend. But finally, the selling abated, it was time to buy in, and the stock appreciated more than 30% in the following six months as the deal's uncertainty was eliminated and synergies were realized.
Special-situation investing is all about taking advantage of these market inefficiencies, which have nothing to do with the value of the company, and riding them to profit.
The next opportunity
Here's the free idea I mentioned at the top of this piece. It's a special situation involving Mosaic
But before you run out and buy Mosaic now, please note that shares look expensive, at a 13.7 EV/EBITDA multiple. Mosaic produces potash, among other things, and that has been a particularly hot sector of late, as a play on the developing world's agriculture. Australian commodities giant BHP Billiton
Special deals like this are being struck all the time, if you know where to look. DryShips
Want more ideas like this?
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