The last of the consumer stocks

Kenanga called it a hidden gem and put a target price of RM1.50. I do not put a target price in my blog (as I do not think of my purchases and sale this way). I however would not go so far to call it a hidden gem. A hidden gem is a precious stone which nobody have yet to find.

Yee Lee is a very old consumer stock which have been rather consistent i.e. in being profitable. The bulk of its business is in the trading and manufacturing of edible oil in Malaysia. If it is a gem, what are the products that it does. So here it is as below. Which one you think is the Star among the list of products? Helang. Vesawit and maybe the other edible oil products. I do not think the Sabah Tea and Morning Kiss are much of a value. Besides the below, it also owns an associate stake in Spritzer - a very decent drinking water brand.

Now, what makes me feel like wanting to write about this stock. It is again probably a boring stock. It is hidden among many investors but is it a hidden gem? Currently at RM1.20, it is trading at RM212 million market cap. Given that the company has been around for so many years, I would say it has come a long way. The business that it is in is rather competitive, but Yee Lee has proven to be able to be equal among the others. It may not have the brand strength as Knife (Lam Soon) or perhaps the balance sheet strength of Neptune (under Robert Kuok's PPB), but it has survived and well alive.

How?

If you look at the above 5 year financial highlights and inclusive of its better performance in FY2012, it has done pretty well for the last 5 years from 2008 to 2012. The first quarter results for FY2013 is even better achieving PAT of somewhere around RM8 million for the quarter.

Now, I want to highlight another segment which is in the second red boxed. Not the ROE though. Do not expect the ROE to be good for a business with refinery like Yee Lee. Margin is not expected to be good and we cannot expect business like this to have a ROE of 15%. If ROE is the main indicator, walk away as Yee Lee will never provide this figure as long as it is selling edible oil.

A very important trend is the Net debt to equity ratio. If we look way to the right, it was not doing so well there in terms of its health of its balance sheet. A business like Yee Lee is where it buys crude palm oil or Fresh Fruit Bunch, crush them and turn them into refined oil, brand them and sell. To do that, it needs to use some financing to purchase the raw bunch (it also use the financing for terms provided to retailers). This is where mainly the net debt is from, not overly worrying but if its balance sheet is not strong, it will need to finance it longer or even at a higher rate.

Walk through the left, that indicator which is the net debt to equity has gotten much stronger. Partly to do with the shareholders funds getting bigger as well as a much controlled short term financing. This is also to do with better collection, which could be internal as well as a healthier overall industry - AEON, Giant, Tesco probably pay earlier. Another indicator which is my favorite is cashflow.

If you look above where I have included 2012 numbers for Net cash from operating activities. You can look at the record from 2008 onward from the above chart. It shows a huge improvement. A better cashflow despite the consistency of profitability is very important. Better collection means, lesser bank borrowings as compared to turnover. It hence means lower interest costs. Why did I highlight the depreciation? This is because in a operating cashflow, the depreciation following accounting principle where the earlier or continuous investment will need to be depreciated over a period of time. It is not a cashflow item.

What makes me excited? The better cashflow although I doubt it will achieve another RM64 million of net operating cashflow for FY2013 would probably mean better balance sheet (again), hence better profits as financing costs will be lower and hopefully better dividend as well. As usual I do not know where it stands in terms of wanting to pay and its strategy moving forward, but the much better balance sheet is something which we can appreciate.

Yee Lee has gone up to RM1.20. Frankly, at one point of time few years ago, around RM0.70 I took a look and deemed its balance sheet as not attractive but with the trend of its cashflow and strengthened balance sheet, I am relooking at the business and where it stands.

The business is rather consistent, the lower the crude palm oil price, it probably would be better for Yee Lee, as in current situation. But even if the price of palm oil gets higher, the subsidy from government would have allowed companies like Yee Lee to still be profitable. And, I do not think the subsidy for palm based edible oil would be taken away as by doing so, it would be negative to the country and probably allow other types of edible oil to be more competitive against palm oil based edible oil. It would be inflationary as well. Another thing with this industry in Malaysia is that there seems to be a quota for each of the palm based edible oil producer. Hence, there is always some small margin to be made, but it will remain to be small. For these companies to get out of that trap, they would need to sell some other things. This strategy has been used by Lam Soon pretty well. As for Yee Lee, it does try as it has other businesses in can packaging and corrugated carton packaging. These businesses are always competitive but given where Yee Lee is at, they I would say have done decent, but not fantastic.

The gist of it, Yee Lee is a smallish consumer stock, with a rather steady business, decent balance sheet, positioning in terms of its brand and at its current valuation of around 8x PE, I definitely do not think it is expensive.