How activist Palliser may build shareholder value at Korean industrial giant Samsung C&T

Enterprise: Samsung C&T Corp is a Korea-based firm engaged within the buying and selling of commercial items. The corporate operates its enterprise by a gaggle of segments. These embody engineering and development, buying and selling and funding, in addition to trend and resorts. Shares of the corporate don’t commerce within the U.S.

Inventory Market Worth: $15.35 billion ($94.71 per share)

Share Possession:  0.62%

Common Value: n/a

Activist Commentary: Palliser Capital is a worldwide multi-strategy fund with a bias to Asia and Europe. Based in 2021 by James Smith, who was beforehand the pinnacle of Elliott Funding Administration’s Hong Kong workplace, Palliser applies a value-oriented funding philosophy to a broad vary of alternatives throughout the capital construction the place complexity or misery result in undervaluation that may be monetized by an effort-intensive course of or proprietary catalyst. Practically your entire senior funding group has had vital activist expertise working at Elliott. The agency has expertise investing in each Europe and Asia and their activist funding at Keisei has proven the persistence, conviction and diplomacy of a prime activist.

On Dec. 6, Palliser Capital introduced that it took a 0.62% place in Samsung C&T (SCT).

Palliser thinks that Samsung C&T (“SCT”) is grossly undervalued by the market as a result of sub-optimal capital allocation, historic company governance points and a posh company construction. The investor urged short- and long-term measures that could possibly be taken to create $25 billion of shareholder worth. On its face, creating $25 billion of shareholder worth at a $15 billion firm appears ridiculous. Nevertheless, diving into Palliser’s thesis one might understand that the agency is conservatively underestimating the worth that may be created right here. SCT is a big industrial South Korean conglomerate managed by the Lee household by a number of, cross-owned associates. SCT has a publicly traded market cap of about $15 billion. Its foremost property consist of 5 publicly traded subsidiaries and an working enterprise. The post-tax worth of SCT’s curiosity in these 5 publicly traded subsidiaries are: Samsung Electronics ($13.9 billion), Samsung Biologics ($13.4 billion), Samsung SDS ($1.7 billion), Samsung Life ($1.6 billion) and Samsung Engineering ($300 million). That may be a whole of $30.9 billion of simply ascertainable and realizable worth for a roughly $15 billion firm. This doesn’t even rely the working enterprise, which has $30 billion of income and $1.55 billion of earnings earlier than curiosity, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Utilizing a 5.5 occasions EBITDA a number of, Palliser values this enterprise at $8.4 billion. With web money of $1.1 billion, that may be a firm valuation of $40.4 billion.

Why is that this firm buying and selling at a 63% low cost? For 3 causes. First, its capital allocation insurance policies and practices have left shareholders and others with little confidence that a lot of this worth will accrue to them. SCT has roughly $1.5 billion of annual money movement, and solely roughly 25% of that’s returned to shareholders by a dividend and as much as 60% is used for capex. Samsung is an iconic and structurally essential Korean firm that must be investing and rising. Palliser is just not debating that. The agency wish to see a extra clear and disciplined capex plan that makes use of the backdrop of the return on share buybacks because the benchmark and gives a good return to shareholders. SCT additionally has different alternatives to generate money for capex and shareholder return like taking up some debt (the corporate has $1.1 billion of web money) to decrease its price of capital and probably divesting a number of the disparate and non-synergistic companies that make up the working firm.

Second, SCT’s company governance insurance policies don’t give shareholders confidence that the board is working for them. In South Korea, boards have an obligation to the corporate, to not shareholders. Absent a constitution modification, there are different issues the corporate can do to offer shareholders extra confidence. The present board is 5 unbiased administrators and 4 administration administrators. Whereas Korean firms of this measurement are mandated to have 50% unbiased administrators, “unbiased” is just not outlined. Which means board independence will not be the way in which traders would count on it to be within the U.S. Furthermore, SCT’s unbiased administrators lack any actual C-suite expertise, related business expertise, confirmed portfolio administration and capital allocation experience. So, refreshing the board with skilled unbiased administrators could be an important begin. The board can be staggered. Three of the 4 administration administrators are co-CEOs of the corporate; these people reply to the board and account for one-third of its composition. If SCT named one CEO to whom the opposite division heads would report, it might simplify resolution making. Moreover, extra clear communication with the market and aligning administration’s pursuits with shareholders would additionally go a great distance.

Third, the advanced cross-affiliated possession construction, or “chaebols” as they’re known as in South Korea, causes a deep low cost to worth. SCT was shaped by a sequence of M&A transactions that had been designed extra for the aim of the household preserving management than effectivity. These chaebols have adversely affected the valuation of those firms. For that motive, South Korean chaebols have been changing to two-layer holding firm constructions over the previous 20 years. Samsung is one among two massive firms in South Korea that also has the chaebol construction. This chaebol construction low cost permeates your entire organizational construction. Even with the chaebol construction, Palliser estimates a $25 million valuation hole. Changing to a holding firm construction would enhance the worth of all of the SCT subsidiaries. Relative to the place the inventory trades at present, it might inflate this valuation hole much more.

The undervaluation is just not unsure right here. The important thing query is what can Palliser, or anybody else, do to shut that valuation hole? All Palliser is doing proper now’s bringing these points to a public debate to place some stress on administration to make shareholder pleasant modifications. The agency is just not threatening any confrontational actions. Palliser has a historical past of working with administration to impact change. That’s good right here as a result of successful a proxy combat in South Korea is extraordinarily uncommon. It has been accomplished earlier than, however not by a non-local activist at an iconic firm with a household who owns 30% of the frequent inventory. However the pattern is on Palliser’s aspect as South Korea is getting extra shareholder pleasant yearly. And there’s additionally a superb motive why the Lee household would possibly assist modifications that enhance shareholder worth. Lee household patriarch and former Samsung chairman, Lee Kun-hee, was South Korea’s richest particular person on the time of his demise on Oct. 25, 2020. Lee’s demise triggered the biggest inheritance tax invoice in South Korean historical past, exceeding $10 billion. South Korea’s inheritance tax fee of fifty% is the world’s second highest after Japan. His heirs have been given 5 years to pay the inheritance tax, they usually might definitely use increased worth inventory to margin or extra capital returned to shareholders.

Palliser is just not alone in its pondering. Shareholder Metropolis of London Funding Administration Firm has made two proposals for the 2024 annual assembly: a dividend of roughly $3.42 per bizarre share and a buyback program of $380 million to run till the top of 2024. In South Korea, shareholder proposals are binding if authorized by a majority of shareholders, however they not often are authorized. On the very least, sufficient votes might put stress on administration to do one thing. An excellent begin could be to retire the 13% of excellent shares held as treasury shares, which rely in the direction of excellent shares in South Korea and which administration has already promised to retire inside 5 years. Doing this may instantly enhance earnings per share by 14.4%.

Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional analysis service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio supervisor of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments.