Mid Year 2016 Portfolio Review

Brexit free discussion ahead, it was a fairly crazy first half of the year even before the last week, at one point in February my blog portfolio was down almost 20% before climbing back to gain of ~6% at the halfway point of the year.  The significant winners have been MMA Capital, NexPoint Residential, American Capital and Gramercy Property Trust - the significant losers have been CSRA, Liberty Global's LiLAC Group and Par Pacific Holdings.

Current Position Updates:

• Crossroads Capital (XRDC) is soliciting a shareholder vote to convert to a liquidating trust, cash makes up about $1.40 of the $2.05 current share price, it may take a few years to fully liquidate but I assume much of the cash will be distributed to shareholders (technically unit holders) shortly after the liquidating trust conversion reducing the basis and pulling some of the potential return forward.  I added a little more since I first discussed the idea, there might be some indiscriminate selling from those who don't want the illiquidity of a non-tradeable security ahead of the conversion.
• Another current position I recently added to is CSRA (CSRA) which is the U.S. government services spinoff of Computer Sciences Corp (CSC).  I had the original idea right that CSRA should be sold after the spin and CSC held as it was the buyout candidate of the two (HPE is doing an Reverse Morris Trust with CSC) but ended up calling a poor audible and holding CSRA instead for tax reasons.  CSRA is down 25-30% for little reason since then.  The U.S. government has a budget for the first time in years and most government agencies (including the Department of Defense) have seen funding increases.  Leidos (LDOS) is buying the services business of Lockheed Martin (LMT) later this year in a Reverse Morris Trust transaction (could be an interesting split off special situation) for 10x EBITDA, no reason that CSRA should trade for a couple turns below that.
• NexPoint Residential Trust (NXRT) has had a nice run recently on minimal news and is basically at my estimation of fair value in its current external management form.  I want to continue to hold as I like the strategy and their target markets in the Southeast and Southwest but it's hard to fully commit to an external management structure (despite significant insider ownership) as the principal-agent problem is strong and management's best interests are often at conflict with shareholders.  I've sold a little bit and will likely continue to do so, just being slow about it to hedge against Highland selling the company outright in the $20-22 range.

Closed Positions:

• The spread has come in on the American Capital (ACAS) deal with Ares Capital Corp (ARCC), but in the wrong way with ARCC falling since the deal was announced.  After letting the deal settle in my head, I decided merger arbitrage isn't my strong suit so I sold around $16 and moved on.
• I ended up selling Gramercy Property Trust (GPT) this month around $9 after owning it for nearly five years, at that time it was a busted commercial mortgage REIT that held the junior debt and equity in three CRE CDOs that were in various levels of distress.  The old board brought in Gordon DuGan and team in the summer of 2012 to transform the company into a net lease REIT focused on industrial and office properties.  New management grew the company quickly through several large acquisitions and corresponding capital raises which was topped by the merger with Chambers Street late last year.  The market didn't initially respond well to that deal, likely because of Chambers Street's previous private REIT status and corresponding messy asset base and unsophisticated retail investors.  REIT mergers are great because of the scalability of the business, once a management team is in place, there's significant operating leverage.  Gramercy was able to eliminate most of the Chambers Street expense structure and recycle the random assortment of office and industrial properties into a more streamlined portfolio that public REIT investors would assign a premium valuation.  That process is far enough along and investors are once again giving Gramercy credit, I have the shares trading for about a ~6.5% cap rate, and given it's new larger size and wider coverage, just don't see a lot of additional alpha remaining.
• Sycamore Networks (SCMR) drew me in with it's large NOL asset and two activist investors who were looking to stop the ongoing liquidation and preserve the tax asset.  However, the company is set on a liquidation and made an additional distribution during the first half of the year, making it even more unlikely that the tax asset can be monetized (and as we see with Par Pacific and others, even with management focused on the tax asset, not always easy to actually make a dent in it quickly).  It was already a small speculative position for me and after the liquidation distribution it was even smaller, wasn't worth mental effort any longer and I sold for a small loss.

Current Portfolio:

My watchlist is a bit short on new ideas other than a few nano-caps, if any readers have their eye on anything interesting that I should be looking at, please reach out.  Otherwise, have a great holiday weekend for those in the United States and thanks for reading.

Disclosure: Table above is my blog/hobby portfolio, its a taxable account, and a relatively small slice of my overall asset allocation (most of which is restricted) which follows a more diversified low-cost index approach.  The use of margin debt/options/concentration doesn't represent my true risk tolerance.

Pinnacle Entertainment: Tax Attributes, Remaining Real Estate, Insider Buying

This post is mostly a promo for this month's Special Situations Research Forum meeting hosted by the CFA Society Chicago, I'll be leading the discussion on Pinnacle Entertainment (PNK) and the recent sale of its real estate to GLPI.  We usually get anywhere from 6-12 people, it will be held in the loop on 6/27 at 5:30pm, if you're in the area and would like to attend, sign up here or shoot me an email.  Here's the original post from last month, and then below are some additional thoughts around assets that add to PNK's undervaluation to complete the picture.

Tax Attributes
At the time of the GLPI transaction, old Pinnacle had significant NOLs along with the standard D&A tax shield that made it an insignificant federal income tax payer.  The NOLs were exhausted through the taxable spin of the OpCo and even though the D&A of the real estate will still flow through the GAAP financial statements, they can only depreciate the assets they own for income tax purposes.  But due to the structure of the spinoff, Pinnacle Entertainment will continue to be a minimal income tax payer, below are explanations from both PNK and GLPI executives:

"However, we did receive a step-up basis in our assets.  That step up just to give some shorthand for it.  You look at the enterprise value of the company as a whole.  We had a tax basis on what was spun of roughly about $1 billion and the difference between those two will be amortized over a 15 year period evenly.  That will create a deduction going forward, main point being, that our effective tax rate will be materially lower than the statutory one by virtue of the deduction" - Anthony Sanfilippo, Pinnacle Entertainment CEO

"..and the reason we did it this way [spin the OpCo and merge the PropCo with GLPI], was obviously to help solve for some tax problems.  It also, some people expressed some concern that the Pinnacle NOLs would be going away but the reality is, on the spin they will be getting a stepped-up basis of the NOLs as well as to the extent that we pay gain above and beyond the NOLs, their assets will get stepped up actually higher than their NOLs.  So in the end they should be, from a tax perspective, in very good shape going forward with a higher asset level basis for depreciation." - William Clifford, GLPI CFO

Back to the EBITDA to free cash flow bridge slide:

Pinnacle is projecting only $4MM in cash taxes annually on the current business (including the Meadows acquisition), gaming companies typically aren't significant tax payers due to their considerable fixed assets, but even with the sale of their real estate to GLPI, Pinnacle via the stepped up basis of their assets/goodwill that they'll be able to amortized over 15 years have maintained similar same tax efficiency.  I'd be curious to hear anyone's thoughts on how much their tax attributes could be worth?

Real Estate Remaining at Pinnacle Entertainment (OpCo)
GLPI is a net lease REIT and thus uninterested in development assets, their investors want predictable cash flows and not excess land sitting around generating insufficient revenue for dividends.  As part of GLPI's sweetened offer to buy Pinnacle's real estate they sent a letter to Pinnacle's shareholders outlining the increased value of the second offer, and specifically called out the property assets to be left behind at the operating company.

Belterra Park

In 2013, old Pinnacle began the redevelopment of the River Downs racetrack outside of Cincinnati to be refashioned as Belterra Park (to create an association with the Belterra Casino Resort across state lines in Indiana) a "racino" with video lottery machines and six full service restaurants.  The all-in redevelopment price was approximately $300MM, it opened in the spring of 2014 and almost immediately began to under-perform expectations.  By the time GLPI came knocking with an offer to buy Pinnacle's real estate on an earnings basis the Belterra Park property was generating almost nothing - making it a hard fit for a REIT - it would have to be valued at almost zero for it to make sense to GLPI shareholders who demand a current yield on their assets.

William Clifford, CFO of GLPI said on a call discussing the deal:

"The primary reason why we left off Belterra with the operating company is because on a historical basis it has fairly low levels of EBITDA which meant that we weren't really paying very much for it.  And what we were able to do by leaving it behind, was to take the tax basis of the property and transfer that to OpCo which will eventually save us taxes on the gain relative to spend.  That represented probably somewhere north of $50 million worth of tax savings.  So even on a multiple basis, it seemed to make sense and quite candidly, we think it adds value for OpCo and will depreciate by the Pinnacle team."

The decision to leave Belterra Park with the OpCo was made almost a year ago, since then the property has begun to turnaround its performance.  Ohio built 4 casinos between 2012 and 2013, plus granted licenses to many similar racinos, all that development at once hurt the entire market in the state and is just now beginning to recover, Beltera Park included.  Net win at the racino is up 31% year over year through April of this year.

GLPI valued it at $75MM in its letter, typically I would discount this valuation as GLPI was attempting to convince Pinnacle shareholders the deal was in their best interest.  But if anything, $75MM seems low compared to the initial development costs even considering the properties initial struggles - but improving - and additionally new Pinnacle will benefit from the depreciation tax shield in addition to the step up basis on the sold assets discussed earlier.  It's also clear that Pinnacle's management is willing to sell real estate and may look to do a sale-leaseback of Belterra Park once it fully stabilizes.

Excess Undeveloped Land - Lake Charles & Baton Rouge
Staying with Pinnacle Entertainment is roughly 500 acres of undeveloped land, about 50 of those acres are adjacent to their flagship L'Auberge Lake Charles resort which is positioned as a regional destination with non-gaming amenities (concerts, restaurants, golf course) and has an equally positioned Golden Nugget resort next door (which was supposed to be an Ameristar Casino, but Pinnacle had to divest it at the time of the Ameristar-Pinnacle merger).  This land could potentially be valuable as an additional redevelopment asset for this growing market and could benefit from the Golden Nugget casino as well building up the overall market and land value around the two casinos.

The other 450 acres around the L'Auberge Baton Rouge resort looks a bit more uncertain given its size and isolated location (at least according to Google Maps).  GLPI valued the excess land near both properties at $30MM or roughly $60,000 per acre which seems within reason.

Insider Buying
While the new Pinnacle Entertainment isn't your normal spinoff since all the employees came with the spinoff, it's still encouraging to see management has been buying shares in recent weeks (maybe with proceeds from GLPI shares?) giving more validity to their own thesis that the shares are undervalued.

In addition to the insider buying, the company also announced a $50MM share repurchase plan signaling both confidence in their free cash flow and again that their shares are undervalued.

Summary
Profroma for the Meadows acquisition that should be completed this fall, Pinnacle Entertainment trades for 6.5x EBITDA whereas its near identical peer in Penn National Gaming trades for 7.5x EBITDA.  Yes, the structure is leveraged unconventionally and has some risk, but for a $700MM market cap company with almost no tax liability going forward and ~$105MM in real estate provides additional margin of safety at this valuation.  Additionally, management and the company itself are significant buyers of the company's shares.

Disclosure: I own shares of PNK

Par Pacific Holdings: Wyoming Refining Acquisition, Rights Offering

I wrote a poorly timed update of Par Pacific Holdings about six weeks ago, since then the shares have dropped over 20% as crack spreads continued to tighten at the same time as Par Pacific's principle refinery asset in Hawaii is shutting down for a period to undergo significant maintenance.  Crack spreads are of course volatile, however management has guided to the Hawaiian business generating $100MM in mid-cycle EBITDA keeping the valuation thesis largely intact.  The growth story relies on Sam Zell's handpicked team making additional acquisitions in the currently distressed energy sector in order to finally start making a dent in the large tax asset.

This past week, Par Pacific announced the acquisition of Wyoming Refining, it operates a small refinery (18,000 bpd) and related logistics assets in Newcastle, WY which supplies the Rapid City, SD market and nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.  The refinery is in the attractive Rocky Mountain region (PADD IV) where oil supply outstrips local refining capacity and where demand is growing due to the increased industrial activity (although much of it is oil and gas related) in the region, this creates wider average crack spreads.

Par Pacific is paying $271MM for Wyoming Refining from a private equity owner and its expected to generate $50MM in EBITDA, or a 5.4x multiple, which unfortunately doesn't appear like a particularly distressed asset.  The previous owners have invested significant capital recently to increase the capacity of the refinery which should minimize near term capex needs, but I was hoping the next deal would be a fire sale asset from a distressed E&P company, but onto the deal details and resulting change to the valuation.

Note the rights offering and quick July 15th close, more details will follow on the structure of the rights offering but any current shareholders should be prepared to fully participate or face dilution.

The crack spreads for this niche refinery are pretty huge, at least in comparison to the high single digits seen at Par's Hawaiian refinery, much of that can be attributed to difference in the supply chain, Hawaii has to source crude oil from at least half an ocean away whereas the Wyoming refinery is close to new fracking supply that's come online in recent years.

Proforma Valuation
Using the same basic frame work from a couple months back and updating for the recent Q1 results and Wyoming Refining acquisition:

The market is roughly assigning no value to Par Pacific's ownership in Laramie Energy (which is maybe right? I'm not smart enough to value an E&P) and no value to the NOL as well (which could be right as well, quickly finding out its not easy to generate taxable income in the energy sector).

Disclosure: I own shares of PARR