This document provides an analysis and valuation of Luk Fook Holdings (International) Limited (LF), a major Hong Kong and China jewelry retailer. Various valuation models are applied, including comparable companies analysis, discounted dividend model, residual income model, and abnormal earnings growth model. Key assumptions like long-term growth rate and dividend payout ratio are adjusted. The analysis identifies inventory level and gold price as primary business drivers for LF given its large inventory holdings. An ultimate target price of HK$16.93 is arrived at by synthesizing the different valuation results.
HKU Faculty of Business and Economics valuation report on Luk Fook Holdings
1. The University of Hong Kong
Faculty of Business and Economics
ACCT 3114 2016-2017
Valuation using Financial Statements
Instructed by: Dr. Li Jing
A Valuation of Luk Fook Holdings (International) Limited
Silver
Name UID
Yaxuan CHEN 3035084902
Xue SUN 3035140811
Huixin WANG 3035085267
Zhixin WANG 3035085944
Ziyong WANG 3035028166
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Executive Summary
In this report, we apply various accounting based and non-accounting based models to
value our research target – Luk Fook (“LF”), a Hong Kong (“HK”)- China jewlery retailer.
We first conduct research on LF’s business nature and recent trends in HK-China
jewelry industry to generate our assumptions for the basic valuation using Comparables
Method, Discounted Dividend Model, Residual Income Model and Abnormal Earnings
Growth Model. During the valuation process, we make our own justifications on LF’s
long-term growth rate due to the limited base of consensus forecasts. We further
reformulate LF’s financial statements and utilize common size analysis, profitability
analysis and growth analysis to identify LF’s primary business drivers. Based on our
understanding of LF’s future prospects, we derive full information forecasting. After
adopting Residual Operating Income model and making corresponding adjustments on
non-GAAP items, we consider our valuation results from different models collectively
and arrive at our target price of HK$16.93.
1. Introduction
1.1 Company Overview – Luk Fook
Established in 1991, Luk Fook is one of the major Hong Kong (“HK”)-China jewelry
retailers. Primarily operated in HK, Macau, and mainland China, LF engages in the
sourcing, designing, wholesaling, trademark licensing and retailing of all its jewelry
products. Retailing is LF’s major line of business, accounting for 78% of sales revenue
and 55.5% of profits. LF was listed in HKSE in 1997, and now is traded at $22.15 per
share and 14.08x P/E (Fig 1).
LF’s product line ranges from gold, platinum to gem-set jewelry. While gold and
platinum account for 60.9% of the sales, gem-set contributed to 61.9% of the gross
profit. In June 2014, LF acquired 50% of CGS with HK$245 million. CGS is a wholly-
owned subsidiary of HK Resources Holdings Limited, and engaged in the retailing and
franchising operations of gold and jewellery products in HK, Macau and Mainland China
under the brand name “3D-GOLD”.
1.2 Industry Overview & Competitive Landscape
HK jewelry industry saw a progressive decline in 2014 & 15. Despite the large base
formulated by the surging growth in 2013, the massive political protests and
adjustments in policy of visitor visa policy, together with the unfavorable exchange rate
have damaged visitors’ desire to travel. Thus, despite the slowing economic growth,
China still sees a GDP growth amongst those at the top globally, and has been regarded
as the next strategic focus of HK-China jewelry retailers.
Chow Tai Fook (“CTF”) and Chow Sang Sang (“CSS”), another 2 major HK-China jewelry
retailers with market share over 10%, are direct competitors of LF (Fig 2). CTF, with
the largest share of HK-China jewelry market and similar business models and products,
is chosen for comparative analysis with LF.
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2. Basic Valuation
2.1 Assumptions
Key assumptions used in valuations are shown in Fig 3, mainly based on: 1) adjusted
analyst forecasts; 2) academic research; 3) our own forecasts. Important assumptions
adjusted include long-term growth rate and dividend payout ratio.
Consensus forecast for 5Y long-term growth rate currently has jumped from 6.06%
to 15.10%1 from 1 year ago till now. Although it can be justified by LF’s obvious
competitive advantage over its HK peers in mainland China as shown in Fig 4, we
remain conservative in the estimation given an unfavourable perspective in the local
market, and use the lowest of analyst forecasts, 10.2% for further valuation.
With the justified increase in 5Y long-term growth rate, a stable dividend payout ratio
has been maintained in 2012-2015, but jumped to 67.5% in 2016. Considering the
significant cut in earnings in 2016, it is reasonable to believe the special dividend paid is
for the purpose of matching with previous DPS. By excluding this transitory
manipulation of payout ratio, we use the average of 2012-2015, 40.1% as our forecasted
future dividend payout ratio.
2.2 Non-accounting Based Valuation
2.2.1 Comparable Method
Comparable method is a relative valuation approach and it estimates firm’s value by
examining the value of comparable companies. We select two local peers as our
targeted comparables, namely CSS and CTF, mainly out of the consideration that these
three companies share common ground in market shares, firm size and operational
activities (Global and China Jewelry Industry Report, 2014).
Three multiples - P/S, P/E and P/B ratios - are selected to determine the relative value
of LF. Fig 5 presents P/S, P/E and P/B ratios for CTF and CSS, which are derived by
dividing each firm’s market capitalization by its sales revenue, net income and book
value respectively.
The averages of their P/S, P/E and P/B ratios should serve as proxies for LF’s
corresponding multiples since their market shares are quite alike. Through applying the
averages to LF’s relevant measures, we can estimate LF’s market capitalization. Further
dividing the estimated market capitalization by outstanding shares, we arrive at LF’s
estimated value, which is $18.1 by P/S, $25.49 by P/E and $19.17 by P/B. Particularly,
the estimated value by P/B is very close to LF’s current price. We realize that this is
driven by jewelry companies’ identical normal P/B ratios in recent years (Fig 6)
2.2.2 Discounted Dividend Model
The average DPS growth rate is 12.99% over past 5 years, which far exceed the
presumed discount rate of 10.99%. Therefore, it is more justifiable to adopt two-stage
1 Extracted from consensus opinion on Reuters.com at October 7, 2016.
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growth model to estimate LF’s intrinsic value. During the first five years, namely 2016
to 2021, LF’s dividend growth rate will follow its historical trajectory of 12.99%.
Starting from 2022, LF’s dividend growth rate will drop down, suggesting that the firm
will enter into a mature and stable growth phase. Here we take HK GDP growth rate -
3%, as the proxy for LF’s second stage dividend growth rate. The final value we derive
from this two-stage growth model is $21. 32, which is slightly higher than its current
stock price.
2.3 Accounting Based Methods
2.3.1 Residual Income Model and Abnormal Earnings Growth Model
Residual income model and abnormal earnings growth model have intrinsic similarities
despite of different arrangement of inputs. While residual income emphasizes on the
extra return on book value, abnormal earnings growth intends to associate the value
with capitalized earnings.
Considering the brand-name effect but weak financial performance of LF, it is more
reasonable to assume constant residual income after years 2020, or rather, no abnormal
earnings growth. Under such circumstance, the intrinsic value will be priced at $17.14
(Table 1).
In this sensitivity testing, the difference in residual income model between the highest
and the lowest value insignificant partly results from the low absolute value of residual
income in our projected years. Moreover, the P/B ratio of LF is close to one, implying
the critical influence of book value in deciding its intrinsic value. Nevertheless, AEG
model is more sensitive to discount rate. The possible rationalization is the crucial
impact of discount rate on capitalization of earnings.
2.3.2. Building Block Analysis
To challenge on the market price, we anchor on book value from known and short-term
forecast of which we are reasonably confident. To begin, we establish the no-growth
valuation by reverse engineering. Three-level blocks breakdown of the market price
include book value, value from short-term accounting and value from long-term growth.
Book value has been ascertained as $14.94. To derive the value from short-term
accounting, we calculate the present value of residual earnings of both 2016 and 2017.
The result showed that in the short term, market expects the share price will go down
$0.09. Meanwhile, in the long-term, market is placing $4.23 on the speculative growth.
To further determine the reasonableness of market price, we also can solve for growth
in residual earnings valuation model. Based on current market price $19.08, we convert
the residual earning growth rate to EPS growth rate and find the expected EPS growth
rate of market is 10.2%. If the analyst forecasts growth rates are below 10.2%, it implies
that LF was overpriced at current market price.
As we have mentioned in the first part, this 10.2% long-term forecast was based on
analysts’ good knowledge of business, and they believe the rebound on gold price and
company’s competitive advantage will support this growth. While remaining skeptical
of prices, as investor we may also reflect on ourselves to avoid over-pessimism.
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Exclusive information, which is beyond our knowledge, may exist, thus supporting the
higher expectation within market.
3. Business Drivers Analysis
Through examining reformulated balance sheet, we realize that LF is a NOA firm and at
the same time, a NFA firm. Among operating assets, inventory is the largest component
and accounts for around 80%. This high percentage not only is contributed by LF’s
inventory’s inherent fair value, but also is inflated by gold price decline in recent years.
As presented in Fig 7, gold price has dropped substantially over 20% during 2013 to
2014. The massive depreciation offered LF an incentive to increase inventory level and
speculate for a future bounce in gold price. The targeted gold price provided by
Goldman Sachs is US$1300 for the next year. However, given the great intensity and
uncertainty shock for current economic environment, together with LF’s declining sales
under HK bleak economic conditions, we expect LF’s future inventory level to be
relatively stable with moderate increase.
We further examine the effect of gold price on LF’s sales performance and find a
moderate negative correlation (-0.54) between change in gold price and sales growth
where sales growth is measured by same stone sales growth (“SSSG”) (Fig 8).
Considering the great volatility in gold price, this factor is not taken into consideration
for sales prediction purpose.
Breaking down revenue by market, business line and product respectively, we discover
1) Proportion of sales from mainland China has been growing, which brings new growth
opportunity and more exposure to exchange rate risk (Fig 9); 2) HK will still be the
main source of sales in short term. Since the growth of visitor arrivals have been
stabilizing after over 12 months of consecutive decline, it is likely there would be a
rebound in SSSG (Fig 10); 3) Business and product revenue structure remain stable,
with over 75% revenue coming from retail and 60% from gold & platinum.
In terms of expense structure (Fig 11), staff cost takes the largest proportion against LF’
s sales revenue, so does CTF. As increasing staff cost is an inevitable trend in this
industry, LF’s lower staff cost proportion compared to CTF can be explained by a larger
part of revenue from franchise and licensing business.
The second largest item in the expense structure is lease expense. The soaring HK
property rental in the past few years consumed LF more proportion of rental expense
than CTF with its larger HK based business. Downward course is expected as HK
property rental price has started to decline since this year, and LF is switching its focus
to mainland China.
4. Growth and Profitability Analysis
To analyse the profitability and growth of LF, return on common share equities(“ROCE”)
is the most direct reflection. ROCE of the company reached a peak in year 2013 and has
been decreasing ever since, especially dropped by 11.31% in 2015. This inevitable
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change is a result of the slow-down economy in mainland China and the decrease of
tourists to HK.
When we further decompose ROCE to investigate the impact of leverages, it is not
surprised to observe that those effects are relatively insignificant since LF has a very
small proportion of liabilities [Fig 11]. Change of financial leverage(“FLEV”) remains
stable and merely adds on small increase as 0.33%. Instead, return on net operating
assets(“RNOA”) and return on operating assets(“ROOA”) are the major drivers of ROCE.
Consequently, breaking down RNOA and ROOA are crucial to look for value drivers.
When it comes to RNOA, profit margin and asset turnover are decisive components,
particularly driven by core business. Within LF’s 13.37% decrease of RNOA in 2015,
drop from core income from sales takes up 11.66%. Decomposing profit margin, we
observe that the sales profit margin of the company is relatively stable, even slightly
increased in recent two years, probably caused by the rising sales of gem-set (Fig 12).
However, since the growing selling and administration costs, the bad performance of
the associate and the loss in hedging instruments, the profit margin of the most recent
year drops in year 2015 compared to a relatively stable rate at around 9.7% in previous
years (Fig 13). Further investigation into core income from sales shows that decrease in
core profit margins and asset turnover contribute 6.54% and 5.11% respectively. In
other words, assets used to generate same amount of core operating sales are rising
year by year, mostly caused by the climbing inventory turnover, which closely related to
the the number of visitors to HK and gold price (Fig14).
Besides, if breaking down RNOA to investigate the impact of ROOA, operating liability
leverage (“OLLEV”) and operating liability spread(“OLSPREAD”), ROOA is also the
dominant factor in determining RNOA (Fig 15). For one thing, operating income
decrease drives down the return. For the other thing, the rise in operating assets
enlarges the base. More specifically, the financial drag from associate accounts for the
growing amount in “interests in associates”, “loans to associates” and “amount due from
associates” which recorded as assets on the balance sheet of LF. Consequently, the
combination effect of both operating income and operating asset results in consecutive
decline of ROOA in recent years.
Residual earnings growth is also driven by the change in common share equity(“CSE”),
which can be explained by two components which are change in net operating
assets(“NOA”) and change in NFA. In 2015, growth of NOA turned negative after a two-
year increase. Previous analysis breaking down into profit margin and asset turnover
explained the change in sales growth that affect NOA. Moreover, it is also caused by
decrease of long-term investment and inventory. On the other hand, the growth of NFA
turned positive attributed to the sharp reduction on bank borrowing in 2015.
In addition, we further compare some key indicators with other well-known jewelry
brands in the world. In terms of gross profit margin, jewelry brands such as Pandora
and Tiffany that rely more on gem-sets are higher than brands like LF and CTF whose
main focus is gold products. Also, the high selling expenses which includes marketing
expenses are also high for these two brands, probably also contributes to a higher
margin (Fig 16).
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5. ReOI Model
Residual operating income (ReOI) model is a modified model for RIM. Using CAPM, we
calculate cost of equity to be 10.99% and WACC to be 12 57%. Corresponding to three cases
in RIM, the continuing value of residual operating income model also has three forms and
when we apply scenario 2, the intrinsic value of LF is $17.16 (Table 2). Specially, in simple
forecasting scenario 3, growth rate in residual operating income is -13.94%, which is not
representative for the growth trend of residual operating income. So we use the average
growth rate of ReOI in past three years, 26%, to generate enterprise value.
Valuation grid is made to indicate what combination of return on net operating assets (RNOA)
and growth in net operating assets (NOA) can justify current market price of LF. For instance,
current market price $19.08 can be legitimized by forecasting a 16% RNOA and 2.5%
growth rate in NOA, or alternatively, 15% RNOA and 5.5% growth rate in NOA. However,
since we estimate the long term growth rate in NOA to be 1%, LF needs to maintain at least
16.55% RNOA to explain its market price, while its current RNOA is only 14.56%.
FFull information forecasting of ReOI model is conducted based on analysts’ forecast and
historical data. Analysts forecast there will be a sharp drop of sales, leading to -8.31% growth
in sales in 2016. After 2016, the sales tend to grow relative steadily so we assume long term
sales growth rate to be 1%. As far as asset turnover, ATO declines and analysts’ forecast for
2016 ATO is 1.815. We assume ATO continues to decline until 1.215 in 2018 and remains
constant after then, and we have NOA grow at 1% after 2017.
As for non-GAAP items adjustments, LF does not issue any share options and its design
fees cannot be capitalized as R&D expense. We therefore adjust LF’s ReOI by capitalizing
operating lease commitments. Detailed calculation please refer to excel appendix. Since
LF has relative small amount of lease contingent commitments, adjusting operating
lease does not bring a significant difference on LF’s valuation.
6. Conclusion & Recommendation: Sell
Based on our analysis of valuation results above, our initial investment
recommendation would be sell at target price of $17.14. The most suitable model would
be residual income model, as the industrial P/B ratio is close to one, therefore our
analysis on book value may give us reasonably expectation on stock price.
Our valuation results from all models are listed in Fig 17. We take average of the
valuation results given by both RIM (Case 2) model and ReOI (Case 2) model after non-
GAAP adjustments, which gives a target price of $16.93. This price is within the
company’s 52w price range and 11.27% below the current market price, and our final
opinion is to sell.
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Fig 3: China Gem-set SSSG LF vs CTF
Source: LF and CTF’s Annual Report
Fig 4: Assumptions
FY16 FY15 FY14 FY13 FY12
Basic EPS 1.63 2.74 3.17 2.11 2.43
DPS 1.10 1.10 1.27 0.86 0.96
Payout ratio 67.5% 40.1% 40.1% 40.8% 39.5%
Notes:
We extract the forecasts for 5Y long-term growth rate and EPS in the next 2 years from
Reuters, as well as the firm beta and industry beta. We use the firm beta, which is quite
close to the industry beta, and US 10Y T-bill yield as our risk free rate to get the
discount rate of LF. The market risk premium is from NYU source.
More on 5Y long-term growth rate:
Appreciation of gold at the beginning of 2016 might be a justification for the jump.
Earnings lift is likely to come from GP margins as inventory purchased at a lower cost is
sold at a higher spot value, but any impact from rebounce of gold price with high
volatility is likely temporary given the 3-month inventory cycle. However, the volatility
in gold price cannot support a sustained positive impact. A more reasonable explanation
is the visibility of LF’s obvious competitive advantage over its HK peers in mainland
China. LF has outperformed CTF in China gem-set SSSG continuously for 15 months, and
remained a positive growth.
Fig 5: Comparable model:
Sales Net Income Market cap
(ttm) (ttm) (msq)
CSS 17,630 765.2 9,078 9,600 0.54 12.55 1.06
LF 7,300 379.26 4,607.38 7,082 0.97 18.67 1.54
LF 14,030 958.69 8,674
P/S P/E P/B
Calculated as below
(in Millions)
Book value
(mrq)
Notes:
LF’s value by P/S: 0.76*14,030=10,625.36/587.11= $18.2
-30%
-20%
-10%
0%
10%
20%
Mar-15 Jun-15 Sep-15 Dec-15 Mar-16 Jun-16
Luk Fook CTF