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NEPI Rockcastle – Mucking Out the Stable

Author: Published on: Published in: NEPI Rockcastle JSE:NRP

On November 28th, 2018 Viceroy Research released a report regarding NEPI Rockcastle (JSE: NRP) detailing what we believed to be over-inflated profits in the company’s Romanian operations. NEPI issued a response to our research and hosted a call for concerned investors.

NEPI Response 2018.12.06 – Download Link

NEPI Dutch Filings – Download Link

Unusually NEPI provided some clarity in terms of their accounting treatments. We maintain our belief that NEPI is fundamentally overvalued with reservations regarding the sustainability of distributable income, the tax treatment in foreign jurisdictions and the status of the overall company. This we will update on.

  • NEPI Rockcastle have not sought to deliver any scope of investigation in response to a request by investors in August 2018, and claim it is the prerogative of investors to identify the exact issues they want investigated. It seems clear what issues 10 of South Africa’s largest financial firms sought clarity on: potential trading of associated companies, suspicious capital raising activity and property transactions.
  • Per our original report, we were of the opinion that transfer pricing is not an adequate explanation as to why statutory losses are incurred in Romania. This is due to transfer pricing legislation in Romania and the EU. On further investigation, these hard currency, unsecured, intra-group loans are disclosed in NEPI’s Dutch subsidiary at rate of 8%-12%, compared to the Romanian mortgage rate of 4.5-5% and safe harbor limit of 4%. This is a stark contrast to the CFO’s description, in which she did not provide the figures, but guided the rate was between 4% to 8%.
  • Having obtained the filings of Dutch subsidiary, NE Property Cooperatief UA, we find it untenable how a local CFO or Financial Controller locally can advocate a “fair” and arm’s length transfer pricing interest rate on unsecured loans of 8%, formerly 12%. Essentially, the equity holders at the local level are being punished for an excessive and non-arm’s length priced loan. We make this assumption based on local Euro borrowing costs within Romania with an LTV of circa 28% as disclosed by NEPI.
  • NEPI uses the entirety of its funds earmarked for deferred tax payments to inflate its distributable earnings figure. In effect, the company is likely improving their dividend figures at the expense of future disbursements.
  • New anti-abuse legislation will materially hamper NEPI’s transfer pricing model going forward in Romania, Netherlands, and across the EU. Given the extent of transfer pricing, this will impact NEPI’s distributable earnings.
  • Taking a step back, it is delayed outgoings, not earnings, that substantiate ~20% of distributable earnings. The Romania tax channeling is in fact one of many adjustments that allow this unsustainable dividend practice. Other items that deserve scrutiny include the dividend contribution of stocks, the antecedent dividend add back and the sale of financial investments.
  • At a property yield of 6.77%; after accounting for cash costs, interest costs, taxes, and the stock trading at a premium to NAV, we fail to see how NEPI can justify a 7.5% dividend unless holders choose to take their dividend as scrip, which is dilutive and makes future dividends even harder to justify. Accordingly, we maintain our view that the stock is fundamentally overvalued.
  • Of concern is that large money managers, including retirement money managers PIC, have continuously chosen to take dividends as scrip.
  • SENS trading data shows entities associated with the Resilient stable associate Roque Hafner traded large amounts of NEPI shares at least for the period between May 2016 and May 2018. Hafner was implicated in the media as being involved in the Resilient insider trading scandal and several Hafner entities used to trade Resilient shares also traded NEPI shares.

We reiterate our belief that NEPI Rockcastle’s shares carry a high investment risk and are fundamentally overvalued, which will become increasingly unattractive over time given what we believe are unsustainable distribution practices.

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