Note From The Spring 2016 Grant’s Conference by @ChesapeakeCap
Grant’s Conference – David D’Alessandro – Long Oil
- Peak oversupply of 1.5-2m barrels/day; started 2016 with 600-700k which isn’t weather adjusted (El Nino).
- 3 buckets of supply
- North America – modeling down 700-800k by ‘17
- OPEC – Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Overall modeling up 600-700k
- SA – look for them to freeze. Signs are on the table, they’re willing to attend meetings.
- Iran – ramping to 500k growth yoy due to sanctions lifted. Difficult to export due to capex needs.
- Iraq – At the limits of their export capacity; won’t raise production.
- Non-OPEC – Most will be down, some flat. Models down 600-800k
- Libya is the wild card on supply side – dire situation, but can do 1m/day export if political situation changes.
- Just on supply, we are undersupplied. Counter: 900m inventory?
- A third is unusable (essentially reserves that never are used).
- Look at days of inventory – because demand is increasing, this is decreasing.
- Demand was up 1.8m in 2015, assuming 1.5m for 2016, range of 1.0-1.8m increase.
- Drivers: India, South Korea, US, China.
- Variant perception
- Supply is declining
- Demand is accelerating
- No sudden surge in US production at $50-55 like sell-side projects
- Labor markets aren’t as loose
- Bush-era EPA not around
- Stricter capital
- Dug but not completed wells are overstated.
Grant’s Conference – Scott Bessent – Japan
- China isn’t the biggest risk – Japan is.
- Abenomics – underappreciated aspect is Abe’s leadership in 2006 as PM.
- Tons of charts on various macro elements in Japan
- 3 arrows partially successful – but craters in the policy
- JPY depreciation solely during inflation
- Limited structural reforms outside of women labor participation and corporate governance
- Services recovery will be needed to drum up CPI.
- Sales tax increase will be cancelled
- Good chance of surprise at April BOJ meeting
- Debt write-off is eventually how we get out of this
- Never count on immigration or privatization being a factor in Japan
- If you’re investing, look to take off FX hedges in Japanese stocks, stay long JPY.
Grant’s Conference – Anne Stevenson-Yang – L/S China
- China since 2006 has looked like Silicon Valley in 1999 – growth at the expense of profitability.
- Two sources of capital – both end with massive capital flight – best short ideas are the most loved names.
- State via household deposits
- FDI / Portfolio / etc.
- Short BABA
- Look to put on when the capital flows change
- Maxed out ecommerce platform – avg annual spend of $1075 vs AMZN $330 (faking?).
- Poor capital allocation; using capital to generate growth
- Misleading GMV
- Dubious assets – Investment in equity investees, goodwill & intangibles
- Long Tingyi
- Largest maker of noodles – have scale, brands, operating leverage, 10b US revenues.
- Competes with UPC but UPC backing down / becoming more rational
- Extensive distribution, partnerships with SBUX & PEP – upside from beverages segment
- 20x PE vs 30x historical, 10% op margin historical vs 3% now -> expansion of both leads to 2-3x winner
- Short RMB
- Nothing has changed in the policy, but politicians say it has; don’t believe them.
- PBOC using forwards / swaps to hide capital outflows, delay booking in foreign reserve declines
- 9 months before reserves run down to perilous point.
Grant’s Conference – Jamie Dimon
- Auto is a little stretched, but overall consumer credit is pristine
- Student loans are going to be a problem – growing too fast.
- Rate normalization is a good thing – strong economy. 25bps will have a de minimas impact
- Grant: Is the gov’t digging a moat for your biz in regulation? What would it take to replicate JPM?
- Could give you $1t and you couldn’t remake this. Employees, customers, goodwill, etc.
- Banks will trade at 2.0x TBV when regulation, lawsuit overhangs go away. Look at pace of change of regulation.
- We’ll be there for energy customers in tough times – most loans are still money good. We can’t run from the problems or sell stock – we’re not traders, we’re building a business.
- Grant: “The fed ought to provide a living will for the central banks.”
- The fed sets short rates, but market participants set the curve.
- More detail on credit…
- 10% debt servicing to mortgages; this is near lows, all good here.
- Credit cards are pristine.
- Some may get hurt in auto, terms extending, but will be very small.
- $1.3t in student loans – 30% delinquent. Went from 20% to 80% government underwritten.
- I own stock – HD / YUM / JNJ / BA and the like.
- Nil chance to make money in US treasuries over the next 10 years.
- By 2030, China will house 30% of the Global 3000.
Grant’s Conference – Pierre Lassonde – Gold
- Demand rising, has outperformed everyone the last decade.
- Mine supply has not kept pace with demand because cost of production risen 4-5x over past 30yrs.
- Production next 6-7 years goes down.
- Takes 7-12 years to get production online from field discovery, discoveries have fallen since 80’s.
- China and India now over 50% of worldwide demand
- Shanghai will take over the London Exchange in 5-10 years. It becomes a casino and prices skyrocket.
- Central banks went from sellers to buyers in 2010 – now buying 400-600tonnes/year
- Retail investment has grown since 2008, Europe now largest market
- Negative interest rates spur demand – greater uncertainty, no opportunity cost, uncertainty in FX
- Recycling has grown to meet shortfall between supply and demand
- Gold: liquid, low volatility, low correlation to other asset classes
- 80% of price is determined by USD, which will roll over again, driving gold higher (mean reversion).
- Trump would accelerate this devaluation
- DJIA / Gold = financial assets / real assets. Expect normalization at 1:1 and a 3-7 year bull market
Grant’s Conference – Kevin Warsh – Case of the missing growth
- Yellen gets done what she wants to get done; don’t make fed watching more complicated than that.
- We all have bias to think our economic status is better than other countries
- Growth doesn’t just appear by being one step ahead on devaluation
- QE was initially to restore markets, drive liquidity, not to boost asset prices.
- Difference between 2% and 3% GDP growth is not 1%, it’s 50%. And we’re not even getting 2% here, nor 3% internationally, and int’l trade is slowing; policymakers shouldn’t be doubling down.
- This is the most important year since 2008
- The 8 Growth destructive policies
- Conflated regimes
- Politicians fail so fed turns to multipurpose agency
- Fed has wrong dashboard – backward looking and heavily revised data
- Short-term time horizon as if managing q/q not thinking like a long-term biz owner
- QE is copied abroad – the wealth effect – works primarily to boost financial assets, not real assets.
- Regulatory structure is in purposeful limbo with respect to banks – “we’re only 60% done implementing so we can’t be blamed if something goes wrong again” but now tougher for banks to make money.
- Models are still from the 1970’s.
- Story of an aggregate demand shortfall with no acknowledgement of supply side.
- Central bank buying takes away the price signal – no clue about risk premium -> prices of assets. Asset prices shouldn’t worry the fed but they’re still managing around them, vocal about it.
- Want growth? More people working and more productive workers.
Grant’s Conference – John Haskell – Long LATAM equities
- Forex, earnings, and the multiple in LATAM all down in 2015 – attractive grounds.
- INRETC1:PE
- 1/3 malls, 1/3 supermarkets, 1/3 pharmacies (think Walgreens)
- Hold 22%, 36% and 53% share respectively.
- Accelerating private label from 33% to 40%; drives higher margins.
- Accelerating store count
- Reduced dollar exposure from 74% in 2014 to 23%.
- Trading at 13.8x 2018 EPS vs comps >20x
- GRAM:US
- Largest engineering firm in Peru
- End of commodity supercycle means depressed results in core E&C biz
- Capital structure stressed due to cash cycle and business shift
- 2016 outlook is positive; inflection point
- Up 52% since Monday morning, whoops.
- Trading at 3.2x ’18 EBITDA – core E&C biz for 1.9x EBITDA
- ENTEL:CL
- 36.9% mobile market share in Chile (the VZ there)
- 7.6% share in Peru vs Telefonica at 52% and Am Movil at 37%
- Buy Chile biz for 4.3x ’16 EBITDA and get Peru biz for free
- 25% dilution – due to desire to participate in spectrum auction
- Founder’s HoldCo owns 55%
- MCO downgrade
- Potential Liberty / Malone target
Grant’s Conference – Jim Millstein – Puerto Rico
- 60% of additional 50b in debt from 00-15 was to fund operating deficits.
- Don’t blame gov’t completely; they’ve tried – raised taxes and cut employment / benefits
- Framed as liquidity vs insolvency problem and now decidedly unsustainable / insolvent
- Defaults on May 1 & July 1
- Author’s note: admittedly didn’t follow much of this presentation
Grant’s Conference – Amy Falls – Rockefeller University Endowment
- Low rates
- Lower returns for savers
- Increases risk – leverage, excess investment, erodes system’s capacity to absorb risk
- Increases inequality
- Endowment provides one-third of budget, spend 5-5.5% of it each year.
- HEPI outpaces CPI by 1% on avg since 90’s. 70% of HEPI is salary and benefits
- Absolute rates matter more than credit spreads
- Seeing shorter durations and less cash holdings in many endowments now
- Declining implied vol masks increasing structural weaknesses
- Typically run 2-5% cash, now 8%
- Seek managers with wide mandates and the ability to exploit them.
- LATAM looks attractive to us, too.
- You are actually comped for letting your managers hold longer. Longer lockups -> higher returns w/ lower Std. dev.
- >1yr – 12-14%
- 1mo – 1yr – 11-13%
- <1mo – 6-9%
- Don’t outsource your investment functions – intelligent institutions work both sides of the balance sheet
- Yale model isn’t about the outputs or allocations, but the analytical rigor.
- As nations grow as % of world GDP, their market caps tend to follow – Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are all the most attractive here.
Grant’s Conference – Grant v Zervos debate on monetary policy
Zervos
- Fed was fighting deflation at any cost. With high debt levels, worst thing to do is deflate. Make assets increase, liabilities decrease to repair broken balance sheets from 2008.
- China is pegged to the US however, and we caused their bubble via our QE; we don’t just do monetary policy for ourselves anymore, must consider consequences.
Jim
- If the USD is a commodity, it’s natural price will near the cost of production …
- 700 PhD economists on fed payroll
- Fed MO is to distort price mechanism
- He said a lot of other good classic Jim Grant stuff in here that I didn’t write down…
- Took a shot at Bernanke at PIMCO and whoever happens to live in Greenwich
Zervos
- US, China, Japan, Europe – 4 countries that matter for FX.
- Tightening causes feedback – see August and the Chinese 3% devaluation; our stocks off 10%.
- If we go, it’s got to be a turbocharged tightening
- When Europe and Japan devalue, it’s against us but against China too; Draghi took the signal and looked to pump inflation without relative devaluation.
- Japan can print and buy back its own equities.
- This is a prisoner’s dilemma – won’t break down before the November election, but Yellen considering all these interdependencies.
- S&P will form base here and go much higher, but real trade will be in EMs. Worst possible asset to hold is cash; it will be diluted by CBs.
- Understanding CB reactions to data is the only way to get an edge. Everyone is terrible at forecasting data; I’d never give a trade rec on unemployment, GDP, or inflation.
