Tuesday, August 28, 2012

PP London Sumatra

Surviving The Dry Season
Weak 1H12 nucleus FFB growth due to dry weather. On the back of the dry weather condition that adversely affected palm oil productivity in London Sumatra’s (LSIP) palm oil estates, 1H12 FFB nucleus production fell by 3% YoY. However, higher 3rd party purchases (+15% YoY) led to CPO sales volume growing by 3% YoY to 209k tonnes.

Production to accelerate in 2H12, but will remain flat for FY12. According to LSIP, production composition in FY12 will be different. LSIP expects a slightly higher production split of 58% in 2H12 vs. 55% under
normal conditions. LSIP believes that production acceleration in 2H12 would be supported by yield improvement, though production should remain stable at 18.5t/ha for the full year. While we expect higher
production due to the seasonality factor in 2H12, we believe that FY12 production growth will fall into the 3–5% range vs. 5%-10% previously.

Potential resurge of El Nino, but still too early at this juncture. A risk on production outlook could come from the potential return of El Nino. If strong El Nino were to unfold, we believe that the potential adverse
impact on production could be offset by higher CPO prices (El Nino is positive for CPO prices). Nevertheless, it is still too early to factor El Nino in our forecast; thus, we maintain our FY12 CPO price forecast at MYR3,150/t and MYR3,000/t for FY13/FY14.

Sizeable unplanted landbank to ensure long-term growth. While FY12’s dry weather condition would limit LSIP’s production growth, a sizeable unplanted landbank of 40k ha, an annual planting schedule of 5k ha, and a relatively young age tree profile of 12.5 years should pave the way for production growth to recover to 8–10% post FY12.

Attractive valuation remains: Retain BUY. While LSIP’s share price has fallen due to its unexciting 1H12 earnings, its current share price continues to reflect its attractive valuation. The stock is trading at FY13 PER of 10.9x, a 25% discount to Malaysian counters. With all the bad news on production factored in fully, we retain our BUY rating on LSIP with slightly higher TP of IDR3,150 (implied FY13 PER of 13x).

Source: KIMENG dated 28 August 2012