China Yurun Food (1068, $12.64) 12M Target $14.85 BUY
Event: Interim earnings of China Yurun Food grew 71% yoy to $672mn that was above market consensus.
Yurun reported that turnover increased 75% yoy to $6,043mn in 1H08. Interim earnings grew 71% yoy to $672mn representing 59% of our full year forecast. EPS rose 62% to $0.44. Interim dividend was $0.11.
Yurun continued to optimize its product mix, focusing on chilled pork and low temperature meat products (LTMP) which enjoyed higher gross margins. In the upstream business, turnover of chilled pork grew 119% yoy to $3,728mn, while that of frozen pork increased 29% yoy to $1,425mn. As for the downstream business, sales value of LTMP rose 65% yoy to $1,273mn, while that of high temperature meat products (HTMP) increased 20% yoy to $132mn.
Upstream sales volume was almost unchanged at 268,000 tons. Utilization rate of upstream capacity dropped from 57% in 1H07 to 56% in 1H08, indicating live hog supply was still tight. However, the company managed to increase chilled meat sales volume by 26% to 173,000 tons.
Downstream sales volume grew 15% yoy to 64,600 tons, in which LTMP increased 22.8% to 54,400 tons. Utilization rate of downstream capacity rose to 65% from 62% in 1H07.
Overall gross margin dropped from 14.8% in 1H07 to 13.6% in 1H08, due to faster growth in upstream business and a decrease of gross margin for upstream business. Gross margin of chilled meat dropped from 11.5% in 1H07 to 9.5% in 1H08, and that of frozen meat from 8.1% to 6.4%. However, gross margin of LTMP rose slightly from 27.0% in 1H07 to 27.5% in 1H08, and that of HTMP improved from 18.3% in 1H07 to 18.5% in 1H08.
Yurun has spent $10mn in 1H08 to build brand recognition throughout China, tenfold of that in 1H07. However, the company still managed to control selling and administrative expenses at 6.4% of total turnover versus 6.5% in 1H07.
By balancing upstream and downstream businesses, Yurun managed to minimize the impact of volatile live hog prices on earnings. Since chilled pork was priced mark-to-market, Yurun could enjoy robust profits from upstream business during a rise in live hog price. On the contrary, margins for LTMP will expand if hog price declines.
As an industry integrator, Yurun targeted to expand slaughter capacity to 30mn heads and processed meat capacity to 400,000 tons in 2010. We have revised our EPS forecasts for 2008-2010 at $0.79, $1.00 and $1.19 respectively implying the counter is trading at undemanding PER of 16.0x in 2008 and 12.6x in 2009.
With a conservative PEG ratio of 0.7x, we consider the fair value of Yurun at $14.85. Maintain BUY.