Cibus: Something more to chew over - Evli Research
Certain exceptional transactions burdened Q2 bottom line
Cibus was largely immune to the pandemic (shared certain small Finnish tenants’ troubles to the tune of EUR 0.2m). Property figures were as expected with rental income at EUR 16.4m vs our EUR 16.2m estimate. Property expenses remained in check and so net rental income amounted to EUR 15.1m i.e. same as our estimate. Administration costs were elevated by some EUR 0.5m due to bond transactions as well as the restructuring of Finnish books. The EUR 13.6m in operating income thus fell short of our EUR 14.2m estimate. Net financial costs were driven high, to EUR 5.8m, by a one-off EUR 2.9m item attributable to bond redemption premiums and arrangement fees. Net operating income was thus EUR 7.8m vs our EUR 9.9m estimate.
Both existing portfolio and prospects basically unchanged
The daily-goods property market remains stable and the pandemic hasn’t discernibly altered deal flow. This means Cibus is in a strong position to add to its property mass through smaller portfolio acquisitions and thus scale the current organization. Yields are still attractive as Cibus can buy assets at some 100-150bps pick-up relative to its own book valuation. In addition to the EUR 180m Swedish entry, Cibus is well ahead of its annual EUR 50m acquisition target since Finnish purchases total over EUR 70m YTD. With EUR 85m in cash and long-term financing in place further additions might well happen in H2’20. Cibus is also instituting additional shareholder-friendly effects in the near term, namely the transitioning to monthly dividend payments as well as switching to the Nasdaq Stockholm main list.
We see scope for further valuation rerating
In our opinion some tightening in valuation relative to the wider Nordic property sector is warranted since the pandemic has very limited direct bearing on Cibus. The situation is different for the bulk of commercial real estate e.g. offices. Cibus’ yield spread relative to other listed Nordic entities has indeed tightened a bit recently, however in our view there’s still room to go with Cibus yielding ca. 5% vs some 4% for a typical Nordic portfolio. Our TP is now SEK 160 (150) per share. We retain our BUY rating.
https://pankki.evli.com/hubfs/ERP/Raportit/cibus/Cibus%20200821%20Company%20update.pdf
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