While our bank stocks as a group were being buffeted by slowing global growth, increasing concern about the Chinese economy and collapsing oil prices, it is our position in Standard Chartered Bank (LSE:STAN) that has to date proven to be the most disappointing. As you know from our prior letters, we first purchased shares in this emerging market dependent bank back in 2013, after it had declined from 18 pounds to approximately 13 pounds per share, a price we felt did not adequately account for its future prospects. As Will Browne has sometimes said, “there is a fine line between being early and being wrong.”
At the time of purchase, Standard Chartered, in our view, was conservatively financed, traded at a significant discount to our estimates of its intrinsic value, and paid an attractive dividend. That dividend was omitted last November due to mounting capital concerns, loan losses and uncertainty associated with the bank’s oil & gas loan book. As of fiscal year-end, Standard Chartered was priced at roughly 50% of its tangible per share net asset value (book value). If Standard Chartered’s earnings power were to recover to a 10% return on tangible equity (based on today’s book value), it would generate a 20% after-tax earnings yield on the current price. In other words, the current stock price would be 5 times after-tax earnings, if earnings recover to a 10% return on equity. In the past, banks in Asia have been acquired at significant premiums to tangible net asset value and at more than 10 times after-tax earnings. The bank is in the midst of a restructuring with new management, and appears to be taking all the right steps to put it back into a more competitive and more profitable position. That said, the near-term headwinds are significant. We continue to monitor the position carefully, and have eliminated it from our Worldwide High Dividend Yield Value Fund because it suspended its dividend.
From Tweedy Browne (Trades, Portfolio) letter to shareholders first quarter 2016.
