Japan Petroleum Exploration Co Ltd. (JAPEX) is a company engaged in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. It has operations in Japan, Canada, Indonesia and Libya. In the seventies, JAPEX was the E&P division of the former Japan Petroleum Development Corporation (JPDC).
Price
With 57 million shares outstanding, and trading at about $45, the company’s market cap is $2.5B
Value
JAPEX has ¥250B ($2.7B) of Long term investments on the balance sheet. Among these is an 11% stake in INPEX Corporation. The market cap of INPEX is ¥1.6 T meaning this stake alone is worth ¥190 B ($2B) in the market today. INPEX is well capitalised, is growing and trades at about 1.2 x book value.
What remains is an established, well capitalised, diversified and consistenty profitable E&P company earning ¥12B ($130m) in a recession.
Thesis
The long term investments are not critical to the operations of JAPEX.
One way of looking at it is to say the operations of JAPEX are trading at a negative P/E. In this case, it is not earnings that are negative but the price.
Another way of looking at it is to realise the investor is being paid $200m to own a company earning $130m in a recession.
Jet another way is to value JAPEX at 10x depressed earnings ($1.3B) and add back $2.7B for it's stake in INPEX et al. This will get you a value of $4B for a company with a market cap of $ 2.5B.
Any and all questions welcome as usual.
Price
With 57 million shares outstanding, and trading at about $45, the company’s market cap is $2.5B
Value
JAPEX has ¥250B ($2.7B) of Long term investments on the balance sheet. Among these is an 11% stake in INPEX Corporation. The market cap of INPEX is ¥1.6 T meaning this stake alone is worth ¥190 B ($2B) in the market today. INPEX is well capitalised, is growing and trades at about 1.2 x book value.
What remains is an established, well capitalised, diversified and consistenty profitable E&P company earning ¥12B ($130m) in a recession.
Thesis
The long term investments are not critical to the operations of JAPEX.
One way of looking at it is to say the operations of JAPEX are trading at a negative P/E. In this case, it is not earnings that are negative but the price.
Another way of looking at it is to realise the investor is being paid $200m to own a company earning $130m in a recession.
Jet another way is to value JAPEX at 10x depressed earnings ($1.3B) and add back $2.7B for it's stake in INPEX et al. This will get you a value of $4B for a company with a market cap of $ 2.5B.
Any and all questions welcome as usual.
