Tag: COVID19

Featured

Hotel stocks – buying opp or stay away? $MAR $HLT $PK $AIRB
Reading Time: 9 minutes

I have the opportunity to again share the work from a friend & prior guest poster – the same author who imparted his views on cruise stocks in a prior post. This time, he’s back with some thought-provoking views on the hotel industry and the hotel stocks. Enjoy.

In #Is It time to Buy Cruise Stocks? Pt 2, we went into the heart of the Covid storm, and found that there may be solid upside if the risk sits well with you. For this article we’ll move to some of the “lighter” outer bands, as at least some portion of revenue stream continues for hotels, whereas cruise departures have been completely halted. Let’s start with some high-level thoughts on the industry, and then dig into some of the players.

Macro thoughts

If we break down hotel stays between business and pleasure, it seems reasonable to say that ~40% of booked hotel stays are business related. For the time being that implies a complete halt on 40% of hotels’ revenue. Assuming the other 60% of revenue is vacation related, it may be reasonable to assume ~50% of the vacation bucket is attributable to Loyalty Program members (see snipit from 2019 10-K below).

Digesting the above, it seems like (i) 40% of hotel revenues are completely compromised, and (ii) possibly another 30% is disrupted, as Loyalty Program members develop a lot of their status from business travel.

Enter Airbnb. Its presence represents an approximately decade long build of disruption to the hotel industry. In terms of annual revenue, it looks like Airbnb falls somewhere above HLT but less than MAR – it had approx. $1bn of revenue in Q4 19 (assume $4bn annually at this rate) – we can potentially get more details this year if they move ahead with IPO. Note that when considering HLT and MAR revenue, I’m excluding “Cost reimbursement revenue”, as there’s corresponding expense with this item (e.g. franchisor pays some expenses, and franchisee reimburses). Airbnb is a sizable force in the markets, but I’d also assume it does not have and cannot really get a share of business travel yet (easier from liability perspective to encourage employees to stay at big name hotels, rather than with miscellaneous landlords). What does this mean in Covid?

  • I’d guess Airbnb is benefiting from the suffering of hotels. Would you rather stay in an isolated mountain/lake house, or in a hotel resort teeming with tourists? Assuming you’re not a Covid denier, then probably the former.
  • While business travel should in theory return to the big-name hotels, this may not come for a longer time – why would a business risk Covid outbreaks for the sake of business travel? Seems unlikely unless business travel is essential to the functionality of the business. Further, a blow to business travel inevitably means some level of reduction to vacation stay for hotels.
  • Similar to analysis in Covid so far, showing e-commerce adoption has accelerated, it could be the same that Airbnb share has also accelerated (hence why they may be pushing for an IPO despite a terrible operating year…)

While hospitality may not be an awesome industry to be in at the moment, can we still find businesses that will persevere, and potentially emerge well once the dust settles? In exploring MAR and HLT below, we’ll discover that a sizable portion of their businesses come from franchisor/franchisee relationships. This leads to another question – is it better to be the franchisor or the franchisee? We can explore Park Hotels and Resorts Inc (PK) to get a flavor for the differences. Unlike the Cruise Pt 2 analysis, less of the below focuses on whether these companies have the liquidity to survive Covid – cash is still coming in the door, even if the demand recovery may not be as a resilient. It instead explores more of the pre-Covid operations for MAR and HLT, and thoughts on what that means going forward.

MAR and HLT

Historical revenue demonstrates a push to franchisor/manager business, rather than own and operate. Note that HLT spun off PK and Hilton Grand Vacations Inc (HGV) (owned hotel and timeshare businesses) at the very beginning of 2017, hence why you’ll see the change in revenue presentation and overall split.

My quick takeaways are:

  • Revenue per Available Room (“RevPar”), hotel room revenue divided by room nights available over the applicable period, has had immaterial changes for each company over the last six years, but MAR converts more $ per room then HLT.
  • MAR derives larger portions of its revenue from franchise/management fees than HLT. Given HLT’s spin offs of PK and HGV, it is clear the biggest players see more value in reducing the tangible assets on their books.

I’m not seeing crazy differences in the debt profile of the two. But compared to cruise lines, MAR and HLT are noticeably better capitalized and have generated sizable free cash flows compared to the debt on their books (15-20% each year). But MAR and HLT are noticeably more expensive – EV/EBITDA at 20x+, while cruises were closer to half that.

How well do MAR and HLT translate revenue into cash? #What Drives Stock Returns Over the Long Term? pointed out that growth in free cash flow per share often drives long term value. In looking over a 6 year horizon, the below free cash flow illustrations seem to speak to this point, with better overall performance from MAR.

In the above, I removed timing differences between reimbursement revenue and expenses; these items are supposed to offset one another over time, so it seems more appropriate to exclude noise from these pieces.

So, what does this mean going forward? MAR and HLT’s stock prices are down ~32% and ~18% since beginning of 2020. As you’d expect these entities faced losses, largely driven in Q2. However, there are still positive free cash flows, expectedly coming from changes in working capital accounts.

Looking at 2019 10-ks, debt maturities don’t become significant for HLT until 2024 (i.e. less than 40m), while MAR’s are more significant at ~1bn+ each year 2020-2022 (bigger red flag). The cash situation for these two feels better than what we saw in cruise stocks, but I think a significant con is that business travel may not come back for some time (i.e. until a vaccine is found)- I’d be more inclined to bet on cruise demand coming back faster than business need for travel lodging.

The Q2 MAR earnings call transcript may be worth a read. In that, they discuss cash burn with in a scenario where demand doesn’t pick up meaningfully from here. Running a quick liquidity analysis on MAR below, survival horizon for MAR seems around 3+ years.

If you’re quietly optimistic that Covid will be meaningfully resolved next year, then there may be potential upside in these stocks, but if you consider FCF yield then you’re probably disappointed at current stock prices. The 2019 FCF per share were $5.57 and $4.76 for MAR and HLT; if we want a 10% FCF yield that implies stock prices slightly above and below $50, but meanwhile the stock prices are around $100 and $90. Additionally, it’s probably going to take some time for FCF per share to come close to the 2019 levels. Not attractive points from a cashflow perspective.

Let’s explore a player on the ownership side of the house to see if that noticeably changes what we’re seeing.

PK

As noted above, PK was spun off of HLT back at very beginning of 2017. As expected in looking at end of 2019 vs Q2 2020, there’s more debt on books to generate cash on hand, and unlike the above franchisors, the costs associated with maintenance and operations of the hotel real estate is entirely reflected on PK’s income statement. The stock price has declined ~62% since beginning of year (significantly more than MAR and HLT), with its discontinuation of dividend payments back in May further crushing investor sentiment. See below for some quick snipits comparing PK’s 2020 financials to 2019.

Reductions in PP&E, wipe out of goodwill, increase in cash with corresponding increase in debt – all things I’d expect to see in this Covid environment.

The income statement data isn’t any better.

Free cash flows are also already negative – noticeably worse cash situation than MAR and HLT, as those companies have still been able to stay free cash flow positive in 2020 thus far.

PK is a Real Estate Investment Trust (“REIT”) for US tax purposes, meaning there are requirements from the IRS that need to be met for the entity to preserve flow through status (i.e. no entity level income tax for federal tax purposes). These requirements include and are not limited to distributing the majority of taxable income to shareholders (REITs often distribute all of taxable income anyway), holding a certain % of assets in real estate, and ensuring the majority of income is derived from passive real estate sources (see Section 856 of the US tax code for additional details). Hotel REITs include additional complexity, as most hotel REIT structures involve (1) creation of a Taxable REIT Subsidiary (“TRS”) where hotel operations occur, and (2) a lease agreement between TRS and REIT whereby REIT owns the assets and TRS makes payments to REIT for use. The nature of this arrangement is intended to mirror a typical real estate arrangement. Hotel REIT players try to maximize REIT income by ensuring the lease agreement strips most of the kosher earnings out of TRS.

My concern here is more a generally pessimistic view of the recoverability of REITs post recession. Distribution requirements make it hard for a REIT to hold on to cash; there is a concept known as “consent dividends”, whereby REIT shareholders may agree to recognize a deemed dividend in their income without cash actually moving outside the REIT, with this fulfilling the REIT’s distribution requirement. But this obviously does not apply in a public REIT context.

Furthermore, REIT investors are mostly concerned with annual yields generated by investment, making cash collection more impractical. While REITs are able to generate net operating losses (“NOLs”) to the extent that they have taxable losses, NOL usage is done on a “post-dividend basis”, making it tough to monetize them since REITs typically distribute out most of their taxable income.

While I think the above points make it hard for REITs to come back after a downturn, I can see a potential opportunity for prospective Buyers (e.g. Blackstone, Brookfield, etc) with cash on hand to buy real estate at a heavy discount (see WSJ article Public Real-Estate Companies Are the New Way to Buy Distress for example). In looking at PK, I tried to compare the net asset value to market capitalization to assess how discounted PK is currently trading. Below I’m assuming that the FMV of land and buildings/improvements is equal to original cost (likely conservative since most of the real estate was acquired back in late 2007).

I’m estimating market cap at ~2bn and net asset value at ~4.7bn; these quick estimates at least directionally tell me that prospective buyers could likely get a pretty sweet discount if they tried to buy the assets.

That said, I think that you can probably find this trend and opportunity across non-hotel REITs as well, and therefore would be more inclined to pass on buying PK.

Thank you again for this great guest post. My main takeaways from this are:

  1. Cruise lines over hotel operators might be better risk/reward, as at least with cruise lines there are signs that demand is still strong once ships can take-off (so becomes just a liquidity consideration in the near term, which you can bracket)
  2. Not getting paid much for the franchisors. The franchisors, MAR and HLT, are historically good businesses. Asset light and generating strong FCF, but at the end of the day, revenues / performance are going to be tied to how the hotels are doing. Its going to be hard for them to just sit and generate FCF when their franchisee base is struggling. With the stocks currently trading at ~20x peak FCF (2019 levels), it doesn’t feel like you are getting paid for any downside risk (e.g. do the franchisees want forgivable loans or some re-cut of the franchisee agreements to survive)
  3. Airbnb wildcard. Airbnb has been a concern to the industry for years, but frankly the impact hasn’t been too noticeable yet (e.g. hotel revenues continued to march up despite Airbnb’s new presence). However, that may change in the future….
Columns, Security Analysis

Why Hasn’t Autozone Stock Re-rated with Other Pandemic Winners? $AZO #COVID19
Reading Time: 3 minutes

I just did a post where I evaluated my holdings of Apple following its recent surge, which looks to be a quite big move for the US’s largest public company. One thing I didn’t really discuss in that post was that Apple may have re-rated recently due to perception of it being a pandemic winner. If your sales have held in well this year, or even increased, you are viewed as either defensive or on a continued growth trek. In turn, your stock has rocketed up.

Here’s a list of stocks that I would say fall into that category. I can’t include them all, but you get the point:

FB Chart

FB data by YCharts

The S&P total return is ~5.5% at this point in the year.  Home Depot is doing well because housing is holding in well, and the pandemic is causing people to reinvest in their homes. Same store sales were up ~24%+! No wonder Home Depot has surged.

The same is true for other retailers, such as Target or Wal-mart, which despite possibly missing the back-to-school shopping season (which is big bucks) they are reporting some of the best comps in years.

So let me take off some of the true high fliers and compare Autozone stock and other auto part retailers to these names.
FB Chart

FB data by YCharts

If you’re having trouble finding the auto retailers on this busy chart – they’re all at the bottom!

This is odd to me. O’Reilly reported +16% SSS comps for Q2 and a 57% increase in net income. Advance Autoparts has a different fiscal period, but they reported 58% increase in EPS on a 7.5% SSS comp.

Why is that? There are several reasons.

  1. In recessions, people keep their car longer and do more work themselves. See my post on AutoZone for some discussion on their comps after the 2008 financial crisis.
  2. After reaching about 7 years in age, cars tend to need more work. The average age of a car in the car parc today is around 12 years
  3. Retailers focused on cleaning products and other pandemic needs consumers would need and auto parts took the back seat. It’s likely that the pure-plays auto stores picked up share

So I fully expect Autozone’s sales to benefit when they report at the end of September. And if this current crisis persists, then their increased comps will likely persist as well.

I’ve been watching street estimates for Autozone. They still sit around pre-pandemic levels. My guess is AZO handily beats these estimates, though admittedly there are some tough comps (believe there were additional selling days in the prior year).

Look, I’m a long term holder at the end of the day and I wouldn’t recommend trading around a  quarter. All I’m saying is you have (i) a high ROIC business that (ii) historically has returned every dollar of FCF to shareholders that (iii) is probably benefiting in COVID where (iv) estimates might be too low. I like the set up.

Featured, Security Analysis

Is it Time to Buy Cruise Stocks? Pt 2 $CCL $NCLH $RCL #COVID19
Reading Time: 8 minutes

It’s always a pleasure to share these pages with like-minded people. Today’s post was written by a very smart, very diligent guy — who just so happens to be a long-time friend of mine. During COVID-19, he’s scrutinized one of the most “center of the storm” sectors: the cruise line stocks . I was thrilled when he accepted the invitation to share his thoughts and work on the blog. I know you will be, too.

With almost five months of lockdown behind us, logic would tell most that the outlook for the cruise industry has gone from bad to worse. As you’d expect, most cruise lines have spent the last few months pulling together survival dollars for what could be the worst storm to hit while not sailing. But even in the darkest of times, could there be light at the end of this tunnel? Article #Is it Time to Buy Cruise Stocks? Intrinsic Value Impact from Coronavirus identified what I think is a very counterintuitive point – even when some of the most horrific events have hit cruise lines, their demand has been remarkably resilient in the following year(s).

For those who like bottom lines up front – I think CCL probably has best chance of survival, and a lot of assumptions used in this analysis are pretty conservative. This is a big gamble, and I’m not expecting any potential pay off until 2022 at the earliest (although reckless day traders may create some wild ups and downs along the way), but the payoff could be exceptional.

The case for strong demand recovery

So what happened after a massive pandemic hit, confining people to their homes in March and April…see Carnival swamped with cruise bookings after announcing August return or What pandemic? Carnival Cruise bookings soar 600% for August trips. When CCL announced cruise returns in August 2020, bookings shot up, with the spike reflecting a 200% increase in bookings over the same period in the prior year.

Who are these people making these bookings? Will these spikes in demand last? Even if there is strong demand, won’t governmental restriction stymie all chances for recovery here?

All great questions. The first two cannot really be answered definitively. If the past can be used to determine the future, it is fair to say that cruise demand has historically come back strong even after disastrous events. Further, many people seem to be of the mindset that Covid is here to stay, and are accepting its spread while hoping for a low death rate (whether this is an ethically acceptable position is an entirely different discussion and far out of the scope of this article’s analysis).

The last question is probably the most important here – where does governmental restriction fit in all of this? In my opinion, it is the most important final step in the recovery. If demand is there, but governments forbid sailing, then demand becomes irrelevant. Your guess is as good as mine here, but demand assumptions for the rest of this analysis are:

  1. No more cruises will sail in 2020 – only revenue accumulated was Q1’20, with a complete halt to revenue for the remainder of the year.
  2. Demand in 2021 is 50% of what it was in 2019.
  3. 2022 resembles normal operations – EBITDA falls somewhere between the min and max annual EBITDA generated in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

After diving into the financials of CCL, RCL, and NCLH (“The Big 3”), it looks like these three cruise lines have the ability to survive into next summer with no cruise activity. While some of these may be able to last longer, failure to resume sailing in the peak season for cruises (i.e. the North American summer months) would likely be a final dagger for these businesses. CCL looks best poised to survive of the three, so more of the below will focus on them. Note that as of date of this post, cruises in the US will not resume until October for The Big 3; however, some European cruises are still scheduled to go ahead as planned.

Survival – what does liquidity look like over the next year?

Let’s start by getting perspective on what debt looked like on the balance sheet for The Big 3 pre-Covid. Looking at Net Debt to EBITDA and FCF as a % of Debt (avoid using equity in this kind of assessment, as companies can mess with it via share repurchases, dividends, etc):

CCL looks best capitalized coming into this mess, and has traded cheaper in comparison to the other two – EV/EBITDA ratio is ~20% less than the other two at the end of 2019.

As you’d expect, over the last few months The Big 3 have moved quickly to build up liquidity to survive this next year, drawing down revolvers and issuing new debt. Some of the debt issued at CCL and NCLH are convertible notes, so assuming these companies recover I think it’s important to factor dilution into any analysis that you run. NCLH also took in additional equity investment from both the public and via PIPE from L Catterton.

Now let’s put together some pro formas for CCL. What does a projected income statement look like?

As expected, these next couple years look rough, but I’d like to reemphasize that 2020 assumes no additional revenue, and 2021 assumes 50% demand – unless Covid goes from bad to worse than we could have ever expected, these feel conservative. This analysis also does not bake in the benefit of reduced fuel prices that may stick around these next couple years.

Where does this get my cashflows?

Using rough numbers here, analysis projects that $7.3bn of financing is needed over next couple years ($3bn in 2020 and $4.3bn in 2021). The good news (depending on how you look at it) is CCL pulled $3bn from revolvers in March and issued $5.75bn of new debt in April (some of which is convertible, and should be assumed converted if CCL recovers), meaning they’ve already achieved the financing needed based on these projections. My above cashflow projections also assumes all treasury shares are reissued at approx. 80% loss, and per the below, 62.5m of the 190m shares have already been reissued.

Other comments on cashflow:

  • 2020 sales of ships– CCL plans to sell 13 ships in 2020 (approx. 10% of its fleet). I assumed $150m sale price per ship in my above cashflow estimates. I don’t think this is actually that alarming, as (1) these ships are probably older, and needed to go at some point anyway (who wants to ride an old cruise ship), and (2) 10% of fleet isn’t that bad given that they are the biggest cruise operator with ~45% market share. Competitors have also done and/or will probably do the same.
  • Cash outlays for ship orders- I’ve assumed that commitments for new ships will be wiped out over next few years. I think it’s fair to assume that CCL is probably under contract to take them, but in this environment they’ll probably tell the shipbuilders to pound sand the next couple years. It’s probably in the interest of the shipbuilders to suck it up as well if they do think CCL can recover – way worse trying to get paid if CCL gets forced into bankruptcy.
  • Credit vs cash refunds- so far, approx. 60% of customers have elected a to receive a future cruise credit rather than cash refund for their postponed cruises – definitely a positive sign for pent up demand

  • Breakeven point- the CCL Q220 earnings call transcript may be worth a read. David Bernstein (CCL CFO and CAO) notes that the breakeven point on an individual ship basis is generally 30-50% of capacity. He estimates that they’d need to run approx. 25 ships for cashflow to breakeven (approx. 25% of fleet). I view this as validation that my analysis is conservative, as I’m anticipating a cash shortfall in 2021 with 50% demand.
  • Debt covenants- I found some of the debt covenant specifics for RCL (net debt to capital ratio, fixed charge coverage ratio, min networth, etc); wasn’t able to find these for CCL and NCLH, but it looks pretty clear that The Big 3 will struggle to meet these. But similar to view on new ship orders, creditors will probably be willing to grant leniency if there is a light at the end of the tunnel – most lenders want to avoid seizure of assets and bankruptcy proceedings.

Other Considerations

  • Bankruptcy- while I definitely see potential upside in an investment in CCL, it is definitely risky. If Covid continues to unfold in a horrific way into 2021, The Big 3 could be pushed into bankruptcies. But important to consider impact to CCL if RCL and/or NCLH go down while it stays afloat. RCL is the 2nd biggest behind CCL – if it files Chapter 11 and is relieved of some of its debt payments, it could suddenly have the opportunity to compete more aggressively. If RCL drives its prices down, it could force CCL to follow, driving CCL into bankruptcy. Takeaway here is that bad news for the other two could ironically lead to bad news for CCL.
  • NCLH differentiation- while NCLH’s balance sheet looked bad going into Covid, two points that I think help its survival case:
    • (1) It historically focused on cruise routes that the other two were not focused on. See snipit from 2019 10-k:

    • (2) its ships are significantly smaller (~30+%) than RCL and CCL. This could come in handy if governments put official caps on the number of people that can be on a cruise at a given time (regardless of ship size).
  • Cruises sailing in 2020– analysis assumes no cruises again until 2021, but if some of these carry on (unlikely in the US, but maybe more likely in Europe), it will be very important to track the outcomes and potential regulatory responses.

Bottom line

If betting on the survival and recovery of cruise lines is something that you’re interested in, I think CCL is the best bet. Back in March the market priced death into the Big 3 stock prices, and stock prices of these at the time of this post are not far from those March prices. Applying the lowest PE ratio from the last 10 years (excluding Covid) to this analysis’ EPS estimate shows a sizable ROI is in the cards. By no means should you view this as a real way to project the stock price, but point is that there’s a lot of potential upside here if you can handle the risk.

Caveat emptor. Hope you find this helpful!

Columns

Why did oil prices go negative?
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Why did oil prices turn negative? How is that even possible? Typically, instead of paying someone to take a product away from you, you would just stop making that product and wait for another day so you can make a profit. Well, it is very difficult to just stop oil production and wait. It’s very costly to shut-in production and then restart.

What led to this issue? Supply is greater than demand right now. Given the impacts of COVID-19 means the largest consumers of oil have halted (jets and cars). At the same time, we’ve been building supply in Cushing, OK which is America’s key storage and delivery point.

Negative prices may seem attractive when you’re getting paid to take product, but aren’t so great when you realize if you were to take delivery (i.e. receive physical oil) you’d have to pay high prices to store it, which could eliminate all your profits.

Why didn’t the energy ETF sell-off more? If you look at Exxon or Shell or any of the majors on April 20th, their stocks were down maybe 3-4%. In fact, if you looked at Brent futures, the benchmark for Europe, it was selling for $25 / barrel. WTI contract for June delivery was $20 / barrel. Huh?

It all has to do with the futures market. Matt Levine also has a great post on this.  In essence, if you want exposure to oil, but didn’t want to actually take barrels of oil, you could buy a futures contract that gives you paper exposure to the commodity until it expires at which point you can either roll the contract (maintain paper exposure) or take physical delivery. If you go to the CME website, you’ll see you can buy oil in 1,000 barrel increments and it is settled “physically” – not financially – so you’d actually have to find a place to store it if you didn’t roll the contract.

When the June oil futures contract price is higher than May, that means the market is in contango. The June cost being higher than May partially reflects “the cost of carry” or storage costs for you to pay someone to hold the oil for you until the contract is settled. In this case, oil went into super contango because the cost of carry went to extreme levels.

This is also why energy companies didn’t sell off more. The “real” price of oil wasn’t actually negative. It was a panic to not settle physically. In fact, if energy companies hedge, they were likely the ones selling futures contracts before this point…

So this caused oil to turn negative?  Yes. As traders looked at their May contracts, they realized they couldn’t take physical delivery without paying huge prices. Also, panic probably settled in.

Was this predictable? Yes, actually. Here is a link to an article published on Bloomberg about 1 month before oil actually turned negative essentially predicting it could happen.

Could it happen again? Yes. And it might given investors decided to buy $USO, the oil ETF, to gain exposure. $1.5BN flooded into the ETF.  The problem is that investors bought this fund, which had to create shares and buying underlying, front-end futures contracts. So what did they buy? They forced it to buy June expiry contracts. So now they have exposure to the June contract in a vehicle that cannot take physical delivery and has no choice but to roll contracts. That may very well lead to this issue happening again in a month.

Oil prices outside of futures contracts remain very low. Could we see the majors like Exxon cutting more dividends?

Another incredible black swan event for 2020!

Real Estate Investing

Cash on Cash Return of Real Estate – Will #COVID19 Create Opportunities?
Reading Time: 5 minutes

COVID-19 has already produced some interesting investment opportunities in the stock market. Fortunately or unfortunately, part of investing is being prepared to buy an asset that others NEED to sell. Perhaps the cash on cash return of real estate will improve…

This happens in the stock market all the time, but I think real estate could again become attractive given unemployment is rising, there has been disruption in the mortgage market, and a cease in travel may pressure liquidity of those who bought short-term rental properties (think airbnb). Since I am seeking investment opportunities for myself, I figured I would share. My wife & I already own one investment property purchased in 2010 and I can clearly see the benefits.

Here are a few positives of buying real estate:

Cheap leverage:

You can finance around 75%+ of the purchase price with very cheap, 30 yr debt. Our property is an investment, so interest rates are around 50-75bps higher than the national average, and we are paying 4.25% over 30 years.

Compare that to buying a cash flow producing business and you’re likely going to have to pay 8% and carry risk that the business fails, whereas you can generally have decent protections in real estate (location, location, location)

Asset is then paid for by tenants:

The next best thing is that you have that rate locked-in for the tenor of the loan, but rent typically rises each year or over a long period of time. So you’re typically getting “more profitable” each year. Also, you’re not the one paying for it – the tenant is!

Rinse & Repeat – Taxes are favorable:

Thanks to 1031 like-kind exchange rules, when you sell a property (hopefully for a gain) you can roll your original investment & gain into another property and avoid paying capital gains. In other words, it’s akin to a deferred tax account.

You can buy a property on the cheap, realize gains & maybe move rent up to a market rate, sell for a profit & repeat. Also, mortgage interest is tax deductible.

You can essentially conduct a dividend recap on the property:

Also known as a cash-out refi, we did this with our rental property. The lender will appraise your property and allow you to re-lever back up to 75% LTV. So a new mortgage is created against the higher property value, the old mortgage is paid off, and the bank cuts you a check for the difference.

This is a great feature because you can buy a place that needs to be rehabbed on the cheap, fix it up, rent it, and then go and refinance the property on likely a higher value and take out all of your original equity! This has also been called the “BRRR” strategy, Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat.

I do, however, have a few complaints.

Not quite passive investing:

I can go out tomorrow and buy a bond fund that pays interest and pay the manager a few basis points for their trouble. Real estate though is tough. If you’re managing it yourself, you need to find tenants (a challenge) and be prepared to find someone to fix an issue at any time. A property manager can ease this concern, but there still is generally some back-and-forth here.

Are the returns really that great?

This is what I plan on investing in this post. My wife & I just hired a property manager, but there have been times while we were self managing the property where we asked ourselves if it was all worth it in the end.

Liability:

You can finance properties in an LLC, but typically that interest rate won’t be nearly as good. You can instead get insurance to help cover some of the liabilities involved with renting properties, but will you lose sleep wondering if its enough? (biggest fear for me is a party where someone falls off a roof railing or something like that – personally I should be covered in several ways there, but still a concern in the back of my mind).

Understanding Cash-on-cash returns vs. IRR vs. Cap Rate in real estate

There’s a lot of jargon thrown around in investing, particularly real estate. First is probably cap rate, which is your NOI (net operating income) over the asset value (or purchase price). NOI is just the annual rental revenue less the operating expenses (such as ongoing maintenance costs, utilities, property taxes), but does NOT include financing costs. It’s just a rough proxy for what the return on the property will be unlevered. So it’s likely a lower rate of return given you probably will finance your purchase.

I sometimes look at cap rates, but only as a quick proxy for value, similar to EV/EBITDA — in fact, a cap rate is really just EBIT/EV. So clearly, it is missing financing costs (interest) as well as any capex needs and I prefer to know what my cash returns are as an equity holder.

Cash on cash return removes what we just discussed. This takes out financing costs and any recurring annual capex to find out what a real cash on cash return is.

Note, by financing, I just mean interest cost. That’s because a pay down of principal is paying down debt permanently and therefore building your equity (as I’ve said before, when a company pays down $1 of debt, this is a $1 to the equity). Some investors add the principal amount to cash flow, but I don’t do that because I’m not actually benefiting from that cash flow in the period. Doesn’t make intuitive sense to me.

Example:

I wanted to share some math that I’ve been looking at so, here is a spreedsheet snapshot I’m working on (perhaps this is a legible picture…). Hopefully the assumptions are clear enough. This assumes purchasing the property at a ~6% cap rate and a 8% cash on cash return, which I would say is somewhat typical.

I also highlighted when you could expect to refi out around ~95%+ of your original equity. Not bad – I can cash out my equity by year 8 and still own the asset. I could probably then go buy another property with that cash.  Unfortunately, as of right now, the areas I am comfortable investing in are more like 4-5% cap rates… not that great.

One thing that should be somewhat obvious is that the more equity you put down, the closer your cash-on-cash return will be to cap rate.

What does this mean from an IRR perspective?

The IRR in this example was around 9%, including closing costs on both sides of the transaction. Clearly that is much closer to the cash on cash return. The problem with IRR is it basically assumes you can reinvest each dollar you receive back at the project rate, which may not be realistic.

That brings me to another thing to focus on: total return. Just add up all the costs in vs. costs out. This ratio is called the multiple of money. I like to use it to compare returns. Subtract 1 from it and you have the % total return as well.

All-in-all, these returns aren’t bad. Especially for a “stable” asset class. That said, I have to think about the balance between buying this asset, some of the headaches that come with it, and not have much liquidity. I’d need to either find a way to put less equity down (to juice returns) or find properties at a steeper discount.

If you want to look at some properties yourself and run the math, you can check out this company called Roofstock, which to me seems like its trying to make long distance relationships & real estate a thing. Its an interesting concept and I have to commend them on their tools as well. You can even buy fractional shares in a home on their site (not sure how the financing and taxes works though… I’ll have to give them a call), though inventory seems limited. I’m not getting a kickback from them or anything, but I do monitor their site so thought I’d share.