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Gav Yam (Bayside): A Stock to Sleep Well at Night

Last updated on 2016-03-08

Disclaimer: I am not a certified investor of any kind. These are my personal views and are solely for informational purposes. The numbers I have provided here were digged up by me from many sources and may be wrong in many places. User discretion is advised. I may or may not own the stocks named in this post. This message will not self destruct in 5 seconds.

Gav Yam (or in her english name Bayside) is a company that develops and rents industrial real-estate and develops residential projects in Israel. It is a very old company (for Israeli standards), founded in 1928 to help develop the industrial infrastructure of the yet to be born country. The company is a public primarily owned by Nechasim UBinian (Property and Building Corporation in English… a very imaginative name), which in turn is owned by larger Israeli concerns in a not-so-long chain of companies. The following information was extracted from the 2011 yearly statements.

The company owns many industrial parks – a total of 743K sq. meters, in inflation-adjusted long-term contracts, with an occupation rate of 96%, which produced for the company an income of 330 Million Shekels in 2011.

In the residential sector, the company finished selling all units in two projects it had, and started selling a new project. From these sales the company received 5.1 Million Shekels in 2011.

The company has very interesting assets:

  1. Haifa Matam Park: Home of Intel, Microsoft, Google, Elbit, Phillips and many other high-tech companies. It contains 194K sq. m. rental space of which 145K sq. m. are office space. The occupation rate of this asset is 97%. This assets gives a return of 8.4% on its value, which was calculated as 1,088,497K Shekels, almost one fourth of the company’s long term assets.
  2. Herzlya North: Home of more hi-tech companies, one of them Microsoft. It contains 114K sq. m. rental space of which 44K sq. m. are office space. The occupation rate of this asset is 98%. This assets gives a return of 7.8% on its value, which was calculated as 721,160K shekels.

Overall, the company’s assets give a return of 8.6%, on assets valued at 3,231,870K Shekels, with an occupation rate of 96.5%. Pretty nice.

The company is also developing a number of projects, extending the Herlyza and Matam parks and building a full hi-tech park in Beer-Sheva similar to the Matam park. From a presentation to investors, the company is building 266K sq. m. more of office space that will be available for rent in the future (2-3) years.

The company’s stock price has grown 21% since 2000. It had a high valuation in 2006 of 1000 Shekels, from which it went to 410 Shekels in the hysteria of the sub-prime crisis. Now it hovers around 800, going up and down as the winds of the stock exchange carry it, with no real direction.

The stock’s behavior can be expected from how the company has operated in the last years. The stock’s EPS since 2005 has been a roller-coaster:

Here are some numbers from the latest (2011) yearly statements (all numbers are in terms of thousands shekels):

Balance Sheet
2011 2010 2009
Assets
Current 592420 601327 648128
Long-Term 4719895 4249547 4045987
Total Assets 5312315 4850874 4694115
Liabilities
Short-Term 531098 409376 370722
Long-Term 2842287 2397595 2355095
Shareholder’s Equity 1938930 2043903 1968298
Total Liabilities 5312315 4850874 4694115
Income Statement
2011 2010 2009
Revenues 475731 474686 532200
Operating Income 416103 410421 384702
Net Income 85613 231479 286356
EPS 34.51 95.08 110.61
Cash Flow
2011 2010 2009
Operations Cash-flow 267342 290537 341621
Investments Cash-flow -64368 -107914 -293419
Financing Cash-flow -83597 -270410 -221327
Total Cash-flow 119377 -87787 -173125
Cash at end of period 345960 226583 314370

What I read from these statements is:

  1. Consistent cash flow.
  2. Lots of assets.
  3. In 2011 the company had small income because it paid lots of taxes (I read that in the company’s statements).
  4. Many liabilities, but most of them are long term, which will be paid in the next 5 to 10 years. Since the company generated very good cash flow from its rents, I don’t think it will have a problem paying.

Gav Yam has distributed dividends regularly since 2002, even doing so in the height of the real-estate crisis, which didn’t even touch the company:

It is hard to say that there is a trend to increase the dividends, and the company does not have a dividend policy, but since it is owned by holding companies that need the money to pay for their acquisitions, I thinks dividends will continue to flow.

Reading the numbers, Gav Yam does not look like a promising company. But from my point of view, it is. It has great assets, and even greater projects. It has debt, I don’t think they will have a problem serving it, both in the short and long terms.

If you have ideas how to better analyze this company, please comment. I’ll do my best to improve with time.

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