A quick note on the Cafe Coffee day IPO:
- Ends today
- Rs. 316 to 328
- Multiples of 45 shares
- 1100 cr. in size
This is me being VERY VERY Late. I know. I’m sorry.
I wasn’t going to bother thinking this is another waste IPO where you won’t get anything due to oversubscription. So no point doing a detailed analysis. But apparently things don’t seem that badly oversubscribed. They only got full subscription just now.
Things to note:
- VG Siddhartha is the promoter. He and other promoters will own 52%. He is ex-Karnataka CM, SM Krishna’s son-in-law. This is only as important as you want it to be.
- Loss making: the last financial year saw a loss of 159 cr. and the first quarter in this year was already a loss of 40 cr.
- It’s not just the Coffee Day business: the company owns tech parks, a massive stake in Mindtree, a financial services business, hotels and coffee plantations.
- Ambit’s report says avoid. Because of very low Return on Capital Employed, and a EBIDTA growth rate of only 14%.
- The coffee business is about 51% of their turnover, and 55% of their EBIDTA
- The company is raising only 1100 cr. in the IPO – it will repay debt of the holding company, which has taken loans for the retail business and for their stake in Mindtree etc.
- Only 25% of the money raised will be for new outlets, which will be on highways, and to upgrade the current infrastructure.
- They will also set up a new coffee roasting facility.
- The valuation is incredibly difficult to break down but the plantation valuations I don’t agree with. They can sell the mindtree stake when they get a good buyer, and that can be valued. (They own 16%)
- The market cap is 6800 cr. with this issue, which isn’t very big. However, the scale depends on how the management takes this forward, and they are very smart people.
Coffee day’s coffee isn’t great. Their Arabica variations suck. I think they need to train their buyers better.
But Coffee Day isn’t about coffee alone. It’s about hanging out with friends and a meeting place and place to read books. That’s something we are likely to grow to love. The startups love it already – any coffee day in BLR is a place to see startups pitch investors, make deals and all that. That’s the scene with all coffee shops.
My Take
It may be too late to do anything right now. I can’t – my online IPO system is not allowing me to buy. But if I could I would apply for a small quantity, around Rs. 50,000 worth. I think the retail coffee business is huge and can scale substantially.
The cost of refurbishing shops should come down as the cost of cement, paper etc. comes down. They have huge advertising potential, and the ability to bag the massive scale we will need in the highway shops, and none of their competitors are in that market.
It may be better to watch it at listing instead, with a low demand it might not list at much of a premium. This is a tiny IPO – just Rs. 1100 cr. – and hasn’t got much attention. But it could just end up being a big hit if Siddhartha pull out all stops, moves into the highways and gets a much lower real estate cost on his shops. But yes, this is so late you probably can’t act either.
Short take: Buy small, bet on longer term growth, no listing gains expected. Wait till listing.
