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Vocus Communications
HOLD (previously REDUCE) Refocus at Vocus
Current price: A$2.80 ■ At VOC’s investor day a number of new initiatives were tabled which make us
Target price: A$2.78 more confident that management is making progress on reshaping the business.
Previous target: A$2.22
■ These include revenue tracking to target in Q1 FY18 and tighter cost controls
Up/downside: -0.6% (both opex and capex) which show attention is now being paid to ROIC.
Reuters: VOC.AX
Bloomberg: VOC AU
■ The possibility of divesting the New Zealand business was also mentioned, and
should this occur at a reasonable price, it could resolve VOC’s balance sheet
Market cap: US$1,365m problems, in our view. We upgrade from a Reduce to a Hold recommendation.
A$1,742m
Average daily turnover: US$9.73m
A$12.39m FY18 guidance – largely unchanged
Current shares o/s 618.0m FY18 guidance was largely unchanged with the slight tweak being higher ASC (VOC’s
Singapore to Perth Submarine cable) capex in FY18 although it will be lower in totality.
Free float: 97.5%
FY18 guidance suggests underlying EBITDA will be flat to down 5% yoy (on a like for
Price Close Relative to S&P/ASX 200 (RHS) like basis assuming VOC owned NextGen for 12 months in FY17).
5.90 95
4.90 77 Meeting sales targets and Return on Invested Capital now in focus
3.90 60 On the revenue front, VOC noted its direct sales team achieved its Q1 FY18 targets,
2.90 42
new staff and partners have been added, and VOC has successfully won 4 of 4 Federal
1.90 24
80
60
business tenders. Operationally VOC has made progress and is starting to fix some of
40 its enterprise delivery backlog/issues (although this doesn't appear to be completely
Vol m
20
fixed yet as VOC excluded some parts of the business from this statement). With sales
Oct-16 Jan-17 Apr-17 Jul-17
meeting expectations and delivery delays getting resolved, VOC should be in a better
Source: Bloomberg
position. VOC noted plans to take A$120m of cost out of the business by FY20 with
Price performance 1M 3M 12M A$30m of higher NBN access costs netting this back to A$90m. The unknown part of
this remains cost associated with these cost reduction programs and whether they will
Absolute (%) 17.2 -20 -52.5
deliver, on a net basis EBITDA growth, or simply help to offset declining Underlying
Relative (%) 13.5 -23 -61 EBITDA. Regardless VOC has formulated a plan for tighter cost controls and improving
financial returns as evidenced by VOC mentioning ROIC for the first time in many years.
Nick Harris Guidance suggests VOC’s FY18 ROIC (EBIT/Invested Capital) sits at around 7% so
T +61 7 3334 4557 there is room to improve this figure. VOC trades at a 25% discount to book value, so
E nick.harris@morgans.com.au should ROIC improve materially, this would represent an upside risk to the share price.
James BARKER
Possibility of NZ divestment could fix the balance sheet
T (61) 7 3334 4893
Vocus announced plans to sell the NZ business, ideally by the end of FY18. In FY17 NZ
E james.barker@morgans.com.au reported A$232m of revenue and A$57.5m of EBITDA. Applying 6-8x would value this at
A$340-450m. A divestment would see EBITDA drop by ~17% but gearing would drop
from ~3x to ~2.2x and take the pressure off VOC’s balance sheet.
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4.2) Q1 enterprise/wholesale sales targets were met and VOC has some
success in resolving its enterprise/wholesale delivery issues (although this
doesn't appear to be completely fixed yet as VOC excludes some part of the
business from this statement).
5) VOC noted a A$90m net (A$120m gross) cost out program which is
expected to fully contribute from FY21 (a FY2020 exit rate). There were no
additional comments supporting this so we are unsure whether this is expected
to drive growth in EBITDA or offset declining EBITDA. We expect it is a growth
driver but have not been provided details of the cost associated with this cost out
program. Previously VOC management noted cost out / synergy targets but
failed to include the fact that Underlying EBITDA was declining and that there
were substantial costs associated with delivering this cost out program.
6) VOC has retained its ASC (Submarine cable) go live date of Q1 FY19 and
appears to have slightly reduced the overall capex spend (down US$8m over
the payment terms) but up US$4m in FY18.
7) VOC has implemented tighter capex and opex control which is a positive,
in our view. More pleasingly VOC's slide now makes note of ROIC / Return On
Invested Capital which has not been a focus before.
Figure 3: Key slide for us was tying it all together to focus on ROIC
SOURCE: COMPANY
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06.07.17