Tag Archives: EADS

July 17, 2013 · 8:00 am

Dear Congressman, send the C-27Js to The Boneyard

I read yesterday the following article from Aviation Week & Space Technology: “U.S. Coast Guard Patrol Aircraft May Fall To Cuts“. Part of the article stated the obvious, that the Coast Guard modernization programs may fall also victims of the budgetary pressures faced elsewhere in the Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security. However, the following passage caught my attention:

“While the results of the portfolio review, started in April, remain to be seen, the Coast Guard has not given up on gaining new equipment. Obama administration officials are looking at transferring at least 14 newly built Finmeccanica C-27J transports from the Air Force, which has controversially declared them “excess” to its needs. As CRS reported, if the Coast Guard were to receive 14 or more C-27s, it could stop procurement of EADS HC-144A maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) at the halfway point, with 18 aircraft, saving $887 million.”

I was amazed, since:

The rationale behind was the potential saving of up to 800M$ in acquisition costs (not buying the remaining 18 out of 36 aircraft which originally made up the Deepwater program) and getting some 14 C-27J instead…

If I were an US Congressman looking for savings across the US Armed Services, I would have it clear: instead of interfering with sound acquisition programs, I would simply get those C-27Js already acquired, send a couple of them to museums and the rest to The Boneyard in Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, to lay there forever close to their older brothers the C-27As and avoid any cost-ineffective operating and maintenance expenses on them…

The only cost-effective C-27s are in the desert (or already scrapped).

The only cost-effective C-27s are in the desert (or already scrapped).

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January 29, 2013 · 8:00 am

Strategy 101 at play in EADS

EADS announced last month, on the 5th of December an overhaul of its Governance and Shareholding Structure. See the press release in which it was announced.

That press release had 7 key points. Each of them would deserve a long discussion. To be honest, I have had long discussions about some of them with colleagues.

The week after the release was made public, I had lunch with a couple of former colleagues, both former strategists and now retired. When discussing together our impressions of the changes and implications, we first talked about the share buy-back (part of the emphasis is mine):

2. Share buy-back

Subject to market conditions and to the approval of the Extraordinary General Meeting, EADS intends to implement a share buy-back program and subsequent cancellation of up to 15 percent of the outstanding EADS shares, divided into two equal and simultaneous tranches bearing the same terms and conditions:

– A first tranche of up to 7.5 percent, which shall be open to all of EADS’ shareholders, other than the parties to today’s agreement; and

– A second tranche of up to 7.5 percent, which shall be reserved exclusively for Lagardère SCA up to 5.5 percent. If the size of the tranche is higher than 5.5 percent, SOGEPA and SEPI will have the right to tender the remainder (based on their pro rata ownership of EADS shares unless they agree otherwise). In the event that SOGEPA and SEPI do not exercise their right, Lagardère SCA could take up to the full amount of the tranche. Finally, in the event that this tranche is not fully tendered by the above parties, Daimler AG will have the right to participate up to the full unused amount of the tranche.”

I have already shared on a previous post Buffett’s view about share buy-backs, thus I will not comment further about in this post.

Then, my senior colleague raised attention to another part of the release, to which I had not paid much attention the first time I read it:

“Certain specific French and German national security interests will be protected through the creation of “national defence companies” holding sensitive military assets, and including the rights of France and Germany to consent to three outside directors to the board of their respective “national defence companies”. Two of such directors of each “national defence company” shall be members of the EADS Board.”

In the release it is explained that France, Germany and Spain have agreed on a capped government shareholding and will have reciprocal pre-emption rights. The composition of the Board of Directors is changed, to 12 directors, with at least 8 independent and 4 coming from these “national defence companies” (2 from each).

Just as a remark, there is no Spanish “national defence company” holding sensitive military assets. There is not an agreement on any director coming from any such Spanish company, though some of the 8 independent ones could be Spanish.

Today two names appeared on the press:

As my former colleague said, let’s play attention to these moves, especially to the second kind of moves. We are going to at least learn a lot and even enjoy the process. Strategy 101 at play in EADS.

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PD: To put the icing on the cake, let me finish the blog post as the press release is finished:

***************

“In the context of this change of governance, and in a separate agreement with the French State, subject to the consummation of the above transactions, EADS has undertaken to consult with the French State before exercising its voting rights at the general meeting of shareholders of Dassault Aviation and has granted the French State a right of first offer / first refusal in case of the sale of all or part of its stake in Dassault Aviation.

The parties to today’s agreement are EADS, Daimler AG, DASA, Lagardère SCA, SOGEPA, Sogeade, KfW and SEPI.”

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September 16, 2012 · 10:00 am

EADS and BAE Systems merger talks

I first learnt about the merger talks between EADS and BAE Systems via a tweet from my brother:

I then suggested that the possible kind of “last supper” might have been the “Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty” signed almost 2 years ago between France and United Kingdom.

Last supper. First, what is that “last supper” my brother was referring to? It refers to a meeting that was called in 1993 by William Perry, then US Deputy Secretary of Defense, in which he explained defence contractors the post-Cold War defense strategy which called for defense industrial base consolidation. In the chart below, you can see the spree of mergers and acquisitions that took place in the following years:

US defence contractors consolidation after “last supper” in 1993.

In Europe at the time there was a similar consolidation trend, which ended in mainly 3 big European aerospace and defence groups: EADS, BAE Systems and Finmeccanica.

Setting the record straight. Prior to the definition of those 3 groups, several discussions took place at the end of the 90s between different companies. Some articles that I have read about the EADS and BAE talks mention that after conversations between German DASA and British Aerospace failed in 1998 (when BA opted for acquiring GEC Marconi), DASA underwent the acquisition of the Spanish Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA). Well, this is not true. It never happened. DASA merged with French Aerospatiale. Some months later CASA joined the merged when EADS was created. This is well reflected in many other articles. Just as a side note: Tom Enders, current EADS CEO took a role personally in those conversations between DASA and BA already in 1998.

Balance between Defence and Civil business. Most of the articles that we can read today mention the strategic goal of EADS in balancing its defence portfolio with the civil one. Two years ago I wrote a post which included some graphics comparing the then largest world defence companies. I compared the relative size of each company and how defence-oriented their businesses are. Today, I will make use of one of those graphics to show the profile of the two companies, EADS and BAE Systems to weigh that strategic fit:

EADS vs BAE. Size and defence profile.

Stock Market response. The merger talks were announced last Wednesday 12th. The closing prices of each company the previous day were:

  • EADS: 29.67€. This is, a market value of 24.3bn€.
  • BAE Systems: 328pc. This is, a market value of 13.3bn€ (taking that day exchange rate of 1.25).

That is, the combined merger would be 37.6bn€; 64.6% coming from EADS, 35.4% from BAE. However, the announcement mentioned a 60/40 split of the parent company. That is, the announcement pointed investors that either EADS was overvalued (up to +17.7% to get a 60/40 split keeping BAE’s value constant), BAE undervalued (up to -21.5% to get a 60/40 split keeping EADS’ value constant) or somewhere in between.

In the following days, EADS price fell down and then stabilised, BAE went upwards. On Friday they closed at:

  • EADS: 25.31€. This is, a market value of 20.7bn€.
  • BAE Systems: 347pc. This is, a market value of 14.1bn€.

That is a split of 59.5%/40.5%… thus, the market understood EADS was overvalued around -15% while BAE was undervalued around 6%.

Self praise. Taking that price in which now EADS sells, 25.3€ (undoubtedly guided by the 60/40 split), I wanted to bring back another post I wrote about a year ago. In that post, I mentioned that I valued EADS at a price of 24€… Not bad :-).

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April 14, 2012 · 8:00 am

Helicopter ride from Nice to Monaco (video)

About 2 months ago, Luca and I went to Monaco for the weekend. On the way there we first took a flight from Toulouse to Nice, and then a helicopter from Nice to Monaco heliport. This was our second ride in a helicopter after the first one in Brazil 2 years ago. In this post I just wanted to share the videos I filmed of the ride (find them below).

This time the helicopter was an Eurocopter EC 135 (Eurocopter is an EADS company, same as Airbus, where I work). As we took a picture before getting on it, we didn’t have the best seats to shoot a nice movie. There is another shortcoming: since the heliport in Monaco Western than Monaco Ville and in the ride from Nice you are coming from the West as well, you don’t get to see all the sea-line of Monaco in the helicopter ride (the main port, Monte Carlo and the beach).

EC-135 at Nice airport.

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March 12, 2012 · 8:00 am

Le Bal des Ambitions

Le Bal des Ambitions, 2009.

I learnt about the book “Le Bal des  Ambitions” in 2009, when a former colleague mentioned it and asked me to buy it in one of my trips to Paris. By then, I did not know French so as to read it, but some months ago I found it again in the aerospace boutique in Blagnac and grabbed it.

The book is written by two journalists, Véronique Guillermard and Yann le Galès, that in my opinion give an image history of EADS and the main characters who shaped it a bit too much thriller-like. Nevertheless, I found it interesting as I could recall many of the names and chapters, even though most of the stories happened either when I was still a student or had recently joined the company.

Some of the topics covered in the book:

  • Who are the so-called Lagardère boys, the relationships among them and with J.L. Lagardère. (I got to know who from some of top managers came from Matra and who from Aérospatiale.
  • It describes the merger discussions between Aérospatiale–Matra, BAE and DASA.
  • You get a glimpse of the role played by the grandes écoles in French networks.
  • The case of insider trading affecting top management of EADS in 2006.
  • Some of the issues behind the delays of A380 in 2006.

I guess that for a French native the text hasn’t got much quality, but for me, being my second book in French language, it was just perfect.

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October 31, 2011 · 10:00 am

Active investment fund managers

In a previous post I showed the evolution of stock price for EADS and the target price calculated by an investment bank along 34 months. I already stated the misguided recommendations that they provided. A truly “Buy high and sell low”, the quickest way to lose all your savings.

There are many advertisements of investment funds using the term “active” (active management). That’s truly dangerous regarding investing. It not only implies more expenses paid in commissions, but also implies a manager who is acting more.

Imagine that the active fund manager was the same person who had produced the investment bank’s report of EADS that I showed in my previous post. If he had been as active as he recommended his clients to be, he would have bought shares in 6 different moments between 2005 and 2006 and sold them at the beginning of 2007 (*).

As an example, I made the calculation using around 1,000€ as the amount invested in each of those points in time (using the technique called “Dollar cost averaging“). You may see in the table below how many shares those 1,000€ afforded to. You may also see the amount it could cost in commissions (of course, professional brokerage firms would get lower fees – nevertheless, if you omit that commissions, the net result at the end would have been negative as well).

Quick way to lose your savings: follow the advice of an investment bank.

As you can see, after the 7 operations along 2 years, the manager would have lost 268€ on an investment of almost 6,000€, that is losing 4,4% or about 2% a year… It is much better then to leave your money in a savings account.

Nevertheless, what is more worrisome is the fact that in the period of 34 months, the bank produced 15 different target prices, changing its recommendation (i.e., from “buy” to “hold”, etc.) up to 5 times. This urge to produce new figures and even worse, to act upon those new figures is what makes most of professional investment fund managers a truly dangerous species. As Charlie T. Munger wisely says “Resist the natural human bias to act”.

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(*) I would have loved to have performed the same analysis with a newer report, as the price of EADS stock went even below 9€ in the years that followed to reach over 24€ again in 2011… but the last report of EADS (or any other company) that I had with such detailed explanation of target prices was this one (and I’d never pay for such a paper).

EADS share price since its creation.

Note 1: You may think that the negative figures reached with this example are due to the case selected. If you think that is the case, I invite you to take another example and share it with us. I do not have many such reports available, and as I already stated, such a report is not something I would be willing to pay for, I can find many more useful ways to spend money.

Note 2: If you think I was biased by using frequent buys of 1,000€ each one and selling everything at once, I made the same calculation imposing that the manager used the technique “dollar cost averaging” also at the time of selling, that is selling about 1,000€ each time the recommendation was “sell”. The result: at the end of the period he would have 2,962.5€ in cash and 2,114.6€ in stock, having lost this time nearly 16% of the invested amount, even worse than in the first case.

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October 27, 2011 · 8:00 am

Buy high, sell low

If I tell you that investment banks way of making you rich is advising you to “Buy high and sell low”, you’d call me stupid, you’d think I got the sentence wrong (obviously the way to become rich is “buying low and selling high”).

Take a look at the chart below. It’s taken from an investment bank report of EADS at the end of 2007 (let me omit the name of the bank out of courtesy… nevertheless, all banks incur in the same vices).

EADS historical prices from 2005 to end 2007 and investment bank's target prices and recommendations.

Along almost 3 years time, the bank recommends you to buy at 6 different points in time with prices ranging from 26€ to 34€. In the same period it recommends selling 3 times with prices ranging from 18€ to 21€. That is indeed buying high and selling low.

Margin of Safety

Each time that the bank recommended “Buy” the stock actual price was just between 7-16% below the bank’s estimated target price (e.g. 31.5€ vs 34€, -7%). Benjamin Graham concept of “margin of safety” advises you to invest only when the margin between the price you’ve estimated as the stock’s intrinsic value and its current price is above 30%, otherwise possible errors in your judging of the price will eat away possible gains.

That means, that if the intrinsic value of EADS had been well estimated at 34€, and the price was 31.5€, still the recommendation should have been “hold” or “sell”, never “buy”. A “buy” should have come only when price was below 23.8€ for a target of 34€…

That was regarding the margin of safety… was the intrinsic value of EADS really 34€? I have checked statements of EADS several times since its creation. I have never come to that figure as its intrinsic value. Even discarding all the one-offs that have occurred in the last years, the conservative price I reached never went upper than 24€ (a price reached at some point in 2011 – when I sold my stock). That means that the stock would have been a “buy”, had I been the banker, only when its price was under 17€ (which was never the case in the period shown in the report – but for a long period afterwards).

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October 5, 2011 · 10:00 am

Corporate disconnect

Two years ago, EADS launched an engagement survey based on the proven approach offered by Gallup. In its website, Gallup offers a downloadable brochure [PDF, 0.7MB] about the survey, its questions, results and best practices.

Some of the standard questions asked to employees can be found in that brochure:

  • At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
  • In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
  • At work, my opinions seem to count.
  • In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress…

The results of the first two surveys were widely covered by the press (2009 and 2010) due to the low engagement results showed by the survey. Moral was apparently rock-bottoming. Surely, many initiatives would be launched to overcome the situation. In the end, the same brochure by Gallup offered the clue to what the best companies were doing best:

  • Strategy
  • Accountability and Performance
  • Communication
  • Development

In the last issue of the The Economist I found an entertaining article showing the disconnect between opinions at the top and the bottom of the companies. It reminded me of the big differences in the responses shown by the Gallup survey between groups of low ranking employees and top management.

I loved the following paragraph in the article that summarizes well the corporate disconnect:

Tragicomically, the study found that bosses often believe their own guff, even if their underlings do not. Bosses are eight times more likely than the average to believe that their organisation is self-governing. (The cheery folk in human resources are also much more optimistic than other employees.) Some 27% of bosses believe their employees are inspired by their firm. Alas, only 4% of employees agree. Likewise, 41% of bosses say their firm rewards performance based on values rather than merely on financial results. Only 14% of employees swallow this.

Let’s see if the formula of Gallup it’s indeed proven return on investment.

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June 13, 2011 · 10:00 am

Preferred employer both in Spain and Europe…

Yesterday I wrote about what was my dream job as a child: being an astronaut. I work now for Airbus, and for many people, that seems to be the dream company to work for according to some studies.

Already last year, I posted about the study made by Randstad which placed EADS (mother company of Airbus) as the most preferred one in Spain.

This year, the same study by Randstad [PDF, 1.5Mb] has placed again EADS as the favourite company for workers (out of a study including the 150 largest companies in the country), even though the sector Aviation placed only as the third most wanted one.

Apparently the 3 factors in which EADS led the rankings were: the quality of in-company education, the interest of the work performed and the pay policy.

Moreover, recently it was released another study, this time targeted to engineering students across Europe. This one placed again EADS in the top 3 preferred employers behind Google and Audi, and ahead of BMW and Apple.

The good news: EADS will be recruiting over 4,000 employees in 2011.

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June 2, 2011 · 8:00 am

My experience at BRK2011

Berkshire Hathaway was a small textile company in Rhode Island. As many other textile companies it was struggling due to cheap labour competition elsewhere. Warren Buffett had already invested in the company before realising that it was headed for the worst. He was about to sell his stake when he felt irritated by an underbid from the managing director, then he decided not only not to sell his shares but to invest until gaining control, sacking the CEO and completing what he later referred to as his worst investment mistake he ever made…

Today Berkshire is a very different outfit: a big conglomerate, with over 130 billion USD in revenues, with a big insurance arm, dozens of operating companies and large investments in securities. Warren Buffett, his current CEO, regarded as the best investor ever.

Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting (BRK 2011, for this year’s event) is an extraordinary event, widely covered by press and attended by over 30.000 investors and relatives.

I explained in a previous post how I became interested in investing and when and why Luca and I became shareholders of Berkshire, now I want to give a small account of my experience in my baptism in the Woodstock for Capitalists (pictures below)…

… on Thursday 28th April Luca and I picked a rental car in Chicago, from where we would drive 800km to Omaha, Nebraska, with a stop over in Des Moines. Early in the afternoon Friday 29th we arrived at our hotel in Omaha, where the receptionist informed that there was a package waiting for us: our credentials for the weekend (thanks Debra!).

The event is not restricted to just the shareholders meeting, it is composed of a series of events covering the whole weekend. Let me describe them.

Cocktail at Borsheims. On Friday evening several buses would pick shareholders up from an infamous mall to bring us to Borsheims, the group’s jewellery shop. In front of the shop there was a big tent with live music, drinks and food. The shop was open, with re-doubled staffing to attend shareholders in eventual sales (as Buffett says “what better occasion to propose to your girlfriend than at BRK shareholders meeting?”).

Shareholder meeting on Saturday morning. The meeting started at 8:30am, doors opened at 7:00am and Luca and I arrived at 6:45am when there was already a huge queue. The meeting is held at the Qwest Center, a big convention center, which has room for exhibition and a sports indoor arena where the meeting is held. The exhibition area is packed by stands selling all kinds of goods from the group subsidiaries: boots, construction tools, books, sports wear, insurance… anything at a nice discount for shareholders. What better place to go shopping than to your own shop at a discount? To open the day some very funny videos and commercials were displayed. One featuring cartoons of Buffett, Munger and Schwarzenegger as Governator was especially welcomed.

Q&A session. Most of the meeting, until about 15:30 in the afternoon is a questions and answers session. This is when everybody wants to test and listen to the insights from the “Oracle of Omaha”. They made room for approximately 60 questions. Half were selected by 3 journalists from the thousands sent in by shareholders and the other half were drawn just before the meeting from volunteering shareholders in the floor.

This Q&A session is the most widely event reported by media. If you have read anything about the meeting, it was most probably said there. Instead of me telling here again what’s that was said, let me just refer to my first and second favourite accounts from other sources.

Charlie T. Munger. He is the vice chairman of the company and doesn’t get nearly as much coverage in the media as Buffett, however Warren has for him the highest regard. Munger has written a book, “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, which is a treasure of wit and wisdom (and heavy as a brick).

At the meeting he is sitting side by side Warren all day during the meeting, looking half asleep and eating candies. Every now and then he replies with a “I have nothing to add” whenever Warren asks him for comment, except for a few times when he gets to give his point. That point goes without cosmetics straight to the issue at hand: “Much of the present crisis was caused not so much by evil but by stupidity”, [on financial projections] “seeing them in paper or in a screen makes some people believe they’re something serious”, “It seems both parties are competing to see which can be the most stupid. What it’s worse, they’re topping each other”, “Insurance is a difficult business: there are many temptations to be stupid… like in banking”…. after hours of this is when Warren came with his “If there’s anybody we’ve forgotten to insult, pass a note up and we’ll get to you.”

Business meeting. Just as a reminder I will say that this was a shareholders meeting. I hadn’t been in any other before though I had seen some either by streaming or podcast. Luca had attended one of EADS. At BRK the shareholders meeting itself lasted… 20 minutes? Reports, directors for the next year, etc., were voted in a matter of seconds. The only issue which took longer was a proposal to get all subsidiaries to report their carbon impact anticipating eventual legislation. Several shareholders took the word for and against and it was finally turned down… this is America.

Picnic at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. Once the shareholders meeting was finished, we all headed for NFM to enjoy a very professionally organized picnic as well as to visit the furniture shop (largest one in North America). This is another BRK subsidiary founded by Mrs. Rose Blumkin, a strong woman who emigrated from Russia at the beginning of the XX century and started the business at her place,  and after a disagreement with Warren went on to open a new business well into her ‘90s, being involved in the operations until shortly before her death at 104.

Brunch at Borsheims. On Sunday morning shareholders could go back to the jewellery shop to have a brunch while shopping, playing bridge or chess, seeing the performance of a magician, etc… It sounds all fine for a Sunday morning plan, the singularity comes from that jewels were sold by Warren Buffett himself, you could play bridge with or against Bill Gates, the chess game was against US champion, etc.

Lunch at Gorat’s. On Sunday two steak houses in Omaha closed doors for shareholders of BRK. Luca and I booked a place in both; one for lunch, the other for supper. Both are Buffett’s favourite places and this is why he recommends them (not being part of the group). Food was wonderful, just too much for us to finish everything.

Dinner at Piccolo’s. This would be our last event in the weekend. We had finished lunch just 5 hours before and were not really hungry. In fact, we were not hungry at all, but we went on with the plan. While we were having our burgers, Warren and Bill came in with their entourage to have dinner at a table 2 tables away from ours. It felt awkward to say the least but this how we closed our BRK2011, our first.

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