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Concordia International CorpCXR.TODON'T BUYJan 19, 2016Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Dec 01, 2018. Market Open.
It has lost the overwhelming majority of its value. It is burdened with leverage. It is important to step back and take a cold, clinical view of it. The market does not care what you paid for it. The prospects going forward don’t look very favourable for it. The subordinate debt went into default this week. The stock is more of a lottery ticket.
She wouldn’t be buying this now, even though the stock price has come down dramatically from what it was a few years ago. This has only been public for about 4-5 years, and they’ve been buying assets. There is a lot of pricing pressure on the drugs they bought and paid a lot for. Has a lot of debt on their balance sheet. Debt to Enterprise EBITDA is over 11X. There is a big question as to how they are going to repay the debt when it comes due. Based on what they have now, it doesn’t seem sufficient.
He loves turnaround stories with lots of debt. When you get them right, they really move. This one is not a turnaround yet. It has a lot of things that you look for, what it doesn’t have are signs of a turnaround. Wait until you see two quarters of deleveraging and improving margins. The stock will move from there. It still has bankruptcy risks.
He is pessimistic on this. They recently hired another set of advisors to advise them on capital structure. That usually doesn’t end well for equity holders. Just had so much debt. The big UK acquisition they made really went south on them in a hurry. Expects debt holders are either going to want a massive equity dilution or for some kind of bankruptcy and restructuring. The equity is probably close to worthless.
Concordia (CXR-T) or Valeant (VRX-T)? He wouldn’t pick either because whenever you have accounting irregularities, that never gets better, especially in Canada. This sector is under so much heat right now. The US president has really focused in on even legitimate drug companies and there is going to be a lot of scrutiny. doesn’t think either will survive.
Canadian market is a tougher one to be in for healthcare. There have been some strong pockets and some weak ones. Biotech and pharmaceutical have had a tough 3-4 months. Broke down in the fall, so he is giving an X to that sector for adding new names. This one has had a very tough go since September. Would prefer something like Bristol-Myers (BMY-N) instead. You could also look at health care devices like Intuitive Surgical (ISRG-Q), because those companies are behaving quite well.