We believe that WHA's operations will continue to grow at a steady pace while HEMRAJ will slowly recover, though the industrial property sector may not be out of the woods just yet. WHA remains a strong valuation play and the amount of core net profit growth YoY simply due to its interest savings from its leveraged buyout (LBO) loan repayment is deemed very significant for 2016-17. Additionally, HEMRAJ's recurring income will provide the conglomerate with a defensive earnings profile while its land sales slowly recover in the years ahead. The small hiccup in HREIT's IPO timeline has caused us to revise down our core net profit for WHA and target price by 8% and 10%, respectively, however, its overall picture remains little affected. Thus, we maintain our HOLD rating for HEMRAJ, TP: Bt4.40, and BUY for WHA, but revise down our target price to Bt3.60. We believe that the divestment of HEMRAJ's ready-built factories and warehouses, along with the IPO of its first ever REIT (HREIT), is likely to be delayed to 2Q16. The trust size has yet to be finalized—we currently expect ~Bt7.8bn, while the original filing indicated Bt9.0bn. Furthermore, WHART unit holder's right of first buy will also have to be amended during its EGM in March before the asset sale could occur. As a consequence, HREIT's second divestment (~Bt4.4bn size) is also pushed back to 1Q17, from the planned date of 4Q16.
… leads to net profit revision
Factoring in the delay of the trust's IPO (assumed as extra item/one-off income in our model); we revise down our 2016 and 2017 net profit to Bt6.2bn and Bt6.5bn for HEMRAJ, and Bt4.6bn and Bt6.4bn for WHA respectively. However, as we have assumed the HREIT sale as one-off income in our model, this leads to no change in HEMRAJ's core net profit and WHA's core net profit is only affected by higher interest payments—core net profit is revised down to Bt3.6bn and Bt7.2bn for 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Upside still intact
Even though we now expect WHA's 2016 interest payment to climb to Bt1.5bn from its previous Bt1.2bn, the consolidation of HEMRAJ's operations as well as the remaining interest savings from its LBO loan repayment would still provide a whopping 97% YoY improvement in its core net profit. As for HEMRAJ, WHA has already secured 70% of its second tender—or ~98% of HEMRAJ's total shares. The tender offer has already proved successful and it is now a matter of time before HEMRAJ will be delisted (planned March 2016).