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Iron oreminer Cleveland-Cliffs shocked the steel establishment with a surprise all-stock buyout of AK Steel. The move has AK Steel shares up this morning while Cliffs shares are tumbling.
Untangling the logic of the deal will take some time and requires a dive into raw material markets and thenature of steelmaking. For now, the Street is panning the deal. The combined value of both firms is lower than it was before the deal was announced. One plus one is equaling less than two for thesesteel-based companies.
First, the details. AK Steel (ticker: AKS) shareholderswill receive0.4 shares of Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) for each AK share held. That works out to about $ 3. 36 per AK share, a 16% premium over the $ 2. 89, based on Monday closing prices. AK Steel stock is up 6.2% to $ 3. 07 in premarket trading at 8: 35 am
Cliffs stock, however, has dropped 9.4% to $ 7. 62. Cliffs stock is down for two reasons. The first is technical. When an all-stock deal is announced merger arbitrage investors will sell the buyer’s share — Cliffs in this instance — and buy the target’s stock, locking in a spread, a profit earned if the deal closes as originally envisioned.
The merger-arb aspect of this deal, however, isn’t why Cliffs share are down a lot. Cliffs investors were happy owning iron ore capacity, but aren’t very happy to be owning steelmaking capacity. Iron ore margins, over time, have been better than margins for U.S. steel producers. The deal creates a far more complicated company with a more complex profit margin structure.
It gets more complicated still. AK Steel is a customer of Cliffs, and that means part of Cliffs ’profit was derived from AK Steel. Now both companies are slated to become one so AK Steel’s costs go down — in theory. AK doesn’t have to pay a spread above Cliff cost for iron ore any longer. That pushes up AK earnings, but it reduces iron ore profits — again, in theory. The profitability of the overall entity isn’t changed when a supplier buys a customer.
Cliffs says it earns $ 30 to $ 40 per ton of iron ore pellets shipped to AK Steel in themerger presentationavailable on the company’s website. What’s more, the presentation says the combined companies have a more competitive cost structure by having captive iron ore supply. But the majority of the U.S. steel industry has captive iron ore. And the supplier-buying-customer paradox still exists. AK Steel margins are more competitive at the expense of Cliff profits.
Deal cost synergies will approach $ 120 million in savings a year, according to the companies. It isn’t clear how those are being calculated. And there is another proposed benefit from the merger. AK Steel won’t have to close a blast furnace because it has access to lower cost raw materials. That is, again, predicated on the supplier-customer paradox. What’s more, additional pig iron supplyisn’t goodfor overall industry pricing.
The deal benefits are far from certain. And there is financial leverage to consider too.
The deal is all-stock because both companies have a lot of debt. The combined enterprise value of both firms — the debt plus market capitalization — is about $ 8 billion. The combined market cap of both firms is less than $ 4 billion. More than half of the total firm accrues to debtholders. More debt means, at minimum, the stock reactions will be more violent than comparable deals with less financial leverage.
The deal might make strategic sense in the long run, but based on the initial reaction of markets, management of both companies have some convincing to do. The Street isn’t buying the cost synergies or strategic benefits yet. The companies host a conference call for investors and analysts at 8: 30 am Eastern time.
This merger comes at aninteresting timefor the industry. Steel stocks are down a lot from all-time highs and the industry is seeking ongoing protection from foreign producers. The industry has a point. China makes about half of the1.8 billion metric tonsof steel made annually — more than it needs for its internal consumption. What’s more, most of the steel capacity is government owned. It wasn’t financed with private market funds.
The last time steel mergers picked up was more than a decade ago when Chinese demand for steel was ramping up and the Middle kingdom wasn’t exporting as much product. Back then, China’s insatiable demand for steel products pushed up raw material costs raising the value of U.S. firms — like Cliffs — that operated existing iron ore assets. Cleveland-Cliffs stock all time high is more than $ 100 a share set back in 2008 before the financial crisis hit.
AK Steel stock is up about (% year to date after rising almost) % over the past three months, better than the comparable gains of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same span. It’s been a wild ride for steel investors as tariffs and demand have whipsawed steel prices. Despite the recent rally, AK Steel stock is still down 11% over the past 12 months. Cleveland-Cliffs shares are up about 9% year to date as of Monday’s closing price.
Write toAl Root at[email protected]
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