The Intelligent Investor_ The Definitive Book on Value Investing - Benjamin Graham [187]
McGraw-Hill continues to be a strong and prosperous company. But its price history exemplifies—as do so many other cases—the speculative hazards in such stocks created by Wall Street through its undisciplined waves of optimism and pessimism.
Pair 7: National General Corp. (A Large Conglomerate) and National Presto Industries (Diverse Electric Appliances, Ordnance)
These two companies invite comparison chiefly because they are so different. Let us call them “General” and “Presto.” We have selected the end of 1968 for our study, because the write-offs taken by General in 1969 made the figures for that year too ambiguous. The full flavor of General’s far-flung activities could not be savored the year before, but it was already conglomerate enough for anyone’s taste. The condensed description in the Stock Guide read “Nation-wide theatre chain; motion picture and TV production, savings and loan assn., book publishing.” To which could be added, then or later, “insurance, investment banking, records, music publishing, computerized services, real estate—and 35% of Performance Systems Inc. (name recently changed from Minnie Pearl’s Chicken System Inc.).” Presto had also followed a diversification program, but in comparison with General it was modest indeed. Starting as the leading maker of pressure cookers, it had branched out into various other household and electric appliances. Quite differently, also, it took on a number of ordnance contracts for the U.S. government.
Our Table 18-7 summarizes the showing of the companies at the end of 1968. The capital structure of Presto was as simple as it could be—nothing but 1,478,000 shares of common stock, selling in the market for $58 million. Contrastingly, General had more than twice as many shares of common, plus an issue of convertible preferred, plus three issues of stock warrants calling for a huge amount of common, plus a towering convertible bond issue (just given in exchange for stock of an insurance company), plus a goodly sum of nonconvertible bonds. All this added up to a market capitalization of $534 million, not counting an impending issue of convertible bonds, and $750 million, including such issue. Despite National General’s enormously greater capitalization, it had actually done considerably less gross business than Presto in their fiscal years, and it had shown only 75% of Presto’s net income.
The determination of the true market value of General’s common-stock capitalization presents an interesting problem for security analysts and has important implications for anyone interested in the stock on any basis more serious than outright gambling. The relatively small $4½ convertible preferred can be readily taken care of by assuming its conversion into common, when the latter sells at a suitable market level. This we have done in Table 18-7. But the warrants require different treatment. In calculating the “full dilution” basis the company assumes exercise of all the warrants, and the application of the proceeds to the retirement of debt, plus use of the balance to buy in common at the market. These assumptions actually produced virtually no effect on the earnings per share in calendar 1968—which were reported as $1.51 both before and after allowance for dilution. We consider this treatment illogical and unrealistic. As we see it, the warrants represent a part of the “common-stock package” and their market value is part of the “effective market value” of the common-stock part of the capital. (See our discussion of this point on p. 415 above.) This simple technique of adding the market price of the warrants to that of the common has a radical effect on the showing of National General at the