In the Global Automobile Race, Investors Bet on Asia's Entrants
TOKYO -- Weak bond prices and credit ratings have signaled trouble at General Motors and Ford Motor for some time now. But thanks to Asian rivals, the outlook for Detroit looks even tougher through the lens of the stock market.
Asian competitors of GM and Ford -- including Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor, Honda Motor and Hyundai Motor -- account for 43% of all the passenger cars sold in the world, according to a recent report by brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. The rest are sold by GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler AG and other car makers outside Asia.
Yet stock-market investors are attributing far more value to Asia's car makers than their market share would suggest. As measured by the combined value of auto makers' shares listed on exchanges around the world -- in other words, the market capitalization of the global business -- Asian companies account for 73% of the worth of all car makers, the report says.
Squeezed into the remaining 27% are not only GM and Ford, but DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Volkswagen and the other car makers of Europe. GM and Ford account for nearly a quarter of global passenger-car sales volume. But they make up a combined 5.1% of the industry's market cap, compared with 11% for Honda alone.
The disparity between how much car makers sell and how investors value them points to what many in the financial markets believe will happen in the industry in coming years. In short, investors are sending a grim message to car makers from the U.S. and Europe: Asian rivals are going to turn all of you into niche players.
"The market has already rendered its verdict, and it is saying the Asians are going to be the winners," says Christopher Richter, a CLSA analyst who is one of the report's authors. Mr. Richter doesn't own stock in the Asian car makers, but his firm says it seeks business with some of the companies its analysts cover.
While Detroit still controls a big chunk of the market for new cars, investors see the U.S. companies' business as increasingly vulnerable to profitable Asian competitors that are gaining global market share.
A key market for Asian car makers is North America, and Asian players see establishing plants there as a rite of passage to the big leagues of global auto production. Toyota, Nissan and Honda all have extensive and expanding production facilities from Canada to Mexico, notably across the southern U.S. By contrast, GM and Ford have announced plans to close two dozen North American factories and cut as many as 60,000 U.S. and Canadian jobs over the next few years.
Investors, of course, sometimes get things wrong. Markets get overheated. Few could fault an investor for backing away from the shares of an Asian auto maker after seeing their recent stock-market performance.
Consider the rally in shares of Toyota -- the maker that, more than any other, symbolizes the dawning era of the Asian car company. The stock, which is listed both in Japan and the U.S., closed in Tokyo yesterday at 6,340 yen ($54.05) -- more than twice the share price of three years ago. Toyota now represents 35% of total auto-industry market capitalization, more than double the combined share of GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler. To put it differently, more than a third of all money invested globally in car makers is in Toyota.
However, Toyota sells only about 11% of the total number of vehicles sold in the world. Add in sales of its affiliates Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, and that rises to roughly 13% -- about the same percentage of unit sales as GM.
True, Toyota is on track to earn significantly more than $11 billion in net profit for its fiscal year that ends March 31, while GM's recent restatement of its 2005 results widened its loss to $10.6 billion from $8.6 billion. But is Toyota really worth that much more?
CLSA analysts say Toyota shares are trading at roughly 13.5 times the brokerage's earnings estimate for the year ending March 31, 2007, far higher than the 10.9 multiple they project for Honda and the 9.4 they project for Nissan for that same year's earnings.
"Investors are becoming wary of Toyota's high share price," says Tatsuo Yoshida, an analyst with Merrill Lynch, in a report this week.
Yet the big cash hoards at some of Asia's auto makers tend to distort the earnings multiples, analysts say. Without Toyota's reserves of more than $30 billion in cash and liquid investments, which attract investors to buy in, its price/earnings ratio would be closer to that of Nissan. The same can be said of Honda, with about $10 billion in cash reserves.
With few exceptions, moreover, the car makers of Asia are adding to those coffers. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have reported record net profits for many recent quarters, and sales have reached records on consistent increases in market share.
Michael Robinet, a vice president of CSM Worldwide, a Farmington Hills, Michigan, research company, predicts that including Nissan's French affiliate Renault, the four Asian auto makers will account for 65% of all the unit-sales growth in the global auto industry between now and 2012.
That helps explain why it's hard to find examples of investors exiting from Toyota. Campbell Gunn, the manager of the T. Rowe Price Japan Fund, raised his stake to 6.3% of overall investments as of the end of October, from 2.9% at the end of April, according to public disclosures. The fund gained 40% during 2005.
Mr. Gunn said through a spokesman that he has kept his Toyota holdings steady at 6.3% in recent months. Despite the heady valuation of Japan's biggest car maker, Mr. Gunn holds more of its stock than the 5.65% recommended weighting of Morgan Stanley's MSCI Japan Index, a benchmark used by professional fund managers.
That helps explain why Toyota's market capitalization is so big, says Mr. Richter, the CLSA analyst. "Over the long haul, everybody sees this company as the biggest winner."
投资者青睐亚洲汽车类股
一段时间以来，债券价格和信贷评级的下降表明通用汽车公司(General Motors, Corp.)和福特汽车公司(Ford Motor Co.)陷入了困境。而透过股市观察，这些底特律汽车制造商的前景因亚洲对手的竞争似乎变得更加糟糕。
里昂证券亚太市场(CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets)最近的一份报告显示，通用汽车和福特汽车的亚洲竞争对手──包括丰田汽车(Toyota Motor Corp.)、日产汽车(Nissan Motor Co.)、本田汽车(Honda Motor Co.)和现代汽车(Hyundai Motors)──占全球轿车销量的43%。剩下的57%则被通用汽车、福特汽车、戴姆勒-克莱斯勒(DaimlerChrysler AG)以及亚洲以外的其他制造商瓜分。
不过，股市投资者对亚洲汽车厂商的追捧程度远远超出那43%的市场占有率：报告显示，在全球汽车制造商的股票总值──也就是全球汽车业的股票市值中，亚洲汽车公司占73%。
挤入余下27%份额的不仅仅是通用汽车和福特汽车，还有戴姆勒-克莱斯勒、宝马汽车(BMW AG)和大众汽车(Volkswagen AG)以及欧洲其他汽车制造商。通用汽车和福特汽车占全球轿车销量的近四分之一，但这两家公司的市值加起来只占全球汽车业股票市值的5.1%，而本田汽车一家就占到了11%。
汽车销量和投资者估值的不一致反映出金融市场对汽车工业未来的普遍预期。简而言之，投资者向美国和欧洲的汽车制造商发出了严峻的讯息：那就是亚洲竞争者将把所有的欧美公司逐入小众市场。
该报告的作者之一、里昂证券分析师克里斯多福?里克特(Christopher Richter)说，“市场已经得出了结论，那就是亚洲制造商将成为赢家。”里克特并未持有亚洲汽车制造商的股票，不过他所在的里昂证券表示，正在寻求和分析报告中提到的一些公司开展业务。
虽然底特律汽车制造商仍控制著新车市场的一大部分，投资者却认为美国公司面对市场占有率节节攀升的亚洲竞争对手变得越来越无力还击。
北美地区是亚洲汽车制造商的主要市场，在那里建设新厂房也被亚洲公司看作是进入全球汽车生产大联盟的标志性一步。北至加拿大南至墨西哥，尤其是在美国南部地区，丰田、日产和本田都拥有庞大的生产基地。相反，通用和福特宣布将在未来几年关闭20多家北美工厂，并裁减6万个美国和加拿大的工作岗位。
投资者当然有时会犯错误。市场已经变得白热化。在看到亚洲汽车生产商最近的股市表现后，投资者退出亚洲汽车类股似乎无可指摘。
想想丰田汽车股价的回升──它最能代表亚洲汽车公司的光明前景。在日本和美国两地上市的丰田汽车周三在东京的收盘价为6,340日圆（合54.05美元）──比三年前的股价上涨了一倍以上。丰田汽车如今占整个汽车工业股票市值的35%，是通用、福特和戴姆勒-克莱斯勒市值总和的两倍以上，换句话说，丰田汽车占全球汽车市场投资额的三分之一以上。
不过，丰田汽车的销量只占全球汽车总销量的11%。加上其关联企业大发汽车(Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd)和日野汽车工业(Hino Motors Ltd.)的销量，其销量比例也仅为13%──和通用汽车的销量比例持平。
无庸置疑，丰田汽车正向本财年（截至3月31日）实现净利润大大超过110亿美元稳步迈进，而通用汽车最近重新发布的2005年业绩却显示其亏损从86亿美元扩大至106亿美元。不过丰田汽车真的值那么多钱吗？
里昂证券分析师表示，基于截至2007年3月31日财年的收益预期，丰田汽车的本益比约为13.5倍，远远高于本田汽车和日产汽车基于同年度收入预期的本益比──分别是10.9倍和9.4倍。
美林公司(Merrill Lynch)的分析师Tatsuo Yoshida在本周的一份报告中指出，“投资者开始注意丰田汽车高昂的股价了。”
不过分析师表示，一些亚洲汽车生产商大量的现金储备可能扭曲了本益比。提出丰田汽车吸引投资者的300亿美元现金及短期投资储备，其本益比可能接近日产汽车。本田汽车的情况也如是，该公司的现金储备约为100亿美元。
此外，亚洲汽车制造商除了极少数的例外都是财源滚滚。丰田、本田和日产在最近多个季度都达到了创纪录的净利润，销量连创新高，市场占有率也持续上升。
调查公司CSM Worldwide的副总裁迈克尔?罗比内(Michael Robinet)预计，从现在开始至2012年，四家亚洲汽车制造商──包括日产汽车的法国关联企业雷诺公司(Renault)在内──将占全球汽车工业销量增长的65%。
这也就是投资者对丰田汽车不离不弃的原因了。根据有关信息披露，T. Rowe Price Japan Fund基金经理坎贝尔?甘恩(Campbell Gunn)将总投资中丰田汽车的持股比例从去年4月底的2.9%提高到10月底的6.3%。该基金在2005年上涨了40%。
甘恩通过发言人表示，他在最近几个月将丰田汽车的持股比例保持在6.3%。虽然这家亚洲最大汽车制造商的估值令人振奋，但甘恩的持股比例高出了摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley) MSCI Japan Index建议的5.65%的比重，该基准指数为专业基金经理所用。
里昂证券分析师里克特说，这就是丰田汽车的市值如此巨大的原因了，“从长远来看，大家都认为这家公司将成为最大的赢家。”
