Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Knight Capital Group..a lifeline US$400m.. an opportunity?

A bit of divergence from Merger Arb to event trades. Caught my eye although it is not in Asia.

Well it seems that the firm has secured sales of $400 million dollars worth of convertible/preference shares which can be converted to common stocks at $1.50. The major investors are Getco, Blackstone, Jefferies, TD Ameritrade, Stephens and Stifel.

If we just calculate a theoretical price based on number of shares and current price,

    millions   Current Price
Total convertible issued 267 1.5
Current Outstanding Shares 98.21 3.04
   
Theoritical price 1.91
   
Potential Upside on Short 37.04%


We get to this figure of $1.91 as the expected share price of Knight Capital. However for Getco and Blackstone to continue having a member on the board, they have to keep at least 25% of the preference shares subscribed. Same goes to Jefferies if they want to have a say on the third additional board member. So theo price should be higher, calculated by my system to be $2.19.

Another way of looking at this is using projection of earnings and divide by the number of new outstanding shares to get the EPS. Use a P/E to project where the price would be.

Did a very simple example

Based on P/E P/E 10 P/E 15
EPS 0.199 0.199
P/E  12 15
Price 2.39 2.98
 
Potential Upside on Short 21.32% 1.65%


Well, I would think that it would be highly unlikely that the P/E would be at 15, but there is a small chance of it going back there.

More like it will take some time to recover to those levels. I am looking to short Knight.

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