Friday, June 27, 2008

The fallout in Australian infrastructure funds

During the 90's and in the early part of this decade, infrastructure funds and their management companies were booming. The key beneficiary of this was Macquarie bank (MQG) which managed and spun out a number of infrastructure funds and led to the bank being called the "Millionaires Factory". Babcock and Brown (BNB) joined the party earlier this decade and reaped enormous gains following a similar model. However over the last year, with the credit crisis and tightening of borrowing standards, many of these debt laden funds and their management parents have suffered quite badly. The table below, based on one from Reuters, shows how much value some of the leading infrastructure companies have lost relative to their Net tangible Asset value (which is the book value or value of all the company assets, less debt and intangibles).

* Share Price discount to NTA value is based on data as of June 24.

Unfortunately I hold a number of the above stocks - MAP, MIG, AIO - so have seen a big hit to my portfolio. However I am not selling any of them yet as I believe the companies themselves are fine and that they have been caught up in the fallout from the credit crisis. While not adding to my positions, I do believe the best value stock in this group is Macquarie Airports (MAP) and if you haven't got a position in this stock then it is worth looking into as it is trading at a significant discount to NTA.

As as side note, the share price management companies Macquarie Group and Babcock & Brown have declined by 45% and 80% respectively - much worse then the infrastructure companies they manage.