Where are the activists? / Où sont les activistes ?

TCI and Co have not been in the news lately.
I was reading a paper on Hedge Fund shareholder activism and the type of companies they were targeting on average.
They look for "value" type of companies, with low P/BV, decent ROA, strong enough cash-flows, where the CEO is overpaid relatively to the sector and non-core businesses can be sold.

I have built a quick screen with those criteria, adding:
- Market cap > €100m
- Not too high performance since 52W low (beauty sleep)
- Free float in excess of 60% (defined by BBG)

I have built it for each sector, adjusting ROAs, FCF Yields, P/BVs to take into account the specificity of each sector. For instance, for P/BV, I have excluded those above 2.5x in healthcare but those above 1.5x in Industrials.
Then I gathered all stocks together in the table below.
In the results, I had the likes of France Telecom or Enel or Vodafone. I excluded them arbitrarily - you cannot defy the FT board.

The rest is a list of value stocks that could be activists’ targets.
Your work would be to check that the CEO is overpaid, that there are some non-core businesses to be disposed of. At worst, those stocks are cheap enough and should perform in-line with the market. At best, you pocket a revaluation and an activist premium.

I never heard of some of these companies but some look very interesting indeed.

=======================================================

Où sont les activistes ?

Je lisais un article sur les Hedge Funds activistes et le type d’entreprises ciblées.
Ils cherchent des titres “value”, avec des ratios P/BV faibles, un ROA correct, et des cashflows solides.

Voici un petit filtre rapide avec ces critères et en plus:
- Capitalisation supérieure à 100m €
- Performance annuelle inférieure au secteur
- Flottant de plus de 60% (selon Bloomberg)

J’ai exclus les mastodontes tells que France Telecom ou Enel ou Vodafone des résultants.
Le reste est une liste de cibles potentielles.
Il reste à vérifier qui possède un PDG surpayé, qui a des activités éloignées du cœur de métier.
Au pire, ces titres auront la même performance que le marché.
Au mieux, on pourra récupérer la prime de l’activiste.

Certains titres sont inconnus au bataillon pour moi mais semblent intéressants.