Crawford A/B Shares crd.a/crd.b
January 02, 2009 - 10:33am EST by
dman976
2009 2010
Price: 6.66 EPS
Shares Out. (in M): 0 P/E
Market Cap (in $M): 750 P/FCF
Net Debt (in $M): 0 EBIT 0 0
TEV (in $M): 0 TEV/EBIT

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  • Dual class

Description

I am dealing with one of the most befuddling positions of my career, a position long CRD.A, short CRD.B. I am recommending you do the same as the only risk is purely quotational (and if you get squeezed down the line). I believe this is substantively different from the earlier short recommendation of CRD. B as this recommends a long/short position with no view toward the fundamentals of the company, and the spread has blow out even more since. I put on the position I believe with an initial spread of about $5 per share, and it has now blown out to over $8 per share. CRD.A is trading at $6.66 while CRD.B is at $14.7. They have the same economic interest in the company, but the B shares have the vote. The B shares trade about 2.5x the volume of the A shares. This relationship is absolutely crazy on any evaluation. This is WAY beyond historic spreads for the two securities. Just a few months ago the spread was about $1.

In looking at how on Earth this could happen, I have come to a couple of conclusions, each of which are temporary:

  1. The company reported good earnings growth last quarter – as a result the IBD crowd has latched onto this stock as a CANSLIM (high growth, low valuation) stock – a number of quant guys and program traders have shown up as Class B shareholders and they appear to be operating in the B shares. I have seen some technical newsletters recommending the B shares due to the “strength” (you know, the buy because it’s going up strategy) – they don’t even reference the A shares. Note that a previous, well done write up here recommended shorting the B shares outright due to its valuation and overstated growth outlook.
  2. The Chairman made a foolish decision to publicly announce he was looking to sell 800,000 A shares. This has scared people away from buying.

I called the Company and had a brief conversation where I asked their opinion on the spread. The person I spoke with was apologetic and said they had been getting numerous calls from irate Class A shareholders. It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to address this in the future.

Catalyst

rationality and reason return
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