Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AJRD) is far from your usual aerospace and defense technology company. Now that earnings are behind the company, 24/7 Wall St. wanted to revisit this maker of rocket propulsion systems. One research report last week called for close to a 50% gain, but a prior call from Barron’s said that this company’s stock price could actually double.
Understand that this is a much riskier aerospace and defense investment than most larger peers. In fact, most Dow or S&P 500 analyst Buy or Outperform ratings tend to come with upside of 8% to 15%. So what does a call with almost 50% upside tell you about risk?
When Barron’s outlined a far rosier case, its view was a sum of the parts analysis, as far as why it could be worth twice as much as the current price. Aerojet Rocketdyne shares were trading close to $16.55 at that time. Even with a 1.2% drop on Friday, the shares ended trading at $17.54.
Still, Barron’s tempered its bullishness with some caution as well. Barron’s warned that the company’s poor current valuation is the partly its own blame. And the company is run by Chairman Warren Lichtenstein, who is head of the hedge fund Steel Partners (a 6.5% holder). Aerojet Rocketdyne also was said to rarely make investor presentation updates and has a history of missing expectations.
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On May 11, after the earnings, Oppenheimer updated its model to reflect the company’s change to a December fiscal year end. The firm’s Ian Zaffino has an Outperform rating and a $26 price target. His report said:
We continue to expect Aerojet Rocketdyne to grow its margins and generate increased free cash flow, as witnessed in the recent first quarter results, as the company makes progress on current missile programs, as well as its ongoing integration and cost-saving initiatives. Our 2016E/2017E EBITDAP is unchanged.
The report also went to say that Aerojet Rocketdyne is moving closer to sustainably higher margins as it achieves cost synergies from the integration of its 2012 to 2013 acquisition of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. It also sees it winning from a pickup in space and defense contracting.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has plans to sell up to 6,000 acres of its land outside Sacramento, Calif. It already has agreed to sell roughly 700 acres for a sum of $57 million. The firm said in its investment thesis that it considers Aerojet Rocketdyne an interesting investment opportunity. Zaffino also said:
Our $26 price target represents an 8x multiple on our 2016 EBITDAP estimate of $255 million, in line with our average peer group multiple. Our target assumes the company’s remaining ~5,300 acres of excess land are currently worth ~$433M pre-tax, or $3.89 per diluted share after-tax.
As for earnings report itself, the company did manage to show some steady gains on the surface. Revenues in the first quarter of fiscal 2016 totaled $356.9 million, up from $323.0 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Its net income also rose to $5.1 million (or $0.08 per share) from a net loss of $3.3 million (−$0.06 per share) a year earlier. As of March 31, 2016, Aerojet Rocketdyne had $2.3 billion of funded backlog, compared to $2.4 billion as of November 30, 2015.
CEO and President Eileen Drake said:
We are very pleased to report growth in net sales and earnings metrics for the first quarter reflecting the strength of our core business. To date, the Competitive Improvement Program is achieving cost reductions ahead of schedule. We continued to move forward with the development of our newest liquid booster engine, the AR1, with the announcement in February 2016 of the U.S. Air Force’s selection of Aerojet Rocketdyne to share in a public-private partnership to develop jointly the AR1 engine.
Note that Aerojet Rocketdyne might be considered a cult stock by many measures. It is one of those stocks in which good news or bad news might never be seen by the investing community (and maybe even the defense and aerospace community). Despite having a $1.13 billion market cap, it has virtually no analyst coverage.
Trading volume did not even go bonkers after Barron’s featured it as a potential stock to double. Aerojet Rocketdyne is also roughly 82% held by institutional shareholders, and close to 15% of its shares are sold short. The stock has a 52-week range of $13.98 to $24.35.
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