If you are looking for the best ideas for your portfolio you may want to consider some of Rhizome Partners top stock picks. In September 2019, Rhizome Partners had released its Q2 2019 investor letter. In its Q2 2019 investor letter – you can download a copy here – the firm discussed its investment thesis on Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) stock. Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) specializes in the manufacturing of naphthenic and paraffinic oils as well as aliphatic solvents and paraffin waxes.
Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) stock has posted a return of -17.3% in the trailing one year period, underperforming the S&P 500 Index which returned 13.1% in the same period. On a year-to-date basis, Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) stock has fallen by 24.4%.
In Q2 2019 investor letter, Rhizome Partners said the fund posted a return of 2.0% in the second quarter of 2019, underperforming the S&P 500 Index which returned 4.30% in the same period. Let’s take a look at comments made by Rhizome Partners about Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) stock in the Q2 2019 investor letter.
“Calumet Specialty Products – This specialty chemical manufacturer is a distressed special situation investment for us. It is a specialty chemical company placed inside a Master Limited Partnership and covered by fuel refining analysts. The leverage and oddball nature results in an orphaned stock with no obvious best owner shareholder base.
Q2 2019 Updates – At the end of Q2, Calumet bonds traded between 96 to 100 cents on the dollar. This is a strong recovery from the high 70s to low 80s that the bonds traded during the fourth quarter of 2018. The company reported healthy results for Q1 and indicated that they have bought back a total of $50 million of bonds as of May 10th. We participated in an investor meeting hosted by Goldman Sachs in New York City in mid‐May and were able to get 2‐3 hours of face time with the management team.
It is apparent that we were the more knowledgeable shareholder in the group as our questions tended to be more granular and qualitative while other participants tend to ask more “intro level” questions. We heard lots of “anecdotes” of process improvements on an organizational level at Calumet. We believe that Calumet’s culture is improving and becoming more competitive over time. Calumet continues to invest in branded and higher ROIC products such as TruFuel and Versagel. Increases of EBITDA for branded and cosmetic products have a 10‐12x multiplier effect as these better businesses command higher multiples. We are also more convinced that Calumet will likely sell the fuel refineries in the next 12 months as specialty EBITDA normalizes upward while the fuel refining EBITDA normalizes downward following a “windfall” year in 2018. Thus, selling fuel refineries in 2019 will result in a “de‐leveraging” event while selling them in 2018 would have the opposite effect and would result in Calumet missing out on the refining free cash flow from 2018. We are watching what Calumet is doing and we like what we are seeing.
We recently built a bear, base, and best case scenario analysis on the de‐leveraging outcomes assuming various sale prices of the Montana and San Antonio fuel refineries. It is possible that Calumet could potentially de‐lever to $560mm, $737mm, and $894mm of net debt by March 2021 under our best, base, and bear case scenarios. Our key assumptions consist of a range from $400mm to $525mm of proceeds from the sale of the two non‐core fuel refineries and $180 to $220mm of specialty EBITDA in the remaining company. In the bear case scenario, capital markets will play a much bigger role in determining the refinancing of Calumet’s 2021 bonds and at what interest rate. Under both base and best scenarios, Calumet may be able to pay off the entirety of the 2021 maturity of $900mm through asset divestitures, free cash flow generation, and drawing a small amount of the revolver. We had not previously considered the potential to pay down the 2021 bond without accessing the capital markets. This change in perception is due to our discovery that fuel refineries, despite being a cyclical and capital intensive business, do have attractive features that are very different than low barrier businesses such as container shipping. NIMBY‐ism plays a large role in limiting the new construction of refineries in the US. This is very different than shipping assets where the increase in supply is almost guaranteed and often subsidized by various Asian governments because shipbuilding creates lots of blue collar jobs. We believe that we have previously underestimated the potential proceeds of “Badco” in an asset sale. Thus, we were a bit stunned to come to the realization that Calumet could potentially de‐ lever much faster than we previously thought.”
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In April 2020, we published an article revealing Rhizome Partners bearish investment thesis on Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) stock in its Q1 2020 investor letter.
Our calculations showed that Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 185% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 109 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
