Underweight Retail In addition to Brexit concerns, we also see a number of fundamental reasons to reiterate out underperform on Retail.
Structural margin pressures: Aside from Brexit, retailers face declining returns as online disruptors and discounters drive up competition. EBITDA margins have fallen from 8% in 2010 to close to 7% in 2016 and RoE has declined by nearly 3% since 2004. We think this structural trend has further to run.
Valuations are also unattractive. Retail remains on a significant premium to the market on absolute terms (17.3x 2017 PE vs 14.2x) and is expensive versus its own history at 20% above its 10y relative average on PE and 92%ile on PBV, while it has the second lowest dividend in the market (2.9%). Even if you strip H&M and Inditex the sector is towards the higher range of its post-GFC range.
UK supermarkets have had their relief rally. Despite challenges facing UK food retailers, Tesco has rallied 25% and Morrison’s 15% since Brexit as retail spending has held up and the short base grew massively immediately following the UK-EU vote. Yet as Xavier Le Mene notes, this has largely been because they have gained market share from Asda and investors have bought into their new management plans. However, Xavier see limited upside potential for either next year and there is
a risk that Asda starts to recoup lost ground under its new management too.
Chart 66: Stiff competition means retail margins are structural declining
Chart 67: Market share gains have largely been at Asda’s expense
8.3% 7.8% 7.3% ——Retail EBITDA margin 6.8% PP FF FF gh gh gh gh gr gh gh
Source: BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, Bloomberg, Datastream, IBES
Chart 68: Retail is expensive on a range of metrics
Tesco
Aldi
Lidl Waitrose Morrisons Sainsbury's Asda
-100 -50 0 50 100
m Market share of grocers, yoy
Source: Kantar Worldpanel
Chart 69: Not cheap even if you strip out the two biggest ex-UK names
1.70 1.60 =——=Retail 12m fwd PBV relative 1.50 1.40 1.30
1.20
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 201
Source: BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, Bloomberg, Datastream, IBES
Stoxx Retail PE a= Stoxx Retail ex-Inditex PE em Stoxx Retail ex-Indi/H&M PE
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
oO Qo N
Source: BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, Datastream
Bankof America Merrill Lynch
European Equity Strategy |01 December 2016 31
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