Are retail headwinds baked-in to Wesfarmers?
What the 3Q retail sales results and its demerger of Coles as a separately listed entity, mean for Morningstar's fair value outlook on Wesfarmers, as explained by equity analyst Johannes Faul.
Johannes Faul: I think that Wesfarmers sales figures were broadly in line with our expectations and are tracking our annual numbers. But in reality, we still see significant headwinds in the supermarket space and also in the department store segment. So, really, at the current price levels we think that a lot of that risk is not appropriately priced into the share price and we think shares are overvalued.
Our view is that they split some of the parts. So, once Coles is demerged from Wesfarmers it doesn't create value. So, in our view, those two parts, the Wesfarmers stump and Coles in separation are essentially the same value as the two firms combined, in terms of the cash that they will generate.
The question then is, how will the market value those two separate entities if they use multiples. But again, our view is that the announcement of the demerger itself is no catalyst really for a price rally, in our view.
