Wellicht is het zo beter leesbaar:
By Jonathan Buck
December 5, 2015
TomTom International and Rolls-Royce Holdings were among investment professionals’ picks at last Thursday’s Sohn London Investment Conference. There were a couple of short-selling recommendations, too, notably Proofpoint , a provider of Internet-security products, flagged by Carson Block, of Muddy Waters.
The conference, at the Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London, attracted an audience of about 500 people and raised 250,000 pounds ($378,000) for pediatric-cancer research and care. Now in its fourth year, Sohn London, an offshoot of the annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York, has raised more than $1.5 million for cancer research.
Digital-mapping company TomTom (ticker: TOM2.Netherlands), best known for satellite-navigation devices, could be worth five billion euros ($5.4 billion), almost twice its current market capitalization of €2.6 billion, according to Vikram Kumar, portfolio manager and founder of TT Long Short Focus fund.
TomTom’s telematics business is valued at €1.4 billion based on peer multiples, while its consumer business, including fitness watches, is worth €500 million, Kumar said. Add another €100 million in cash on the balance sheet, and that leaves the automotive and licensing operations valued at €600 million. Kumar reckons those two businesses could be worth €3 billion. Competitor Here, created by Nokia (NOKIA.Finland), was sold to a consortium of Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW.Germany), Audi (NSU.Germany), and Daimler (DAI.Germany) for €2.55 billion in a deal that closed last week.
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Digital mapping and traffic information “will become a critical piece of infrastructure” for the automotive industry, as car makers move increasingly toward assisted and fully autonomous driving, Kumar said. He called TomTom “a clear takeout target,” noting that the business would keep growing nicely even without a buyer. Licensing alone increased 32% in the third quarter, and TomTom signed a deal last month to provide its services to fast-growing car-hailing service Uber.
TomTom is expected to earn €0.20 cents in 2015, €0.34 in 2016, and €0.46 in 2017. Its shares, which trade for almost 34 times forecast 2016 earnings, have doubled in value in 2015 and don’t look cheap, but still could offer a route to handsome profits.