Indonesia Daily Focus November 19, 2020
Cement’s 2021 outlook: Every cloud has a silver lining
Volume should recover next year
Due
to the COVID-19 pandemic, cement consumption has been sluggish in 2020.
Moreover, as the rainy season kicked off in 4Q20, along with the long
year-end holiday in December and regional elections, we trim our FY20
domestic cement consumption estimates to 62.1mn tonnes (-11.3% YoY).
Meanwhile, we expect that 2021 will be a recovery year for cement
sector. We expect that domestic cement consumption would grow by around
4% YoY next year, supported by higher infrastructure budget and the
potential resumption of economic activities next year.
Room for margin improvement
As
most of the COGS of cement companies is related to energy costs, we
believe that the potential of coal prices to remain soft should bring a
positive sentiment to cement companies’ profitability margin. Thus, with
the normalized demand and the persistently soft coal prices, we believe
that there will still be room for profitability margin to improve next
year.
Oversupply remains a risk but more familiar to deal with
We
believe that there will still be a continued wide gap between supply
and demand in the market for the next couple of years. However, we
believe that the top two biggest cement producers in Indonesia (SMGR and
INTP) have learned their lessons in dealing with the oversupply
conditions.
Upgrade recommendation for cement sector to Overweight
We
believe that volume should recover next year, along with the gradual
improvement of economy activities. Meanwhile, profitability margin is
likely to improve on the back of normalized volume and persistently soft
coal prices outlook. Oversupply remains a risk, but we believe that the
existing players have learned their lessons in dealing with the
conditions. We have a Trading Buy recommendation on both Semen Indonesia
(SMGR/TP: IDR12,650) and Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa (INTP/TP:
IDR16,050). Risks to our call include slower-than-expected demand growth
due to sluggish economy, higher-than-expected costs, and/or
worse-than-expected oversupply.
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