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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