Big Mining Is Big Value

It's pedal to the metal time as fast-growing miners throw off cash. Which one is cheapest?

I don't often buy large cap shares. I prefer to stay away from the thousand Watt arc lamps of multiple broker analysis and take my flashlight around the darker corners of the market.

However this month I bought a share in a sector that looks so cheap that I couldn't keep my grasping value hands off it any longer. I have been mulling a move on big mining since UK investing legend Jim Slater said in February that mining shares were cheap. In fact he thought the rating of this sector was one of the most serious mis-pricing of markets he had ever seen, showing high growth and low P/Es. Being fully invested I didn't buy. Besides, these huge companies have more analysts than Woody Allen, so where's my edge?

Why are big miners so cheap?

This sector is cheap for a reason. Metal prices have run up a hill that's got steeper and steeper and we don't know if there's a cliff at the end. Copper, nickel and zinc have doubled or trebled in the past year, largely due to rapid growth and construction spending in China and India. Many see it as yet another bubble with prices overshooting due to speculation. The futures market is predicting significant falls in prices next year. Demand would fall if the Chinese or Indian economies stumble..

The bull arguments are:

• The same was said about oil last year but the futures market is now predicting $70+ oil until 2011.
  
  
• New mines take six to seven years to enter production, so the recent rush to start new mines will not give a big supply boost until the end of the decade.
  
  
• Chinese growth seems to be underpinned by endless demand for ever cheaper consumer goods.

I believe that mining shares offer the same opportunity that the oil and gas sector did a year ago -- their prices considerably lag the rise in the commodities they produce.

So which is the cheapest?

An excellent Metals and Mining report from Deutsche Bank this month looked at seven UK listed shares. The table below has excitingly low ratios, especially cashflow, and uses Deutsche's estimates adjusted for Wednesday's prices:

P/CF is the price to cashflow ratio. EV/EBITDA is the enterprise value to earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation.

Antofagasta, Kazakhmys and Vedanta get most of their revenue from copper. The others are more diversified. I personally rule out Kazakhmys since it is based in Kazakhstan which is effectively under one man rule and therefore has political risk.

Cash

Cash, cash, cash! Music to my ears. The sector has more cash than it knows how to spend, hence the very low P/CF and EV/EBITDA figures. I decided to buy Vedanta -- it has the lowest 2007 cashflow ratios and nearly the lowest P/E. These reflect forecast output growth of 48% over the next 3 years., far higher than the others at about 5% to 25%. Jim Slater likes it too -- in a talk in June his picks were BHP Billiton and Vedanta.

Be prepared for a bumpy ride. These shares will often move two or three times as much as the FTSE-100 in a day. If you can stomach this and the risk of a slump in copper prices (and the forecasts already assume some decline), Vedanta looks the cheapest of the bunch.

More: An Introduction To Mining Shares | I'm Glad I Avoided Miners | What Is EBITDA?

Alun owns shares in Vedanta.