Third Avenue Value Fund Comments on Weyerhaeuser Co

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Sep 12, 2014

The Fund initiated a position in Weyerhaeuser (WY) as the company moved to finalize the distribution of its WRECO homebuilding subsidiary in an exchange offer with Tri Pointe Homes Inc. Weyerhaeuser is a Real Estate Investment Trust with wood products and wood fiber businesses, and the second largest owner of timberlands in the U.S. It is worth noting that Weyerhaeuser was sourced with TAM’s Real Estate team and is a solid example of the ability of the Fund to pull ideas from across the entire TAM research team. The Reverse Morris Trust distribution of WRECO was structured as an exchange offer, whereby shareholders could choose to accept shares in the new Tri Pointe, or to retain their interest in Weyerhaeuser. We chose not to indicate for Tri Pointe shares, and were pleased that the exchange offer was oversubscribed so that we retained our full position in Weyerhaeuser. The net effect of the transaction from our perspective was a resource conversion event in which WRECO was traded for a large repurchase transaction, representing roughly 10% of Weyerhaeuser shares plus $700 million in cash.

We see the remaining businesses of Weyerhaeuser, led by CEO Doyle Simons, trading at a substantial discount to our estimated NAV combined with a solid outlook of secular growth, selfhelp margin improvement initiatives and a good way to gain exposure to a recovery in the U.S. housing market.

Post the WRECO divestiture, the remaining operations are Timberlands (about 46% of operating income), Wood Products (35%) and Cellulose Fibers (19%). The timber division owns forests in the U.S., Canada and Uruguay, and recently added 645,000 acres of strategic Pacific Northwest forest with the purchase of Longview Timber in July 2013. The Longview acquisition not only provides operational scale and cost reduction opportunities, but increases Weyerhaeuser’s exposure to the lucrative Asian export log markets, primarily China and Japan. Weyerhauser is able to accelerate the harvest on its acquired Longview acreage, as the average age of the acquired trees was over the optimal twenty five to forty year growth cycle the company targets. The Wood Products operations produce Lumber, Oriented Strand Board (OSB) and Engineered Wood Products and have clear upside cyclical leverage to the nascent recovery in the U.S. single family housing market. The Cellulose Fiber division produces fluff pulp and specialty pulps used in a wide variety of consumer end markets. Division management is focused on reducing costs and increasing manufacturing efficiency to compete in this cyclical industry.

From Third Avenue Value Fund’s Third Quarter 2014 Commentary.