metoo105 (31.38)

NL Industries

February 06, 2011 – Comments (0) | RELATED TICKERS: TIE , VHI , NL

NL Industries is a holding company and a subsidiary of Valhi. Valhi owns 83% of NL Industries. NL Industries owns 87% of Comp X and 31% (36%?) of Kronos. This gives NL Industries total assets of $744 million (Kronos shares) + $146 million (CompX shares) using publicly listed values at the close of trading as of last Friday February 4th.

Since the enterprise value of NL Industries is only $715 million, this is a significant 20% sum of parts discount. 

Valhi owns 59% of Kronos and 83% of NL Industries and 100% of Waste Control Specialists, which is a private company that processes spent nuclear fuel. This gives Valhi assets of $740 million (NL  Industries) and $1416 million (Kronos) for a total of $2.15 billion. Valhi has a market cap of $2.3 billion and an enterprise value of $3.9 billion. This places a rich valuation on the Waste Control Specialists piece of nearly $1.75 billion. Since the main nuclear portion won't be operational until late this year, it seems that NL Industries is the real value here.

It's strange then that Simmons seems to be buying up everything he owns but that! Maybe the lead paint litigation is turning sour on them.