Other healthcare stocks performance (Source: Yahoo Finance)

Confluence of tailwinds
1. Soaring demand
Due to healthcare requirements, the demand for natural and synthetic rubber gloves is expected to soar. According to the Malaysian Rubber Gloves Manufacturers Association (MARGMA), they expect demand to be 345bn pieces in 2020 vs 298bn pieces in 2019 (+16% yoy).  The stronger demand has given glove makers the opportunity to raise average selling prices (ASP). It was reported that Top Glove has raised ASP by 3-5% in Feb/Mar and will be going to raise it 5% monthly from Jun-Aug and then 10% from Sep onwards.

2. Supply shortage
The soaring demand has also led to a supply shortage as utilization at glove makers are already very high (~95% for Riverstone vs ~88% pre-Covid) and order backlog 9mths (Riverstone) and 10-11mths (Top Glove). This compares favourably to the typical 1-2month timeframe to meet orders and ~3-4month timeframe during the previous H1N1 and SARS outbreaks. Although most glove makers have embarked on capacity expansion plans, these won't materialize fast enough to keep up with the spike in orders as new factories take time to build and equip. These limitations of capacity expansion have also contributed to increasing ASPs. The supply shortage is also compounded by lockdowns which disrupt supply chains and labour.

The price impact of higher demand and lower supply

3. FX impact
Interestingly, revenue contracts of glove makers are priced in USD due to the global nature of their customers while costs are in MYR as their factories are largely in Malaysia. Malaysia is the world's largest producer of rubber gloves, accounting for ~63% of global supply. Therefore, the recent appreciation of USD due to its position as the world's reserve currency has led to margin expansion of glove makers.

USD/MYR exchange rate (Source: CGS-CIMB)

4. A decline in raw material prices
Despite soaring demand for gloves, its raw material prices have been kept low as a result of the oil price crash in late April. Historically, the price of rubber and crude oil have been positively correlated as the substitute of rubber is synthetic rubber, which is made from crude oil derivatives. Declining raw material prices could help to improve profit margins, ceteris paribus. For longer-term operations, glove makers could possibly look at locking in these low prices via the use of financial derivatives.

Glove raw material prices (Source: Maybank KE)

Why you shouldn't throw your life-savings into Glove stocks
1. Peak-ish valuations
As a result of the run-up in the stock prices of glove makers over the past few weeks, most of them are trading at all-time high prices and peak valuations. While the higher forward trading P/E reflects the earnings growth expectations from the market, this could also imply that upside would be limited without any further increase in earnings forecasts. Additionally, as many existing investors have enjoyed much of the upside in the past few weeks, it is likely that glove makers would be amongst the first stocks investors look to take profits from in the event of a pullback.

Riverstone historical P/E chart (Source: CGS-CIMB)

2. Raw material price increases
While oil price crashed to below 0 in April due to the supply shock from OPEC and decline in demand from the pandemic, prices have shown signs of recovery and it has been consistently trading at above $30 for the past week. Additionally, as more economies come out from lockdowns and production resumes, demand for crude oil will inevitably improve. This will have a knock-on impact on the cost of raw materials used in glove production as explained in the earlier paragraph and could lead to margin compression.

3. Potential cure/vaccine for Covid-19
Unfortunately, this is probably one of the stocks that have such a risk factor. The longer the pandemic drags on, the longer the world has a virus-induced demand for protective equipment like gloves. Any potential recovery will be underpinned by a cure or vaccine, which many large pharmaceutical companies are working on. The more well-known ones have been Gilead, Moderna and the University of Oxford; all of which have produced encouraging early results.

4. Current expansion plans could cause oversupply post-pandemic
To keep up with peak demand, glove makers have been undertaking expansion plans to boost production capacity. Riverstone has commissioned 2 new expansion phases that will be completed in 4Q20 and 1Q21 which will increase their capacity by more than 10%. According to a report by Maybank Kim Eng, Top Glove intends to add 150 new production lines over the next 2 years that could boost capacity by almost 25%.

Top Glove Expansion Plans (Source: Maybank KE)

This expansion of production capacity increases the risk of an oversupply after the pandemic is over. Post-pandemic, we can reasonably expect demand to gradually taper off as the world returns to a pre-pandemic normal.