Inversiones Aguas Metropolitanas SA (IAM.SN): valor razonable

Tesis ACCE

Inversiones Aguas Metropolitanas, the holding company behind Aguas Andinas, supplies drinking water and sewage treatment to most of Santiago under a regulated concession, so its earnings follow a tariff-setting formula rather than volume swings. The moat is the concession itself: a near-monopoly network that is almost impossible to replicate, with an 85% gross margin and a 32.5% operating margin that reflect how little competition it faces. Revenue growth of 6.6% is running ahead of the broader utility peer set, and the near-term question is whether the next tariff review lifts the allowed return on the asset base as the company's infrastructure investment programme comes online. At a trailing P/E of 12.9 and a forward P/E of 11.6, the market is pricing modest growth, but the 8.7% ROE is the weak point, since a regulated utility should earn less than industrial peers and any further dilution of returns would undercut the valuation case. The thesis merits a deeper look mainly to test whether tariff reset assumptions hold and whether returns can move toward the cost of capital's upper bound.