Tag Archives: Current Market Tactics

INTC’s 1Q12: encouraging signs

April 24, 2012 By in earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, Stock ideas, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the results

After the close of trading on April 17th, INTC reported 1Q11 results that were a bit better than the company had guided to three months earlier.  Revenues came in at $12.9 billion, net income at $2.7 billion and eps at $.56 ($.53 on a non-GAAP basis).  This compares with the Wall Street analysts’ consensus of $.50 and $.58 that the company posted in the year-ago quarter.

Quarter on quarter, results were down, as the company felt the full force of the supply disruptions caused by flooding of hard disk drive factories in Thailand.  Basically, INTC customers couldn’t get hard drives to make all the PCs they wanted.  They also didn’t know when production would return to normal.  So they cancelled orders for new microprocessors from INTC and ran down to the bone the microprocessor inventories they had on hand.

Year on year comparisons aren’t straightforward, either.  1Q11 contained 14 weeks, versus a “normal” quarter of 13, like 1Q12 was.  So the yoy revenue comparison, $12.9 billion in 1Q12 vs. $12.8 billion in 1Q11 is considerably better than it looks.  The biggest yoy difference in expense comes in R&D, where this year’s $2.4 billion is much higher than the $1.9 billion INTC laid out in 1Q11.  Had R&D spending been flat yoy, INTC’s net would also have been flat, and eps up slightly (on a lower share count) yoy.  Not bad for a component-constrained quarter that was one week shorter than 1Q11.

details

I reread my post on INTC’s 4Q11 before starting to write this.  I think you should read it, too.  I haven’t changed my thinking.  And otherwise, I’d just be repeating here what I said there.

Three factors are new, though:

–it looks like the hard disk drive shortage is over already, a couple of months earlier than INTC had initially thought.  The company expects 2Q12 sales to be in line with final demand, with inventory restocking by customers only happening in the second half.  My guess is the net result will be a slight uptick (maybe $.05) in full-year eps from my prior guess of $2.75 for 1012, rather than just a reshuffling of the quarters. (Remember, this includes $.15 a share that Thai flooding shifted out of 2011 and into this year.)

–INTC has dropped its tax rate guidance from 29% to 28%, which I take to mean the company is lowering its expectations for the US and raising them for emerging markets.

–INTC is starting to churn out 22nm chips in volume.  At the same time, TSMC is reported to be having trouble with its 28nm manufacturing process.  This should help extend INTC’s performance lead–or close its performance gap–versus competitors who use foundries (meaning just about everyone).

where to from here?

As I wrote three (and six) months ago, at $20 a share I think INTC was a buy simply on the notion that the company wouldn’t fade away within the next two or three years.

At close to $30, the decision is different.  I think you have to believe a lot more–at the very least, that ultrabooks will be a big success.  It would be better, of course, if INTC could make some inroads into ARMH’s franchise in tablets and smartphones, as well.  In both areas, signs are encouraging.

–There are already almost two dozen ultrabook models on the market, with another hundred or so on the way before yearend.  Some will be configured to use the touch features of Windows 8; some will be hybrid devices that can function as tablets as well as traditional PCs. Better still, to my mind, is the fact that ultrabooks are coming from Samsung, Asus and Acer–meaning they’ll be stylish and more reliable than, say, Dell.

Ultrabooks have also gotten a very favorable mention in computer guru (and Mac aficionado) Walter Mossberg’s Spring laptop buyers’ guide in the Wall Street Journal. 

–Rather than waiting for customers to come knocking at its door, INTC created a “reference design”–a detailed blueprint–for the ultrabook and presented it to computer manufacturers.  It’s taking a similar tack with cellphones.  It’s offering its reference smartphone design to carriers to use as their “house brand.”  It’s already signing up customers.

Who knows where this will lead?  But the fact that most carriers are selling iPhones to customers at $400 below their cost should be a powerful motivator to look for cheaper alternatives.

cascades of economic energy and finding a stock-picking focus

April 20, 2012 By in Constructing a Portfolio, Current Market Thoughts, Portfolio management, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

finding the focus

One of the most creative (and successful) investors I’ve ever encountered–and, luckily for me, one of my earliest mentors–gave me this example of his investment style:

Suppose, he said, Washington has decided to stimulate the economy and we’re in the early days of a nationwide road building boom.  What stocks do you buy?

–Your first inclination is to look at construction companies.  That’s what most people buy.  But they’re usually conglomerates, with significant non-public works subsidiaries. There are also lots of them.   It’s difficult to predict who will get contracts and how profitable they will be.

–Your next thought is probably construction materials, like cement or asphalt.  Certainly, roadbuilding will require lots of that stuff.  But the same problem arises here, on a smaller scale–determining who, among many possible suppliers, gets the contracts and how important they are for the overall profits.  One extra quirk:  the low value-added nature of construction materials and their high weight (meaning big transportation costs) make individual plant locations crucial.  Figuring that out is especially hard.

My friend’s answer?  …cement trucks.  Buy stock in the one or two companies whose main business is making cement trucks.  No matter who gets the government construction contracts, no matter which suppliers they choose, they’ll need to transport cement to the construction sites.  As orders build, they’ll have to upgrade their truck fleets.  Large-scale contracts also mean large-scale upgrades.  That’s where the economic energy from the government road building program is going to be focused.

cascades of energy…

This is absolutely right, in my opinion.  It’s Levy Strauss selling blue jeans to Gold Rush miners all over again.

To recap, the surest and safest way to play any economic phenomenon is to find, if you can:

–the sole supplier

–of an essential component

–whose price makes up a very small cost in the creation of the ultimate end product made or sold.

This most likely means that buyers of the component will be much more concerned with the quality of the component than the price.  So the component maker should be able to make unusually high profits.

In my experience, I’ve found there’s also another–time-related– aspect to investor behavior in playing any powerful source of economic energy.

Institutional investors typically proceed as follows:

–initially they tend to buy largest-cap and most obvious ways to play whatever the theme is.  In the context of my friend’s road example above, they buy the general construction companies.

–after the prices of these stocks have gone up for a while, the big investors’ attention begins to move to the most obvious derivative plays–the cement companies–and buy them.

–ultimately they “discover” the cement truck companies and add them to their portfolios as well.

If you know the industries involved well enough, you can see a cascade of successive waves of investment that chronicles the travels of the consensus deeper and deeper into the derivative plays.

…forming a timeline

This changing, and ever narrowing, focus of big investors typically forms a timeline that we can use to judge how much energy remains in a given economic phenomenon in stock market terms.  Once the big guys work their way to the metaphorical cement trucks, that signals most of the money from the theme has already been made.

At this point, the market either goes back to the start of all the excitement–the general construction companies–and begins the cascade process all over again.  More commonly, the market moves on to other areas.

where are we now?

Although it’s relatively early in the 1Q12 earnings season, I’m struck by two characteristics of the market reaction to earnings announcements so far.

The first is that positive reaction is highly company-specific and relatively narrowly focused in the sense I’ve been writing about.  To me, this means that before long the market will no longer be following ever more indirect ways to play the fact of economic recovery from the Great Recession.  It will be looking for new areas of interest instead.

I’ve also noticed that my portfolio, which is more of the cement truck type–and which had been in the dumps for the past several months–is beginning to perk up again.  Yes, my stocks have had an extraordinary two years or so before starting to fade away, but that’s the past and not relevant for today.  I’m also reading my recent outperformance as evidence of an ongoing maturing–maybe even an upcoming sea change–in stock market focus.   More about this in my next Current Market Tactics, on Monday.

 

consumer electronics: a new front on the online/bricks-and-mortar battlefield

April 11, 2012 By in Industry Analysis, internet, Retail, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’d been planning to write this post before the announcement yesterday that the CEO of Best Buy is resigning.  Maybe it’s a bit more topical today.

trying to end discounts on consumer electronics

Early in the month, Korean and Japanese consumer electronics firms–among them, Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic–announced new rules for sales of their high-end products in the US.

Previously, the device manufacturers had at least threatened to, and perhaps actually withheld sales incentive payments to retailers who aggressively discounted the recommended selling prices set by the brands.  That didn’t stop internet retailers from undercutting their bricks-and-mortar rivals, however.  The manufacturers are now taking a new tack.

From April 1st, the consumer electronics companies say they won’t just not pay marketing money to discounters.  They won’t ship “hot” products to them at all.  To get the latest and greatest, buyers will have to go to full-price outlets.

Sounds crazy. 

Why would they do this?

Two reasons occur to me:

1.  The manufacturers want to preserve the bricks-and-mortar distribution channel.  In particular, they want to preserve the big-box strip mall retailers like Best Buy.

This would be somewhat like what the book publishers did a year ago, when they forced Amazon–by withholding newly-published “best seller” e-books from the internet retailer–to charge higher prices.  That provided a pricing umbrella under which independent bookstores could a least continue to limp along and under which Barnes and Noble could complete development of its own e-reader, the Nook.

2.  As far as I’m aware, the consumer electronics companies aren’t going to raise wholesale prices.  So they won’t initially make more money.  They may think, however, that if all retailers become more profitable, then they’ll be less likely to resist future increases in wholesale quotes–or future reductions in sales incentives.

the new plan won’t work

My guess is that this new plan will do more harm than good.  Four reasons:

1.  When prices go up, consumers buy less.  If the price of, say, high-end HDTVs rises by the $800 a unit that some are suggesting, sales volumes will doubtless contract.  Pre-Great Recession, a customer might think of a new HDTV as being like a new car–and finance it.  Not today.  Absent easy availability of cheap credit–and customer willingness to use it–the falloff in unit volume that higher prices brings might be surprisingly large.  And not every manufacturer is in rude financial health, so profit contraction could be painful.

2.  There’s no reason to think that loss in unit volume will be distributed equally across all competitors.  In an environment of smaller price differentials, competition won’t disappear.  It will just take a new form.  My candidate is perceived product quality.  If so, I think this means the market will gravitate toward Samsung and away from Sony.   In any event, market share losers would be under enormous pressure to go back to the old system, before the new competitive game causes irreparable damage to their businesses.

3.  The umbrella of higher prices will potentially allow competitors who don’t adopt the new system–or new market entrants, for that matter–to compete successfully by discounting aggressively.

4.  The move won’t fix what ails Best Buy, in my opinion.

Thirty years ago, suburban big box retailers were an evolutionary advance over urban department stores and local mom and pop shops.  They still are, but the latter, like the dodo, aren’t the competition anymore (actually, the dodo never were).

Today’s competition takes two forms:

–internet retailers, and

–Wal-Mart/Target/Costco, the discount retailers who are the modern successors to the department store.

Compared with the latter group, Best Buy stores are too big and too seasonal (think:  Toys R Us). Best Buy has to lease, light, heat/cool and staff its retail space for the full twelve months of the year, even though 60% of its profits come from sales that happen between the year-end holidays and the Super Bowl.  The others just expand and contract their seasonal departments, depending on the time of year.

Tilting the playing field away from internet retailers and to the benefit of bricks-and-mortar will, it seems to me, just intensify the battle between Best Buy and Wal-Mart et al.  I think we all know who’s going to win that struggle.

there is a better solution for consumer electronics

By the way, this all shows how prescient Apple was in opening its Apple Stores.

The March 2012 Employment Situation report: hiring slowdown?

April 9, 2012 By in economics, employment, Employment Situation report, Recent Market Action, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

the report

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Labor Department released its March 2012 Employment Situation report last Friday, while virtually all the stock markets of the world were closed for Good Friday.  The US bond and derivative markets weren’t, however, and both reacted to the news.

The report said the US economy added 120,000 jobs during the month–about half the gains posted in each of the prior three.   The main areas of difference were in:  temporary help, which recorded 54,900 new positions in February and a loss of -7,500 in March; and in healthcare, which added 26,100 jobs in March vs. 52,800 in February.

revisions weren’t any help, either

February job additions, in their first of two monthly revisions, went up from 227,000 new positions to 240,000.  January additions, first reported at +243,000 and revised up last month to +284,000, were revised down in the March report to +275,000.   So net upward revisions of past months totaled only +4,000 extra jobs.

market reaction was swift, and negative

S&P 500 stock index futures dropped a bit more than 1% last Friday.  Government bond prices regains much of the ground they had been losing over the past month.

Two reasons for the reaction:  the March BLS figures showed only about half the gains of the prior three months, casting doubt on investor belief that economic growth in the US had reached a permanently stronger stage of recovery;  also, the March job additions are at or below the level needed to absorb new entrants into the workforce, so they do nothing to help reduce the number of unemployed.

what significance do one month’s figures have?

Not a lot.  Last August’s Employment Situation, for example, initially showed zero job growth in the economy–a figure subsequently revised up to +104,000 new positions.

Currently, other indicators–like consumer confidence and retail sales–have been rising, adding support to the idea that the strong ES figures from December-February are valid signs of an improving domestic economy and broadening economic recovery.  The evidence I’ve seen from individual company reports tends to support this view.  And the ADP employment report last Wednesday, quirky as it may be, showed +209,000 new jobs.

But, I think, the market has maintained an underlying suspicion that somehow the mild winter in the most heavily populated parts of the US has messed up the BLS’s seasonal adjustment mechanism,  and that, as a result, the apparent economic strength is just work that usually must wait until March or April being done in January of February.  So it’s very willing to believe the December-February ES reports overstate the job situation.  On this view, March is just a return to reality.

my thoughts

I don’t think the current ES report is enough evidence to warrant changing an equity portfolio orientation away from the idea that 2012 will be a year of broadening recovery.  We need more evidence.

If seasonal adjustment factors are responsible for skewing the ES numbers, it’s possible that March is the victim–not Dec-Feb.

The S&P 500 has moved up so sharply so far in 2012 that backing and filling for a while wouldn’t be surprising.

Stock price movements today will be interesting to analyze–especially to find economically sensitive stocks that outperform the market.

Typically, a strong economy with rising interest rates means weak bonds but a flat to up stock market.  Will this rule of thumb hold in 2012?   …by showing the other side of the coin, today may provide a valuable clue.

 

 

 

 

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