Monthly Archives: February 2017

a French sovereign debt default?!?

February 13, 2017 By in Brexit, currency effects, currency markets, Frexit, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

First there was the surprise Brexit vote in the UK, after which sterling plunged.

Then there was the improbable victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, which sent the dollar soaring.

Now there’s France, where the odds of a far-right presidential victory by the Front National have improved.  A competing right-of-center candidate, former frontrunner François Fillion, has been hurt by allegations that his wife and children did little/no work in government jobs he arranged for them (with aggregate pay totaling about €1 million).

If Marine Le Pen, the FN leader and standard bearer, were to win election in May (oddsmakers now give this about a 1 in 12 chance), her victory might conceivably snowball into a similar sea change in the National Assmebly election in June.  Were the FN to win control of the legislature too, the party says it will leave the euro and re-institute the franc as the national currency.  In addition, it intends to, in effect, default on €1.7 trillion in French government bonds by repaying the debt in new francs, at an exchange rate of 1 Ffr = 1 €.

Improved prospects for Ms. Le Pen–plus, I think, President Trump demonstrating he means to do his best to keep all his campaign promises–have induced a mini-panic in the market for French-issued eurobonds.  Trading at a 40 basis point premium to similar bonds issued by Germany as 2017 opened and +50 bp in late January, they spiked to close to an 80 bp premium last week.

my take

At this point, the conditions that would trigger a French exit from the euro and its refusal to honor its euro debt instruments seem high unlikely.  Still, the possibility is worth thinking through, since the financial markets consequences of Frexit would likely be much more severe than those of Brexit.

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disney (DIS): the valuation issue

February 10, 2017 By in Cable, earnings surprise, Entertainment, securities markets, strong earnings, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Long-time readers may recall that I became interested in DIS in late 2009, the company acquired Marvel Entertainment, a stock I held, for stock and cash.

corporate structure

I hadn’t looked at DIS for years before that.  I quickly learned that DIS was a conglomerate, that is, a type of company where the most useful analysis comes taking the sum of its constituent parts.

I knew the company’s movie business had been struggling for some time and the theme parks were being hit hard by recession.  Still, I was more than mildly surprised that ESPN (plus other media that we can safely ignore) made up somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of DIS’s operating earnings.  Why did they still call it Disney?

multiples

Given that the parks are a highly cyclical business and movies moderately so–meaning the PE applied to those earnings should be relatively low–and that ESPN was showing all the characteristics of a secular growth business–meaning high PE–I thought that ESPN represented at least 80% of the market capitalization of DIS.  (That’s despite the fact that the market would apply a higher than normal multiple to cyclically depressed results).

So DIS was basically ESPN with bells and whistles.

ESPN’s turning point

In 2012, ESPN made a major effort to enter the UK sports entertainment market.  To my mind, this wasn’t a particularly good sign, since it implied ESPN believed the domestic market was maturing.  Worse, ESPN lost the bidding, closing out its path to growth through geographic expansion.

It seemed to me that DIS management, which I regard as excellent, understood clearly what was happening.  It began to redirect corporate cash flow away from ESPN and toward the movie and theme park business, which had better growth prospects, and where it has since had unusually good success.

2014-16 results

Over the past two fiscal years (DIS’s accounting year ends in September), the company’s line of business results look like this:

ESPN +        revenues up by +11.9%, operating earnings by +6%

parks           revenues up by +12%, op earnings  +24%

movies        revenues up by +30%, op earnings +74%

merchandise   revenues up by +4.6%, op earnings +33%.

the valuation issue

ESPN has gone ex growth.  This implies these earnings no longer deserve a premium PE multiple.  To me, the fact that ESPN now treats WWE as a sport (!!) just underlines its troubles.

The other businesses are booming.  But they’re also cyclical.  So while improving efficiency implies multiple expansion, earnings approaching a cyclical high note implies at least some multiple contraction.

Because the two businesses are so different, I think Wall Street is making a mistake in treating earnings from the two as more or less equal.

calculating…

DIS will most likely earn $6 a share or so this fiscal year.  That will be something like $3 from ESPN and $3 from the rest.

Take the parks… first.  Let’s say I’d be willing to pay 18x earnings for their earnings.  If that’s the right number, then these businesses make up $54 a share in DIS value.

Now ESPN.  If we assume that the worst is over for ESPN in terms of subscriber and revenue-per-subscriber losses, we can argue that the future earnings stream looks like a bond’s.  If we think that ESPN should yield, say, 5% (a 20x earnings multiple), that would mean ESPN is worth $60 of DIS’s market cap.  If we’d still on the downslope, that figure could be a lot too high.

$54 + $60 = $114.  Current stock price:  $109.

my bottom line

My back of the envelope calculation for the parks… segment may be a bit too low.  I could also be persuaded that my figure for ESPN is too rich, but it would take a lot to make me want to move the needle higher for it.

Yes, most of DIS’s earnings are US-sourced, so the company could be a big winner from domestic income tax reform.

But if I were to be holding a fully valued stock on the idea of a tax reform boost, I’d prefer one with more solid underpinnings.  At $90, maybe the stock is interesting.  But I think ESPN–the multiple as much as the future earnings–remains a significant risk.

 

 

 

 

should the US dollar be strong or weak?

February 9, 2017 By in economics, government economic policy, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

This is the question President Trump purportedly called his adviser, Michael Flynn, to ask at 3am one recent morning.  Flynn, to his credit, said he didn’t know.

Perhaps the genesis of the inquiry is the odd position Mr. Trump has put himself in of criticizing Germany (and by implication the EU as a whole) for damaging the US by having a currency that’s too strong while berating China for damaging us by doing the opposite.

It may also be economists’ comments that the Republican Congressional proposal to introduce a value added tax on imports could trigger a sharp appreciation in the dollar, thereby making exports from the US that much less attractive.

What is the best strategy for the US?

First of all, we should recognize that there’s no generally accepted economic framework that deals with currency.  There are lots of theories for particular aspects of currency relationships, but no one go-to theory.

Also, the US is in the unusual position of being the only universally accepted reserve currency, making the US is in effect the banker to the world.  So rules that apply rigorously to others may not, for good or ill, hold so firmly for us.

 

In 30+ years of dealing with foreign currencies as an equity investor, I think the issue can be summed up in practical terms to the question:  “If this country were a person, would I feel comfortable lending money to him?”

The factors that have meant the most to me are:  political stability, the rule of law, growth-oriented government policies, no excessive government debt, prudent government spending, and no restrictions on being able to repatriate my funds.  All other things being equal, mild appreciation of the foreign currency would be nice.  But I would trade that away in a nanosecond for assurance I wouldn’t have a currency loss.

All this implies that the value of a country’s currency isn’t determined by a deliberate currency policy.  Instead, it’s the result of overall conditions for doing business in that place, and of the effectiveness of government in providing a backdrop conducive for corporations to locate there.

One instructive recent example of what not to do:  massive government-engineered currency depreciation has been the cornerstone of Abenomics in Japan.  The main results so far have been to revive the fortunes of near-obsolete manufacturers, while retarding innovation and inducing an epic fall in the standard of living of ordinary citizens.

My advice for Mr. Trump?   Press forward on tax reform and infrastructure spending.  Establish meaningful vocational training to replace the VA-like stuff we have now.  Don’t try to weaken the dollar; that’s a recipe for disaster.

 

Tesla (TSLA) at $260: what it means

February 8, 2017 By in Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Yesterday, TSLA shares touched $260 early in the day.  That’s the latest high for a stock that has gained 30% since mid-December, a period during which the S&P advanced by 1.8%.

What does this mean?

–On a personal note, it means I don’t own any more TSLA.  Regular readers might reall that one of my sons and I have been trading TSLA between $180-$200 and $250-$260 for the past couple of years.  I had sold some at $250 this time around and placed a limit order for the remainder at $260 about a week ago.  Yesterday, the stock touched $260.00 for a brief period before falling back to close at $257.48.  (An aside:  I find it strange that the stock peaked at such a round number.  I presume this means there’s a lot of stock on traders’ books waiting to be sold in mechanical fashion–meaning with no attempt to entice buyers higher–at $260.)

–The main message, though, is that there’s a lot more going on in the US stock market than the post-election Trump rally–which seems to me to have already exhausted itself anyway.

I’m driving a Kia Sorrento these days, after my Hyundai Veracruz gave up the ghost late last year.  I can imagine my next car being a Tesla.  Nevertheless, TSLA is to my mind the ultimate concept stock.   Yes, the merger with SolarCity is behind it and the death of a driver using the Tesla self-driving feature seems to have been operator error rather than a flaw in the car.  Those are plusses.  On the other hand, the company is still struggling with cash flow breakeven.  And the Wall Street consensus, for what that’s worth, is that it will lose $1 a share in 2017.  So finances continue to be a serious risk.  To my mind, the rally is all about the hoped-for success of the Gigafactory, Musk’s reimagining the car manufacturing process, and the triumph of software over hardware and batteries over fossil fuel.  TSLA’s gains are a testimony to the rude health of the stock market, with or without a Trump tailwind.

–Areas of interest other than aspirational tech or hoped-for tax reform and infrastructure spending?   What about Millennials worldwide?  economic strength in the EU?  regular old tech?  Mexico??  (I haven’t held Mexican stocks for over twenty years, although I’ve had exposure from time to time to that economy through multinationals.  I think it’s too early to make a major commitment, but not too soon to be fact-finding.)

 

 

 

Trump and the big banks

February 7, 2017 By in Banks, economics, Federal Reserve, government economic policy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

banks and their social function

Banks aren’t ordinary corporations.  In addition to being private, for-profit organizations, they also carry out important social economic functions.  They’re the primary instrument the government uses to carry out national money policy.  Through letters of credit, they also underpin the workings of the international trade of multinational firms that is increasingly important for economic growth.

This is why the major banks are considered “too big to fail.”

bank failures

US banks have been on the brink of failure twice during the past hundred years–in the late 1920s and in 2007-09.  Both times this has been the result of rampant speculative financial market activity coupled with reckless lending, both driven by the search for earnings per share growth.

Glass-Steagall, and its repeal

In the 1930s, Washington enacted legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act that barred the banks from non-banking activities (like brokerage, proprietary trading and investment banking).  The new laws ushered in a period of relative stability for the banks that lasted until the late 1990s, when their intense lobbying succeeded in getting Glass-Steagall repealed.

(An aside:  yes, the banks manufactured periodic crises through imprudent lending to emerging economies–the Walter Wriston-led binge of the 1970s being a prime example–but these were relatively tame in comparison.)

Less than ten years later, many big banks were broke.  World trade had come to a standstill as manufacturers refused to accept banks’ guarantees that shipped merchandise would be paid for (the worry was that the guaranteeing bank would file for bankruptcy while the goods were en route, reducing the shipper to being an unsecured creditor).  The deepest peacetime period of world economic decline since the Great Depression began.

This, in turn, spawned Dodd-Frank, the 21st century equivalent of Glass-Steagall.

repeal again?   so soon?

While it took more than half a century for the memory of the Depression to fade enough for Congress to consider removing restrictions on bank activity, we’re now less than a decade away from the 2007-09 collapse.

Despite this, despite campaigning on an anti-establishment platform, and despite warning that Hillary Clinton should not be elected because she would be a creature of the big banks, during his first few days in office Donald Trump is proposing to restore to the big banks the tools of self-destruction they have wielded to devastating effect twice before.

How odd.