Monthly Archives: September 2019

autos, emissions and Trumponomics

September 24, 2019 By in Trump's economics, Trump, taxes and trade, Trumponomics, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

I’ve followed the auto industry since the early 1980s, but have rarely owned an auto stock—brief forays into Toyota, later Peugeot (1986) and Porsche (2003?) are the only names that come to mind.

 

The basic reasons I see to avoid the auto manufacturers in the developed world:

–chronic overcapacity

–continuing shift of intellectual property creation, innovation, brand differentiation—and better-than-commodity profits–from manufacturers to component suppliers

–the tendency of national politics to influence company operations and prospects.

 

In addition, the traditional industry is very capital intensive, with a high capacity utilization required (80%?) to reach breakeven.  The facts that unit selling prices are high and new purchases easy to put off for a year or two mean that the new car industry is highly cyclical.

More than that, today’s industry is in the early stages of a transformation away from units that burn fossil fuels, and are therefore a major source of air pollution, to electric vehicles.  The speed at which this change is happening has accelerated over the past decade outside the US because pollution has become a very serious problem in China and because automakers in the EU have been shown to have falsified performance data for their diesel-driven offerings in a poorly thought out effort to meet anti-pollution rules.

California, which had a nineteenth-century-like city pollution problem around Los Angeles as late at the mid-1970s, has led the US charge for clean air.  It helps its clout that CA is the country’s largest car market (urban legend:  thanks in part to GM’s aggressive lobbying against public transport in southern CA in the mid-20th century).  CA has also been joined by about a dozen other states who go along with whatever it decides.  The auto manufacturers have done the same, because the high capital intensity of the car industry means building cars to two sets of fuel usage specifications makes no sense.

 

Enter Donald Trump.  His administration has decided to roll back pollution reduction measures put in place by President Obama.  CA responded by agreeing with Ford, VW, Honda and BMW to establish Obama-like, but somewhat less strict, requirements for cars sold in that state.  Trump’s reposte has been to call the agreement an anti-trust violation, to claim the power to revoke the section of the law that permits CA to set state pollution standards and to threaten to withhold highway funds from CA because the air there is too polluted (?).

 

Other than pollical grandstanding, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.

Who benefits from lower gas mileage cars?     …Russia and Saudi Arabia, whose economies are almost totally dependent on selling fossil fuels; and the giant multinational oil companies, whose exploration efforts until recently have been predicated on demand increasing strongly enough to push prices up to $100 a barrel.

Who gets hurt by the Trump move?     …to the degree that it prolongs widespread use of inefficient gasoline-powered cars, the biggest potential losers are US-based auto firms and the larger number of US residents who become ill in a more polluted environment.  Why the car companies?  Arguably, they will put less R&D effort into developing less-polluting cars, including electric vehicles.  The desertification of China + disenchantment with diesel will have Europe and Asia, on the other hand, making electric cars a very high priority.  It wouldn’t be surprising to find in a few years a replay of the situation the Detroit automakers were in during the 1970s—when cheap, well-built imports flooded the country without the Big Three having competitive products.

It’s one of the quirks of the US stock market that it has very little direct representation of the auto industry.  So the idea that profits there will be somewhat higher as the firms skimp on R&D will have little/no positive impact on the S&P.  Even the energy industry, the only possible beneficiary of this Trump policy, is a mere shadow of its former self.  Like Trump’s destruction of the American brand—Apple has dropped from #5 in China to #50 since his election—all I can see is damaging downside.

I think the Trump policy is intentional, like his trade wars and his income tax cut for the super-rich.  The most likely explanation for all these facets of Trumponomics is either he doesn’t realize the potentially grave economic damage he’s doing or it’s not a particularly high priority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WeWork (WE) and Wall Street: my take

September 10, 2019 By in Current Market Thoughts, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’ll start out by underlining that I don’t know enough about WE to have a usable investment opinion about the offering’s merits.  I do have opinions, though.  It’s just that they’re more like my thoughts about the Mets than a way to make money.  Anyway, here goes:

in general

–the WE structure isn’t new.  Think: a savings and loan, or a hotel chain, or an airline or an offshore drilling company, or a container ship firm–or, for that matter, a cement plant or a coal mine.  All these involve owning expensive long-lived assets which are typically debt financed and whose use is sold bit by bit.   Although there may be attempts at branding, with varying degrees of success, in the final analysis these are commodity businesses.

–in good times, this is a favorable structure for a company to have.  Costs remain relatively constant as selling prices rise, so most of the increase drops down to the pre-tax line.  Rental/purchase contracts may limit annual price increases, but investors typically factor in anticipated rises relatively quickly

–in bad times, it’s not great.  Customers may stop purchasing with little notice, sometimes walking away from contracts or renegotiating them sharply downward (using the threat of termination as leverage).  Offshore drilling rigs are an extreme example of feast/famine cyclicality

–because of cyclicality, PE multiples for mature firms with this structure tend to be low.  When such companies come to market, they tend to try to ride a wave of energy generated by previously successful IPOs–meaning that simply the appearance of their offering documents is a sign of potential overheating

WE

–in the case of WE, investor perception appears to be frosty.  This is partly because of what I’ve just written.  Also, from what I’ve heard and read, the 350+-page prospectus is not particularly illuminating (I’ve flicked through it but haven’t analyzed it myself)

 

investment implications

The arrival of the WE prospectus coincides with a sharp selloff in the shares of recent tech-related IPOs.

Two possible reasons:

Wall Street thinks that the marketing campaign for WE heralds the end of the line for the current IPO frenzy, on the argument that the underwriters would be presenting a higher quality offering if they had one.  This is what I think is going on.

The other possibility I see is the week-long, humorous but kind of scary Alabama weather discussion, an episode I think makes anyone question the mental stability of Mssrs. Trump and Ross.

In any event, given that some newly-listed tech names have fallen by a quarter or more over the past week or so, I think it’s time to sift through the ashes.

 

Having said that, I do suspect that a significant rotation away from these former market darlings, triggered by WE but based on valuation, is now underway. This will only mark a fundamentally new direction for the stock market if the tariff wars go away completely.  I don’t think this will happen.  So I’d buy a partial position now and hope to pick up more on further weakness.  Remember, too, that this is a highly speculative corner of the market, so it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

 

 

Trump’s economic “plan”

September 10, 2019 By in administration economic strategy, Asian economic development, Brexit, government economic policy, macroeconomics, Trump's economics, Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

So far the Trump administration has launched two countervailing economic thrusts:

—income taxes.   

Starting in 2018, the corporate tax rate was reduced from a highest-in-the-world 35% to a more nearly average 21%.  The idea was to remove the incentive for highly taxed US-based multinationals, like pharmaceutical firms, to shift their businesses elsewhere.  In the same legislation the ultra-wealthy received a very large reduction in their income taxes, as well as retention of the carried interest provision, a tax dodge by which private equity managers convert ordinary income into less highly taxed capital gains (this despite Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to eliminate carried interest).  Average Americans made out less well, receiving a modest reduction in rates coupled with loss of real estate-related writeoffs that skewed the benefits away from heavily Democratic states like California and New York.

Washington made little, if any, attempt to end special interest tax breaks to offset the lower corporate rates.  The result in 2018 was a yoy increase in individual income tax collection of about $50 billion, more than offset by a drop in corporate tax payments of about $90 billion.  Given the strong economy in 2018, the IRS would likely have taken in $150 – $175 billion more under the old rules than it did under the new.

What I find most surprising about the income tax legislation is that the large deficit-increasing fiscal stimulus it provides came at a time when none was needed–after almost a decade of continuous GDP growth in the US and the economy at very close to full employment.

—the tariff wars.

Right after his inauguration, Mr. Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade group aiming to, among other things, fight China’s theft of intellectual property.  However, exiting the TPP for a go-it-alone approach hurt US farmers, since it also meant higher (and escalating each year) tariffs on US agricultural exports to TPP members, notably Japan.

Next, Trump presented the tortured argument that: (1) that there could be no national security if the economy were not growing,  (2) that, therefore, the presence of foreign competition to US firms in the domestic marketplace threatens national security,  (3) that Congress has given the president power to act unilaterally to counter threats to national security, so (4) Trump had the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs on imports.  So he did, in escalating tranches.

No mention of the fact that tariffs slow GDP growth, so under the first axiom of Trump logic are themselves a threat to national security.

Not a peep from Congress, either.

Recently, Mr. Trump has announced that he also has Congressional authority, based on a 1977 law authorizing sanctions against Iran, to order all US-based entities to cease doing business with China.

Results so far:

–the predictable slowdown in economic growth in the US

–retaliatory tariffs that have slowed growth further

–higher prices to consumers that have for all but the ultra-wealthy eaten up the extra income brought by the new tax law

–a sharp drop in spending on new capital projects in the US by both foreign and domestic firms

–tremendous pressure by Trump on the Federal Reserve (in a most un-Republican fashion (yes, I know Nixon did the same thing, but still…)) to “debase” the dollar.

Why?

A falling currency can temporarily give the appearance of faster growth.  But it can also do serious, and permanent, damage to a country by reducing national wealth (Japan is a good example).  Its only “virtue” as a policy measure is that it’s hard to trace cause and effect–politicians can deny they are mortgaging the country’s heritage to cover up earlier mistakes, even though that’s what they’re doing.

–an apparent shift in the goal of US trade negotiators away from structural reform in China to resuming purchases of US soybeans

my take

–if there had been a plan to Trump’s actions, tariffs would have come first, the tax break later.  The fact that the reverse happened argues there is no master strategy.  Again no surprise, given Trump’s history–which people like us can see most clearly in his foray into Atlantic City gaming.

–what a mess!

A better way to combat China?    The orthodox strategies are to strengthen the education system, increase scientific research spending and court foreign researchers to come to the US.  Unfortunately, neither major domestic political party has much interest in education–Democrats refuse to fix broken schools in large urban areas and Republicans as a party are now against scientific inquiry.  The white racism of the current Washington power structure narrows the attraction of the US in the eyes of many skilled foreigners.   The ever-present, ever-shifting tariff threat–seemingly arbitrary levies on imported raw materials and possible retaliatory duties on exported final products–means it’s very risky to locate plant and equipment in the US.

For what it’s worth, I think that were the political situation in the US different there would be substantial Brexit-motivated relocation of multinationals from London to the east coast.

investment implications

To my mind, all this implies having a focus on software companies, on low-multiple consumer firms that focus on domestic consumers with average or below-average incomes, and on companies whose main business is in Asia.  Multinational manufacturers of physical things for whom the US and China are major markets are probably the least good place to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fr