Category Archives: Basic Concepts

business line analysis and sum-of-the-parts

January 23, 2018 By in business line analysis, securities analysis, Stock ideas, stock market, sum of the parts analysis, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

This is mostly a reply to reader Alex’s comment on a post from early 2017 about Disney (DIS).

The most common, and in my opinion, most reliable method securities analysts use to project future earnings for multi-business companies is doing a separate analysis for each business line.  This effort is aided by an SEC requirement that such publicly traded companies disclose operating revenues and profits for each line of business it is in.

In the case of DIS, it’s involved in:  broadcast, including ESPN; movie production and distribution; theme parks and resorts; and sales of merchandise related to the other business lines.

There is plenty of comparative data–from trade associations, government bodies and the financials of publicly traded single-business firms–to help with the analysis.  And every company has, in theory at least, an investor relations department that answers questions put to it by investors. ( My experience since retiring as a money manager for institutional clients is that many backward-thinking well-established companies–DIS and Intel come to mind–can be distinctly unhelpful to their most important supporters, you and me.  (To be fair, I haven’t spoken with DIS’s IR people for several years, so they may be better now.))

Analysis consists in projecting revenues/ profits for each business line and using the results as the key to constructing a series of whole-company income statements–one each for this year, next year and the year after that.

The trickiest part is to decide how to value this earnings stream.  The ability to do this well either comes with experience or from having worked for a professional investor who’s willing to teach.

 

More tomorrow, or in a day or two if I don’t get my film editing homework done today.

 

 

 

corporate taxes, consumer spending and the stock market

December 18, 2017 By in consumer confidence, corporate income tax reform, corporate tax reform in the US, income tax rates, Industry Analysis, Retail, Strategy, strong earnings, taxes, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

It looks as if the top Federal corporate tax rate will be declining from the current world-high 35% to a more median-ish 20% or so.  The consensus guess, which I think is as good as any, is that this change will mean about a 15% one-time increase in profits reported by S&P 500 stocks next year.

However, Wall Street has held the strong belief for a long time that this would happen in a Trump administration.  Arguably (and this is my opinion, too), one big reason for the strength in US publicly traded stocks this year has been that the benefits of corporate tax reform are being steadily, and increasingly, factored into stock quotes.  The action of computers reading news reports about passage is likely, I think, to be the last gasp of tax news bolstering stocks.  And even that bump is likely to be relatively mild.

In fact, one effect of the increased economic stimulus that may come from lower domestic corporate taxes is that the Federal Reserve will feel freer to lean against this strength by moving interest rates up from the current emergency-room lows more quickly than the consensus expects.  Although weening the economy from the addiction to very low-cost borrowing is an unambiguous long-term positive, the increasing attractiveness of fixed income will serve as a brake on nearer-term enthusiasm for stocks.

 

What I do find very bullish for stocks, though, is the surprising strength of consumer spending, both online and in physical stores, this holiday season.  We are now nine years past the worst of the recession, which saw deeply frightening and scarring events–bank failures, massive layoffs, the collapse of world trade.  It seems to me that the consumer spending we are now seeing in the US means that, after almost a decade, people are seeing recession in the rear view mirror for the first time.  I think this has very positive implications for the Consumer discretionary sector–and retail in particular–in 2018.

Broadcom (AVGO) and Qualcomm (QCOM)

November 6, 2017 By in mergers and acquisitions, Technology, Uncategorized, white knight Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

(Note:  the company formerly known as Avago agreed to buy Broadcom for $37 billion in mid-2015.  Avago retained its ticker symbol:  AVGO, but took on the Broadcom name.  Hence, the mismatch between name and ticker.  That deal is on the verge of closing now. Presumably AVGO’s recent decision to move its corporate headquarters from Singapore to the US is a condition for approval by Washington.)

AVGO and QCOM

AVGO is a company that has very successfully grown by acquisition (my family and I have owned shares for some time).  Its specialty, as I see it, is to find firms with excellent technology that are somehow unable to make money from either their intellectual property or their processing knowhow.  AVGO straightens them out.

QCOM, a firm I’ve known since the mid-1990s, seems to fit the bill.  The company makes mobile processors for cellphones.  It also collects license fees for allowing others to use its fundamental and important cellphone intellectual property.  QCOM has been in public disputes over the past couple of years with the Chinese government, which has forced lower royalty payments, and with key customer Apple, which is threatening to design out QCOM chips from its future phones.  As I see it, these disputes are the reason the QCOM stock price has stagnated over the recent past.

the offer

AVGO is offering $70 a share in cash and stock for QCOM, a substantial premium to where QCOM shares were trading before rumors of the offer began to circulate.  The current price for QCOM (I’m writing this at around 10:30) of $63.90 suggests that the market has doubts about the chances for AVGO’s success.

Standard tactics would be for QCOM to seek another buyer, one that would keep current management in place.  Since an overly pugnacious management has arguably been QCOM’s main problem, my guess is that a second bidder is unlikely to emerge.

If I were to try to participate in this contest (I don’t think I will), it would be to buy more AVGO.  I believe AVGO’s assertion that the acquisition would be accretive in year one.  So it’s likely to go up if the bid is successful.  If not, downward pressure from arbitrageurs would abate.  On the other hand, I don’t see 10% upside as enough to take the risk QCOM will find a way to derail the bid.  After all, it has already found a way to anger Beijing and 1 Infinite Loop.

the stock market crash of 1987

October 9, 2017 By in correction vs. bear market, investment advice, Investment firms, Portfolio management, Strategy, Uncategorized, Wall Street Journal Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today on the birth of the ETF–and the index fund, for that matter.

Two factors stand out to me as being missing from the account, however:

–when the S&P 500 peaked in August 1987, it was trading at 20x earnings.  This compared very unfavorably with the then 10% yield on the long Treasury bond.  A 10% Treasury yield would imply a PE multiple on the S&P of 10x–meaning either that bonds were dirt cheap or that the stock market was wildly overvalued vs. the bond market.

–a new product, called at the time portfolio insurance, a form of dynamic hedging, had very recently been created and sold to institutional investors by entrepreneurs steeped in academic efficient markets theory.  Roughly speaking, the “insurance” consisted in the intention to stabilize equity portfolio values by overlaying a program of buying and selling futures against the physical stock.  Buy futures as/if the market rises; sell futures as/if the market falls.

One of the key assumptions of the insurers was that willing/eager counterparties for their futures transactions could be found at all times and at theoretically predictable prices.  On the Friday before Black Monday–itself a down day–the insurers’ model required them to sell a large number of futures contracts.  Few buyers were available, though.  Those who were willing to transact were bidding far below the theoretical contract value.  Whoops.

On Monday morning, the insurers, who appear to have had negligible actual market experience, capitulated and began selling futures contracts at whatever price they could get.  This put downward pressure both on futures and on the physical market.  At the same time, pension funds, noting the large gap between the price of futures and the (much higher) price of the underlying stocks, began to buy futures.  But to counterbalance the added risk to their portfolios, they sold correspondingly large amounts of stocks.  A mess.

Arguably, we would shrug off at least part of this today as just being crazy hedge funds or algorithmic traders.  Back in 1987, however, equity portfolio managers had never before seen derivatives exerting such a powerful influence on the physical market.  It was VERY scary.

conclusions for today

Stocks and bonds are nowhere near as out of whack with one another as they were back in 1987.  The nearest we have today to a comparable issue is what happens as worldwide excess liquidity is drained by central banks from money markets.

The trigger for the Black Monday collapse came from an area that was little understood, even by those involved in it–activity that had severe negative unexpected consequences.  The investors who did the best after the crash, I think, were those who understood the most quickly what had happened.

Collateral damage:  one of the most important results of Black Monday, I think, was the loss of confidence in traditional investment advisers working for the big brokerage houses that it created.  This was, I think, partly because of individuals’ market losses, but partly, too, to the generally horrible executions received when they sold stocks in the aftermath.  This was the start of a significant acceleration of the shift to discount brokers and to mutual fund products.

stuff

October 2, 2017 By in Analyzing performance, Dividends, ETFs Vs. Mutual Funds, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

I have no idea why the seasonal mutual fund-induced S&P 500 selloff hasn’t happened (so far, at least) this year.  Could be this is just an instance of the adage that the market tends to make the greatest fools out of the largest number of people–namely, me.   But even the best portfolio managers are wrong at least 40% of the time.  Not a profession for people who desperately need to be right about everything.

By the way, another curiosity about the annual mutual fund dividend is that holders strongly desire to have a dividend, even though this means paying income tax on it–but almost no one actually receives the payout.  Virtually everyone elects to have the dividend automatically reinvested in the fund.  In my experience, only holders of 2% -3% of shares actually take the money.  So there’s no need for the portfolio manager to raise cash.

This means the annual selloff is an occasion to do portfolio housecleaning plus optics for shareholders.

 

I heard an interesting radio interview of a prominent fixed income strategist the other day.  He said that the reason gradual money tightening by the Fed in the US has made no impact on the bond market is that central bankers in the EU and Japan are still creating new money like there’s no tomorrow.  That liquidity is offsetting what the US is doing so far to drain the punch bowl.  By next spring, however, both the EU and Japan will be at least no longer manufacturing new liquidity and may be joining the US in tapering down the excess money stimulus.  Once that’s occurring, we’ll see a bond bear market.  At the very least, I think, that would put a cap on stock market gains.  Until then, however…

 

September S&P 500 performance:

–I’ll post details for one month, the third quarter and year-to-date later in the week

–the biggest winners for September were:  Energy +9.8%, Finance +5.1%, IT +4.5%.  Losers:  Staples -1.1%, Real Estate -1.9%, Utilities -3.0%.  S&P 500 +1.9%.

ytd:  IT +24.4%; S&P +12.5%; Energy -8.6%.