FAST

The Applied Finance Group’s (AFG) Market Forecast Project is a monthly poll of professional investor’s designed to provide insights on how investor’s currently view the market and economy. This poll started out as an AFG client only poll at AFG’s annual research summit, but due to its popularity and successful predictions it has been expanded to all professional investors who register and participate and will be done monthly. The benefit of participation is being the first to receive the results before they are released on our blog or to anyone else. Earlier this month as a result of one of the poll’s questions that the Tech sector was the most attractive sector to invest in over the next 12 months, we released a list of Tech stocks that we like and a few that looked overvalued as well. In last month’s survey the Basic Material sector was the second most attractive place to invest due to the fact that many investors see an economic recovery ahead that may directly benefit many of the companies within the Materials sector when home building and new construction begin to correct and recover. Provided below is a list of Basic Material stocks that we find attractive and unattractive based on AFG’s default buy/sell criteria, valuation attractiveness and expected change in Economic Margins (AFG’s measure of corporate performance/profitability). Companies expected to improve Economic Margins greater than sector peers have proven through back-tests to be the most likely companies to outperform. Companies with attractive default valuations according to AFG have also consistently outperformed companies AFG views as overvalued.

Source (The Applied Finance Group)

*Valuation & EM Change are Ranks within their sector

AFG's Buy/Sell Criteria - factors in Economic Margin, Management Quality, and AFG's Valuation Metric. In order to determine Management Quality, AFG scores management on their growth decisions in accordance with the company’s ability to either create or destroy wealth. AFG's Valuation Metric measures a company's Percent to Target (the deviation between a stock's current trading price and its AFG current default target price). To derive the intrinsic value of a firm, AFG uses its proprietary Valuation Model.

If you are a professional investor and would like to be a part of our next survey click here.

 

About Economic Margin

 

Created by The Applied Finance Group,  The Economic Margin (EM) Framework was developed to evaluate corporate performance from an economic cash flow perspective and is an alternative to accounting-based valuation metrics. EM measures the return a company earns above or below its cost of capital and provides a more complete view of a company’s underlying economic vitality

 

Value-based metrics (as opposed to accounting-based methods) have become popular for two reasons. First, capital markets have forced money managers and corporations to have a renewed focus on the balance sheet; these companies are expected to provide an adequate return on the money they have invested. Second, accounting information, although necessary, does not by itself adequately explain market valuations nor provide comparability between firms.

 

EM is meant to serves two purposes: Create an measure of a company’s economic profitability; that is, did this company generate cash flow in excess of the costs of its capital invested in its operations, or did the company destroy wealth? Once we have solved for this, we can then use this EM as a function in our valuation model.

 

EM is calculated by dividing a company’s Operating Cash Flow minus Capital Charge by their Invested Capital. For a more detailed explanation see below.

 

 

Economic Margin Framework is more than just a performance metric as it encompasses a valuation system that explicitly addresses the four main drivers of enterprise value: profitability, competition, growth and cost of capital.

 

Economic Margin captures the relevant drivers that are necessary to evaluating corporate performance and identifies wealth creating firms as well as wealth destroying firms while focusing on the key issues that drive market valuations. The EM also incorporates risk through a capital charge on all of a firm’s cash flow while also providing an annual snapshot to evaluate company track records creating and destroying wealth to evaluate current company actions.

 

Correcting Common Accounting Distortions

 

Accounting-based valuation methods provide an incomplete view of a company’s value by not accounting for investment to Generate the Earnings, Cost of Capital, Inflation or Cash Flow.  Because the EM corrects these accounting distortions by taking into account Asset Life, Asset Mix, Asset Age, Capital Structure and Growth , effectively linking the income statement and balance sheet, EM levels have a much higher correlation with market Values. 
 

 

A company’s performance measure must serve as a proxy for its market value creation.  Successful corporations consider cash flow, investment, competition & risk when setting strategy with the goal of creating shareholder value.  But not all management teams are successful at creating shareholder value.  As displayed on the graph below, AFG's Economic Margin can help invesmtent managers clearly distighigh managment teams abilty to create shareholder value.

 

Below is a comparison between Best Buy (BBY) and Circuit City (CC). Not surprisingly, soon after we took a snapshot of Circuit City’s Wealth Creation report they filed for bankruptcy.

Source (The Applied Finance Group)


Source (The Applied Finance Group)

 

 

The average company in the United States generates an Economic Margin of zero.  Below is a list of companies that have been able to generate EM's greater than 10% on average over the past three years.  Although all of the companies listed have had great success in generating a large spread above their cost of capital, some of these companies are classified as unattractive because they have started to trade at a premium to their intrinsic value and the direction of those Economic Margins is unattractive. (Receive Our Stock Reserch Alerts by email)

High EM Buys & Sells

Source (The Applied Finance Group)

 Next week we will be discussing the use of an Economic Margin as a complete valuation system.