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Professional Investors Like The Health Care Sector – Including Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)
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Unattractive S&P 500 Companies - Including Goodyear Tire & Rubber (NYSE:GT) and Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON)
The Applied Finance Group (AFG) works with some of the most well respected investment firms in the U.S. to help them develop quantitative screening processes to identify a better pool of companies to choose from for their portfolio holdings. However, picking winning investment opportunities isn’t the only value AFG provides clients. AFG also develops quantitative strategies to quickly identify possible torpedoes lurking in your client or prospective client’s portfolio.
AFG’s quantitative process is centered on the proprietary Economic Margin (EM) Framework (what a company earns above its true cost of capital). The core of AFG’s quantitative process starts with evaluating corporate performance and the expected improvement relative to their peers, evaluating the valuation attractiveness of the company, and determining if a firm is following a wealth creating or wealth destroying strategy.
A brief description of those variables is available below the list of companies.
When identifying potential torpedoes AFG looks for companies with the least valuation upside compared to their sector peers, below sector median expected Economic Margin change, and a management quality score that reflects a management team following a wealth destroying strategy.
These 12 S&P 500 companies are potential torpedoes that could be lurking in your portfolio. These companies all possess characteristics that make for a bad investment opportunity. If you own one of these companies or consider adding one to your portfolio, we suggest taking a closer look as they look the most likely to underperform their sector peers according to criteria that has proven successful at identifying winners and losers in the market.
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AFG's Valuation Metric – Measures the percent to target (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 (modified discounted cash flow model).
Economic Margin - A corporate performance measurement that addresses the gaps in GAAP, eliminating distortions caused by accounting policies to measure what a company is truly earning above or below their cost of capital.
Management Quality – Assesses management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.
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Sales Growth Expectations of S&P 500’s Top Performers – Including Cognizant Tech Sol. (NASDAQ:CTSH)
Using The Applied Finance Group's (AFG's) Value Expectations interface we have provided an analysis of the expectations embedded in the stock prices of some of the top performers in the S&P 500 year to date (excluding financials) to see which companies have the lowest expectations for sales growth (VE Sales Growth) relative to what the company has been able to deliver historically (5 Year Median Sales Growth).
AFG’s Value Expectations interface provides clients a platform to better understand economic profitability, and at the same time understand the performance a company must deliver to justify its current stock price. By understanding the embedded expectations a company must deliver to justify their current trading price, clients can develop a “hurdle rate” to quickly determine if the company’s expectations are rich or low. Take, for example, the typical company during the tech bubble: the expectations that were priced into the average tech stock far exceeded what it could realistically deliver. For this reason, AFG identified the technology sector as overvalued, as well as potential torpedoes such as Cisco, whose expectations were unrealistically high.
By gaining a better understanding of the embedded expectations built in to security prices, relative to what a company has delivered historically, can provide insight into the Sales Growth, EBITDA Margin, and Asset Turnover a company must deliver in the future to justify its current trading price. In many circumstances, if the imbedded future performance is very conservative relative to the company’s historical performance, the stock is regarded as undervalued.
The top performers of the S&P 500 listed below are ranked based on valuation attractiveness using The Applied Finance Group’s valuation model. You would like to look for companies with attractive valuations and modest expectations for revenue growth relative to what the company has been able to achieve over the past five years when looking for potential investment opportunities as these types of companies have proven through time to outperform firms with the opposite characteristics.
If you would like to view some of the favorite long and short investment ideas provided by professional investors click here to view the results for AFG's Market Forecast Project.
Sales Growth Expectations of S&P 500 Top Performers of 2009
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Source: EconomicMargin.com
AFG's Valuation Metric – Measures the percent to target (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 (modified discounted cash flow model).
Economic Margin - A corporate performance measurement that addresses the gaps in GAAP, eliminating distortions caused by accounting policies to measure what a company is truly earning above or below their cost of capital.
Management Quality – Assesses management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.
To stay updated on how other professional investor's currently view the market join our Market Forecast Project survey and be among the first to receive the results.
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Identifying Large Cap Investment Opportunities - Including McDonalds (NYSE:MCD) Sprint (NYSE:S) and Hasbro (NYSE:HAS)
The Applied Finance Group (AFG) has a disciplined approach for identifying companies that are expected to outperform and underperform the market by using proprietary metrics and measurements that have been tested and proven through time. Because AFG’s research is fundamentally derived, AFG’s quantitative analysis spans across growth and value stocks, all sectors, industries, and market caps with over 20,000 covered securities globally. Using AFG’s proprietary criteria, AFG publishes a monthly buy/sell list to provide clients with a refined focused list as a starting point for potential investments. AFG clients can then use Value Expectations to further analyze the expectations embedded in a security’s price and to build out their own model to refine an intrinsic value of a company based on their own expectations.
When searching for Large-Cap ideas, AFG’s Buy/Sell list is a good starting place as it has proven to create a significant spread in performance between companies that come up on AFG’s buy list and those on the sell list. Further focusing on companies based on AFG’s proprietary screening criteria (Economic Margin, valuation, quality of earnings, and management’s ability to create shareholder wealth) will save investors time in their research process. The result is a target group of stocks that can help you outperform as well as identify potential torpedoes to avoid in your portfolios.
Below is a list of attractive and unattractive companies in the S&P 500 from each major sector (as defined by AFG). It serves as a focus list of companies for investors to begin with as they meet AFG’s criteria. They are more likely to outperform their sector peers and the S&P 500, the benchmark that AFG’s clients most often compare themselves with.
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Source: EconomicMargin.com
AFG's Valuation Metric – Measures the percent to target (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 (modified discounted cash flow model).
Economic Margin - A corporate performance measurement that addresses the gaps in GAAP, eliminating distortions caused by accounting policies to measure what a company is truly earning above or below their cost of capital.
Management Quality – Assesses management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.
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Stocks Trading Above 50 and 200 Day Moving Averages (S&P 500)
Investors are always looking for an edge, a way to improve their stock selection process in the hope that it improves their overall performance. Fundamental investors may flirt with the idea of adding a technical overlay to their process while a value investor may take more of a chance on a growth company. No matter what style of investor you are, you want to be sure the process you are implementing makes sense.
Because of the volatility of the market, investors seem to be paying more attention to the technicals of the companies they hold or are considering to buy. While there are several ways technical analysts look at the momentum in the market, ValueExpectations.com will concentrate on the simple, yet widely used 50 and 200 day moving averages relative to a companies current trading price.
We, at The Applied Finance Group (AFG), believe that technicals are relevant, but it is much more important to focus on the fundamentals of a company in determining which securities are over/under valued. We have taken the S&P 500 and focused only on the stocks trading above their 50 and 200 day moving averages (44%) for those investors who pay closer attention to technicals, and provided a list of companies in most of the major economic sectors that we find attractive and some that we find unattractive based on AFG’s investment criteria, which focuses more on valuation attractiveness and expected corporate performance.
However, if you do look at momentum, a variable we would suggest concentrating on is economic momentum. AFG’s economic momentum coupled with valuation give you a tremendous advantage in outperforming!
AFG |
Rank within Sector |
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Ticker |
Name |
Investment Opportunity |
Valuation Signal |
EM Change Signal |
Capital Goods - Attractive |
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(NYSE:RDC) |
ROWAN COMPANIES INC |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:DO) |
DIAMOND OFFSHRE DRILLING |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Capital Goods - Unattractive |
||||
(NYSE:SWK) |
STANLEY WORKS THE |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NYSE:LEN) |
LENNAR CORP CL A |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Consumer Durable - Attractive |
||||
(NYSE:OI) |
OWENS ILLINOIS INC |
Attractive |
Neutral |
Positive |
(NYSE:XRX) |
XEROX CORP |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Neutral |
Consumer Durable - Unattractive |
||||
(NYSE:IGT) |
INTERNAT GAME TECHNOLOGY |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NYSE:HAR) |
HARMAN INTERNAT IND INC |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Consumer NonDurable - Attractive |
||||
(NYSE:LO) |
LORILLARD INC |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:CL) |
COLGATE-PALMOLIVE CO |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Consumer NonDurable - Unattractive |
||||
(NYSE:RL) |
POLO RALPH LAUREN CORP |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NYSE:HNZ) |
H.J. HEINZ CO |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Consumer Services - Attractive |
||||
(NYSE:DRI) |
DARDEN RESTAURANTS |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:EFX) |
EQUIFAX INC |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Consumer Services - Unattractive |
||||
(NYSE:HOT) |
STARWOOD HTLS & RSRTS WW |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NYSE:CBS) |
CBS CORP CL B |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Health - Attractive |
||||
(NASDAQ:BIIB) |
BIOGEN IDEC INC |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:PFE) |
PFIZER INC |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Health - Unattractive |
||||
(NASDAQ:MYL) |
MYLAN INC |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NASDAQ:ISRG) |
INTUITIVE SURGICAL INC |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Technology - Attractive |
||||
(NASDAQ:SYMC) |
SYMANTEC CORP |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:HRS) |
HARRIS CORP |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Technology - Unattractive |
||||
(NASDAQ:LLTC) |
LINEAR TECHNOLOGY CORP |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NASDAQ:CIEN) |
CIENA CORP |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Utilities - Attractive |
||||
(NYSE:PEG) |
PUBLIC SVC ENTPRS GROUP |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
(NYSE:D) |
DOMINION RESOURCES VA |
Attractive |
Attractive |
Positive |
Utilities - Unattractive |
||||
(NYSE:NI) |
NISOURCE INC |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
(NYSE:NU) |
NORTHEAST UTILITIES |
Unattractive |
Unattractive |
Negative |
Sectors without adequate representation were excluded (Financials, Basic Material, Transportation)
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Health Care - Sector Overview
Healthcare reform has been a hot topic of discussion in the news and on blogsites all over the country as the Obama administration mulls over whether or not a public option for healthcare makes sense and what a plan like that would entail. Any new reform to the current healthcare plan would have a great effect on stocks within the Healthcare sector. Below is a list of stocks we find attractive and a few that we find unattractive within the S&P 500 Health sector. The chart consists of each company’s attractiveness as an investment opportunity using The Applied Finance Group’s (AFG’s) buy/sell criteria (explained below), and also grades each company based on expected Economic Margin (EM) change and valuation ranks within the sector. Companies expected to improve EMs and that have a more attractive valuation than their sector peers have proven through backtests to be more likely to outperform than stocks AFG views as overvalued and that have an expected decline in EMs.
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.
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Analyzing the Earnings Quality of Companies Set to Report
Understanding the amount of accruals a company has on its books and the quality of its reported earnings is especially important during earnings season, as poor earnings quality companies are more likely to have negative earnings surprises and underperform as a result. With so many companies reporting earnings this week, we wanted to share an analysis of their earnings quality based on The Applied Finance Group’s Earnings Quality score. AFG’s Earnings Quality variable is based on the concept of accruals and is an important indicator, which helps to differentiate between companies with poor and high quality of reported earnings. Watch out for firms with poor EQ score – make sure they are not trying to pad their sales numbers through channel stuffing, for example.
*Source: www.afgview.com
Two ways to approach accruals:
1. Cash Flow Statement
•Difference between Net Income and Cash Flow
2. Balance Sheet
•Change in Net Operating Assets from Period t-1 to t
•Net Operating Asset equals Total Assets Less Cash, Less Non-Debt Liabilities (excl. Minority Interest)
• Our studies show that the Balance Sheet approach is superior to the Cash Flow Statement approach.
• We found the Balance Sheet approach is also easier to expand to international companies.
• Low Accrual companies outperform high accrual companies
Here is a look at how well the Earnings Quality variable works when you split top half vs. bottom half in each sector/style universe.
Source: AFGView client databases from 9/1998 - 5/2009 Universe size: 4,000 to 5,500 firms
Here is a look at an example of a poor Earnings Quality company that has a negative earning surprise and thus underperforms.
Eastman Kodak
• Other Liabilities declined in Q308, leading to high accruals – change in licensing agreement required immediate recognition of deferred revenue.
• Eastman Kodak (EK) subsequently missed earnings in Q408.
• EK’s stock dropped 29% on January 28th, when Q408 earnings were announced.
• EK has underperformed the S&P500 by almost 70% since January 28th.
source: www.economicmargin.com
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Companies Reporting Earnings: Week of July 20 (Part 1)
With a major week of earnings right around the corner, we thought it would be useful to our readers to provide an analysis of the companies set to report in the first half of next week. This analysis contains a breakdown of each company's default recommendation according to AFG's Buy/Sell criteria, a look at their valuation attractiveness, and a look at the direction their Economic Margin's are expected to head in the upcoming year. The three companies that look the most attractive based on these criteria are Pfizer, Advanced Micro Devices and Boston Scientific.
A company's Economic Margin (EM) is a measurement of a their true earnings above or below their cost of capital. EM also corrects distortions caused by accounting policies to give a more accurate assessment of a company's real value. It is important to understand the direction a company's EM's are heading because, by knowing this, one can get a complete assessment of how profitable a company can be in the future. The EM Framework addresses profitability, competition, growth and cost of capital. When factoring in each of these variables, investors can fully assess a company's value.
Below is the list of companies reporting earnings in the first half of the upcoming week along with a closer look at Boston Scientific:
According to the chart below, BSX's intrinsic value is above its current stock price, which leads us to believe that Boston Scientific is undervalued right now.
According to the Wealth Creation chart below, BSX has shown a positive Economic Margin and is forecasted to improve that margin in the upcoming year.
Source: Www.EconomicMargin.com
AFG's Buy/Sell criteria factor 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.
AFG's default valuation is a good place to start because it is a simple metric that gives a more accurate outlook on a company's value while correcting distortions.
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AFG’s Intrinsic Value Chart identifies how far a stock’s intrinsic value (target price assuming immediate decay) deviates from its trading range, which helps you recognize potentially mispriced stocks and pursue long and short opportunities.
• The blue bars represent the high and low trading range for a stock for 1 year.
• The red dotted line represents AFG’s historical Intrinsic Value through time.
• When the red line (Intrinsic Value) is above the blue bars (trading range), the company looks to be undervalued.
• When the red line (Intrinsic Value) is below the blue bars (trading range), the company looks to be overvalued.
AFG’s Intrinsic Value Chart also contains a company’s Value Score (ranked valuation attractiveness), Economic Margin Change (expected increase/decrease in economic profitability), and Accuracy score (how well AFG’s default valuation has tracked the company).
Wealth Creation Report: displays a company’s Economic Margins (what a company earns above or below its cost of capital) through time as well as a projection of their expected future levels. The second graph shows how a company has grown their assets over time and also contains a projection of how they will grow their assets next year. AFG’s view on wealth creation starts by looking for profitable companies that are also growing their assets to make the most of that profitability.
Investment Insights from your peers, Professional Investors - The Applied Finance Group would like to invite professional investors to join AFG’s Market Forecast Project so you can better understand what your peers currently think about the market and cultivate the “wisdom of Crowds” into actionable investment ideas and themes.
Click here to learn more
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Economic Competition: Competitive Advantage Period
Traditional Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) models have been been underutilized in equity analysis over the years primarily because of the assumptions one has to sign off on. We will concentrate on just two of the major issues we have with traditional DCF models, the lack of ability to deal with competition and the perpetuity assumption embedded in a DCF model. These assumptions lead to irrational calculations of intrinsic value and force analysts to make compromising decisions in their model building efforts.
AFG uses a modified DCF model that accurately addresses the competitive nature of the business while also dealing with the perpetuity issue through our Economic Margin decay or competitive advantage period.
The four factors that affect AFG’s Competitive Advantage Period (CAP) are;
Profitability – High Profit leads to increased competition and a higher decay rate
Variability – Higher volatility leads to less predictability and a higher decay rate
Trend – AFG gives the benefit of the doubt to an upward trend which leads to a lower decay rate
Invested Capital – Large Invested Capital creates barriers to entry and leads to lower decay rate
The Decay Rate is the rate at which the Economic Margins™ will diminish over time due to competition, market conditions and limited investment opportunities. Higher decay rates translate into shorter competitive advantage periods, while lower decay rates translate into longer competitive advantage periods.
The Decay Rate profile is downward sloping to the right, which means that Economic Margins™ over time diminish to zero. This does not mean that the company will not have earnings, but instead the company will have an Economic Margin™ of zero, which indicates there are no excess profits after the investors are paid and the depreciating assets are replaced.When selecting securities, companies that are maintaining a high level of economic profitability or growing their profits rapidly are attractive from an investment standpoint. However, the more profitable a firm is the more likely other companies will attempt compete away excess returns.
To illustrate this, one has to look no further than Dell Computer. Dell Computer had Economic Margins™ hovering around 40% (top 5% of all companies) in 1997 and 1998, but soon every major firm was announcing that they were going to build computers to order. Why? Because they saw the huge profits that Dell was making. The result is that Dell's Economic Margin™ for 1999 was around 25%, a decline of 37.5% in just one year. The remaining factors are relatively straight-forward, in that volatile returns are worth less than consistent returns, companies with an increasing Economic Margins™ are worth more than a company in decline, and large companies have a natural barrier to entry, thus a lower decay rate.
Theory: Excess return gets competed away
Fact: In 1997, the median top decile Economic Margin (EM) firm = 17.4%. 10 years later, that same group of companies had a median EM of 6.5%. On the other hand, the bottom decile had an EM of -12.2%, 10 years later that same group had a median EM of -1.0%.
Current Top Decile Economic Margin Companies (S&P 500 ex. financials)
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So Far... So Good...
With just a few trading days under our belt in 2009, these stocks have made the biggest moves so far according to Bespoke.com. Will these stocks continue the January hot/cold streak into the rest of the year or is this just a fluke. Only time will tell. We measured the implied sales growth priced-in to justify their current price (VE Sales Growth) against what these firms have delivered in sales growth for the past 5 years to see which companies have low or reasonable expectations. Companies with low expectations for sales growth priced-in relative to what they have been able to deliver are the ones that are more likely to out-perform.
VE Sales Growth calculated on 1-13-09
These lists exclude financials.
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High Priced Investment Ideas
There are six companies in the S&P 500 currently trading at over $100 a share. Five out of those six are companies which have sales growth expectations priced-in to their current stock price that are lower than their historical five year median sales growth.
Although AZO, CME, GOOG, ISRG and WPO are trading among the highest priced per share in the index, their expectations are reasonable enough to meet those sales numbers and add shareholder value. Regardless of whether the stock is trading at $10 or $100 it is not the current price that is important but the expectations that are embedded in that price.
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