CWS Market Review – January 19, 2018

“Patterns are the fool’s gold of financial markets” – Benoit Mandelbrot

Earnings season has arrived. This is Judgment Day for Wall Street. You can have a great business plan, happy customers, and the best swag in the Valley, but if your numbers ain’t good, Lord help you.

Remember that earnings season is all about expectations, so it’s not so important to do well. Instead, you have to do better than everybody else was expecting you’d do. This, of course, means that people are expecting you to do better than what everybody thinks everybody else (but them) is expecting. Earnings season is basically a giant game of Twister. That’s worth $30 trillion.

I’m happy to say that our first earnings report this season was a good one. Signature Bank easily beat expectations, and the shares rose nicely on Thursday. Since its September low, Signature is up more than 31% for us. I’ll go over the earnings report in a bit. I’ll also preview upcoming earnings reports from Alliance Data Systems and Sherwin-Williams. Plus I’ll discuss an ugly hit-piece on AFLAC. But first, let’s look at the 20-cent earnings beat from Signature Bank.

Signature Bank Rises to Seven-Month High

On Thursday morning, Signature Bank (SBNY) reported adjusted Q4 earnings of $2.43 per share which was well above Wall Street’s estimate of $2.23 per share. I call the earnings “adjusted” because the bank took a charge last quarter due to their lousy business in medallion loans.

Let’s dig into some numbers. Last year’s SBNY’s total assets rose by 10.4% to reach $43.12 billion, and deposits rose by 5% to $1.58 billion. That’s quite good. For the year, Signature made $8.91 per share.

“2017 was a year during which our highly successful, single-point-of-contact business model further distinguished Signature Bank in an exceedingly competitive marketplace. We continued to attract quality business relationships as evidenced by the growth in both our core deposits and loans. Notwithstanding our challenges in the taxi-medallion business, we were able to achieve a double-digit return on equity,” explained Joseph J. DePaolo, President and Chief Executive Officer.

“Now with tax legislation becoming law and the positive effect we believe it will have on future earnings and capital, we look forward to the $50 billion SIFI threshold potentially moving higher, to at least $100 billion. This will allow the Bank to slow down the pace of expense growth. Realistically, Signature Bank, with its uncomplicated and straightforward balance sheet, should not be subject to the same standards as a truly complex, systemically important trillion-dollar financial institution. We welcome 2018 as we plan to strengthen our foundation by making major investments in our loan operation and origination systems, payments-architecture platform and new foreign-exchange system. We also will look to expand our geographic presence in areas where we have significant client synergies, such as the West Coast, after we successfully tested the waters in 2017 with the appointment of a team and the opening of our new accommodation office in San Francisco,” he concluded.

For Q4, Signature’s “net-interest margin on a tax-equivalent basis” bumped up to 3.07% from 3.05% in Q3. Except for the medallion mess (which is being addressed), SBNY is doing quite well. For Q4, their provision for loan losses was $41.7 million. That’s up 88% from last year. Thank you, medallions.

When looking at banks, there’s a key metric to watch: the “efficiency ratio.” It’s a bank’s overhead as a percent of revenue. The lower this number, the better. Signature defines its efficiency ratio as net interest expense divided by total income. As a general rule, anything below 50% is considered good. For Signature, the efficiency ratio was 33.5% last quarter. That’s really good, and it’s actually up from a year ago when it was 31.25%.

Traders were pleased by the report as shares of SBNY gained 3.6% on Thursday to reach a seven-month high. Signature has been rebounding nicely from a tough time during much of 2017. The stock is up more than 31% from its September low. This week, I’m raising my Buy Below on Signature to $160 per share.

Negative Article Knocks down AFLAC

Last Friday, shares of AFLAC (AFL) got nailed for a 7.4% loss after The Intercept ran a very negative article on them. The Intercept alleged:

The insurance firm Aflac has exploited workers, manipulated its accounting, and deceived shareholders and customers, according to nine former employees. This article is based on interviews with multiple current and former employees, as well as three previously unreported lawsuits.

The allegations contained in the lawsuits involve nearly every aspect of Aflac’s business and have already led to a series of investigations by state and federal regulators. But though Aflac’s top management and board of directors have known about the claims for over a year, they have not disclosed anything to shareholders in public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission beyond generalities about unnamed pending lawsuits that they say they expect will not hurt the company’s bottom line.

The allegations, if true, are very disappointing. However, nothing I’ve seen so far has me concerned for AFLAC’s future. Of course, I’m hardly an independent observer. I’ve admired the company for years. Also, The Intercept has a political bent to its reporting, so I’m reading this with my eyes open, but most of what I’ve read so far is what I’d call the unseemly byproduct of running a large and profitable enterprise.

In the movie Raising Arizona, the police ask Nathan Arizona, Sr., if he has any disgruntled employees. He answers, “Hell, they’re all disgruntled. I ain’t running no damn daisy farm.”

The sales jobs at AFLAC are described as very tough and demanding. That’s not a surprise. Perhaps AFLAC is guilty of making the jobs seem better than they truly are, but that’s a long way from an Enron-type scam. It’s not difficult for them to revamp their recruitment process.

Any big company will have lawsuits brought against them. If you only read what the lawyers have to say, without any explanation from the company, the picture can look quite ugly. That’s what lawyers do. At one point, The Intercept compared working at AFLAC to being a sharecropper. That’s absurd.

Most of what’s alleged can be explained by saying that AFLAC plays to win in a tough business. The company has 10,000 full-time employees, and they do more than $20 billion in annual revenue. If you talk to all the former employees of any firm, the most disaffected can surely share some unpleasant stories.

To their credit, AFLAC quickly responded with a press release. Here’s the key bit:

Recent media stories regarding AFLAC contain false allegations made by a very small group of independent contractors. AFLAC intends to aggressively fight these allegations beginning with filing for their dismissal. The unfounded articles allege claims including insider trading, fraudulent sales and financial manipulation. The company has investigated these claims and found them to be without merit.

The Intercept says this is the first of a series. So far, I’m not exactly overwhelmed by the allegations. Fortunately, shares of AFL regained a lot of lost ground this week. At one point on Thursday, AFL was more than 5.5% above its low from the previous Friday. Don’t let this article scare you. AFLAC will report earnings again on January 31.

Earnings Next Week from Alliance Data and Sherwin-Williams

You can see our complete Q4 Buy List Earnings Calendar here. We have two more reports coming out next week. Both Alliance Data Systems (ADS) and Sherwin-Williams (SHW) are due to report on Thursday, January 25.

Three months ago, Sherwin had a very good earnings report, and the paint folks raised guidance. For Q3, SHW made $4.75 per share which was eight cents better than estimates. Their EBITDA from continuing ops rose 9.6% to $1.70 billion. The company estimated that the hurricanes dinged them for about 27 cents per share.

For Q4, Sherwin sees earnings ranging between $1.97 and $2.27 per share. Adding back 98 cents in acquisition costs, that comes to $2.95 to $3.25 per share. That works out to full-year 2017 earnings of $14.85 to $15.15 per share.

In October, Alliance Data System reported Q3 earnings of $5.35 per share which easily beat Wall Street’s forecast of $5.04 per share. I was pleased to see ADS reiterate its guidance of $18.10 per share for this year and $21.50 per share for 2018. Since Thanksgiving, the shares have had an impressive run (+15%) and that includes an ugly drop earlier this week. The consensus on Wall Street is for Q4 earnings of $5 per share.

That’s all for now. Earnings season ramps up next week. There will be several big-name earnings reports. We’re also going to get the existing-home sales report on Wednesday. Then on Friday morning, we’ll see the durable-goods report and the big Q4 GDP report. This has a chance of being the best GDP report in years. Be sure to keep checking the blog for daily updates. I’ll have more market analysis for you in the next issue of CWS Market Review!

– Eddy

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3 High Yield REITs to Grow From Interest Rate Increases

Share values of real estate investment trust (REIT) companies have been dropping since the Fed announced its last Fed Funds Target Rate increase on December 13. The Fed started raising interest rates in quarter percent increments in December 2015. Each of the four rate increase announcements has been accompanied by a pull back in REIT values. These declines have been short-lived and can be viewed as buying opportunities.

2017 was an interesting year for the REIT sector. While most of the S&P market sectors had stellar returns for the year, REITs as a group returned just a positive 5.1%. In contrast, the S&P 500 gained 21.8%. With average REIT yields near 4%, the 5% total return gives the impression that REIT values did not do much in 2017.

The REIT sector last peaked in mid-December just after the last Fed rate increase. Since then REIT values are down by 6.5%. This is the time to pick up some high-quality REITs and watch the share values for signs that prices have bottomed for this cycle. It’s not possible to pick and exact bottom, but the good news is that some very high-quality REITs are now sporting very attractive yields.

3 Stocks Taking Off From Trump’s Tax Cuts

The cut in the U.S. corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% is supposed to do everything from juicing the U.S. economy to levels not seen in decades to enriching both shareholders and consumers alike. But the reality is likely to be quite different.

The first thing it will bring is a muddied fourth quarter earnings season for investors. A one-time tax on accumulated offshore earnings and revaluations of deferred taxes, based on the new rate, means a lot of potential charges and writeoffs for multinational companies. For firms that report only GAAP earnings, the headline impact on earnings could be quite large.

Investors should look through these one-off charges and focus on what the long-term effects will be on the companies they are invested in.

While many on Wall Street make proclamations about the benefits of the corporate tax cut for banks, I believe the sector still faces too many headwinds (like continuing low interest rates) for me to be interested in investing into banks. Instead, I’d rather focus on three other sectors – with still relatively low valuations – that should benefit from the changes in the tax law regarding U.S. corporations.

Posted by on January 19th, 2018 at 7:08 am


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.