Archive for June, 2018

  • CWS Market Review – June 29, 2018
    , June 29th, 2018 at 7:08 am

    “There is a danger of expecting the results of the future to be predicted from the past.” – John Maynard Keynes

    In recent issues of CWS Market Review, I’ve discussed how the stock market has become more defensive of late. By that I mean the riskier stocks are lagging while high-quality names are holding up well. This is a very important change, and it’s been reflected in the performance of our Buy List. Since June 1, the S&P 500 has fallen by 0.67%, but our Buy List has gained 2.18%. In fact, we’re now leading the market for the year (not including dividends).

    This week, we had more good news from our Buy List. On Wednesday, shares of Ross Stores touched a new all-time high. Remember how the stock got clocked after its last earnings report? Quality always shines through; it just takes time. Then on Thursday, RPM International jumped 9%. I’ll give you the full story on that in a bit. We also had good earnings from FactSet, plus higher guidance, but the stock fell anyway. I’ll tell you what it means. But first, let’s talk a little more about the market’s pivot towards defense.

    High Beta Finally Starts to Falter

    I realize I may sound like a broken record talking about the big shift in the market, but it became a lot more pronounced this week. A good way of looking at the stock market is to compare the relative performance of High Beta stocks versus Low Volatility stocks.

    If you’re not familiar with these phrases, I’ll skip the mumbo-jumbo and make it easy for you. High Beta stocks are risky stocks that tend to bounce around a lot while Low Vol stocks are conservative stocks that tend to be a lot more stable. When the market goes up, High Betas are supposed to go up a lot. When the market falls, High Betas get extra punished. At least, that’s the theory.

    Investing tends to move in cycles and we can clearly see that in the High-Beta-versus-Low-Vol fight. It’s not that one is always superior to another (though Low Vol is the clear winner historically). Instead, it’s that each side has its moment in the sun. As investors, we need to be aware of which way the sun is shining.

    In 2015, Low Vol owned High Beta. That all changed in February 2016. Since then, it’s been High Beta’s world (Exhibit A: the FAANG stocks). This group started doing really well after the election. Only recently has Low Vol started to fight back.

    Why now? Part of it could be nervousness about the market. Also, there could be fears about an escalating trade war that could do real damage to the economy. This week, Harley-Davidson (a former Buy List stock) said it’s moving some production outside the U.S. in response to higher tariffs. The EU said they’re jacking up tariffs on U.S. bikes from 6% to 31%. Harley said that would raise the sticker price on each bike by $2,200. That’s a tough pill to swallow.

    With our Buy List, I don’t try to pick out Low-Vol names. Instead, I go for high-quality stocks at a discount, and that strategy tends to overlap with Low Vol. In the biz, they would say that’s a Low Vol “tilt.” More importantly, the shift away from high-profile tech stocks and towards more defensive names benefits us. That’s why June has been so good for us.

    I also want to make an important point about our Buy List. We’re not going to beat the market every single year. We realize that our style of investing tends to follow a very general cycle. When junkier names lead, we lag. That’s just how the game is. Ideally, we don’t lag by very much. That’s pretty much what happened during the early part of this year. When the cycle turns and conservative names do better, we often do much better. Tie it all together and it’s a good long-term strategy for us.

    On a side note, social media being what it is, I’ll periodically hear from critics ragging me for lagging the market in a particular month. What they fail to mention is what kind of market it was. If we lag by a little in a High-Beta climate, I consider that to be good news. The lesson is to understand what climate you’re in.

    I suspect the shift towards defense will continue for a few more months. Simply put: too many good names have been left behind. This is an excellent market for us and for our strategy. Now let’s take a look at this week’s earnings report.

    FactSet Beats, Raises Guidance…and Falls

    On Tuesday morning, FactSet (FDS) reported fiscal Q3 earnings of $2.18 per share. That beat Wall Street’s estimate by five cents per share. Quarterly revenues rose 8.9% to $339.9 million.

    Thanks to the good earnings, FactSet bumped up its full-year earnings forecast. The old range was $8.35 to $8.55 per share; the new range is $8.37 to $8.62 per share.

    Despite the good news, the stock fell 5.2% on Wednesday, and that’s on top of sliding into the earnings report. In four days of trading, FDS lost more than 8.6%.

    Why was the market so grumpy? I really can’t say. The numbers look solid. Phil Snow, FactSet’s CEO, said, “We are making progress integrating and cross-selling our acquisitions, resulting in important wins this quarter, particularly within Analytics. We continue to innovate with the launch of the Open:FactSet marketplace and enhancing our risk offering. We believe we have a solid pipeline for the fourth quarter and expect to finish fiscal 2018 in our guidance range.”

    A key metric I like to watch on FactSet is their Annual Subscription Value, or ASV. For Q3, ASV rose 5.3% to $1.36 billion. That’s pretty good. At the end of the quarter, FactSet had 4,975 clients. That’s an increase of 80 clients. User count rose by 860 to 89,506. Business is looking good.

    One negative is that FactSet’s operating margin fell to 31.0% last quarter, compared with 31.9% a year ago. The company blamed the drop on restructuring actions and certain one-time administrative expenses. I’d hardly blame an 8% drop on that.

    The CFO said, “We made good progress on our annual and medium-term goals this quarter. The restructuring actions we initiated this quarter help us to optimize costs and benefit margins in the future. With our balanced capital-allocation framework including our robust share-buyback program and an increase in dividends, we continued to return value to shareholders.”

    For the first nine months of the year, FDS has made $6.34 per share. The new outlook implies Q4 earnings of $2.03 to $2.28 per share. Wall Street had been expecting $2.19 per share.

    FactSet seems to be the latest in a recent trend for our Buy List stocks. They report good earnings, yet the share prices fall. I’m not concerned at all about FactSet. I’m dropping our Buy Below down to $211 per share to reflect the recent pullback. This is a good stock.

    RPM International Jumps on Elliott Deal

    Shares of RPM International (RPM) were in the news on Thursday. Bear in mind that RPM is never in the news, so the mere fact that they’re in the news is itself newsworthy.

    Here’s what happened. The company announced that it has reached an agreement with Elliott Management. Elliott is an activist investor. That’s the new name for corporate raiders. These are guys who take big positions in undervalued companies and then demand that they make changes to boost the share price. These tactics are often criticized because they’re thought to be at the expense of the company’s long-term interest. Still, academic research has shown that activists can boost the share price.

    Elliott is run by Paul Singer, and they’re one of the better activist groups. Since we look for good, overlooked companies as well, we have crossed paths with Elliott before. If you recall, they pushed for changes at Cognizant last year, and it worked out well for us.

    I’ll summarize the agreement between RPM and Elliott. RPM will add two new board members. The board will also form an Operating Improvement Committee. (Shouldn’t every committee be that?) The OIC will “focus on operational and financial initiatives to create and enhance shareholder value. Certain of these initiatives will center around setting and achieving new company margin targets based on top-performing industry standards and optimization of RPM’s balance sheet, including streamlining working capital and implementing new capital allocation guidelines and capital return plans.”

    The idea is that RPM will be more transparent regarding its financial goals. They’ll provide an update for shareholders by November 30. RPM’s CEO said:

    “Over the past year, RPM’s Board and management have begun working on initiatives to drive greater efficiency across our operations while maintaining our growth momentum,” said Mr. Sullivan. “We have made some progress in reducing SG&A and identified key opportunities to improve manufacturing efficiencies, lower operating costs, and improve working capital. The initiatives announced today position us to progress significantly on these plans.

    That sounds pretty vague. I’m not sure if this means they’re pushing for a buyout or pushing to divest some businesses. RPM owns several well-known niche brands like Rust-Oleum. RPM jumped 9% on Thursday. Perhaps that’s due to Singer’s reputation. This is very good news for us. This is a company that has raised its dividend for the last 44 years in a row, and a lot of investors have never heard of them. RPM’s fiscal Q4 earnings report will come out on July 19. I’m raising our Buy Below on RPM to $62 per share.

    That’s all for now. Next week begins the second half of 2018. On Monday, we’ll get the ISM report for June. Tuesday is factory orders. The stock market will be closed on Wednesday in honor of Independence Day. America turns 242 years old! Then on Friday, we’ll get the jobs report for June. The report for May showed the lowest unemployment figures since the 1960s. 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

    Syndication Partners

    I’ve teamed up with Investors Alley to feature some of their content. I think they have really good stuff. Check it out!

    Buy This Export to China That Is Exempt From Tariffs

    Sometimes investment opportunities can be found in the most innocuous of headlines. A perfect example of this occurred in the back-and-forth tariff threats between the U.S. and China.

    One of the Chinese government’s threatened retaliation measures would be to impose tariffs on the most successful export industry the United States has had in recent years – energy. China said it would slap a 25% tariff on imports on U.S. oil, coal and certain refined products. But there is one notable exception – liquefied natural gas (LNG).

    Of course, China may decide to impose a tariff on LNG too, but that is doubtful. And therein lies the tale of an investment opportunity for you.

    Two Stocks to Buy and One to Sell with Oil Prices Climbing Again

    President Trump is at it again! On June 13, he again blamed OPEC for the rising price of oil. In a tweet he said, “Oil prices are too high, OPEC is at it again. Not good!”. This follows a similar tweet on April 20 when President Trump said “oil prices are artificially Very High” due to the supply curbs by OPEC and its allies.

    Trump’s tweet comes ahead of a meeting next week of oil ministers from OPEC and Russia who are under pressure from the U.S. to raise output by at least one million barrels of oil a day, after more than a year of enacting production cuts.

    So is OPEC to blame? Yes and no. There are other factors at play here such as a robust global economy that has driven up demand for oil. For example, if you look at just China and India, they have imported 962,000 barrels per day more in the first five months of 2018 than in the same period last year.

    But the real problem is on the supply side, with President’s Trump’s imposition of new sanctions on Iran exacerbating an already bad situation. Let me explain.

  • Morning News: June 29, 2018
    , June 29th, 2018 at 7:05 am

    China Has Refused To Recycle The West’s Plastics. What Now?

    China’s Penetration of Silicon Valley Creates Risks for Startups

    US-China Trade War Will Spill Into Other Asian Economies

    California Lawmakers Just Adopted Tough New Privacy Rules Targeting Facebook, Google and Other Tech Giants

    China’s ZTE Still in Limbo Over U.S. Commerce Ban

    Buying PillPack Would Have Cost Walmart About $700 Million. Not Buying It Wiped $3 Billion Off The Stock

    Nike Posts Growth in Home Market

    Adidas Reports Data Breach

    Bird CEO Explains Why His Scooter Startup Needed $300 Million

    Crypto Coin Graveyard Fills Up Fast as ICOs Meet Their Demise

    Friday Could Be The Busiest Day in U.S. Airline History — Hopefully, A Fragile System Is Ready

    Howard Lindzon: Nike Just Did It…Fashology 101

    Joshua Brown: The Best Answer

    Roger Nusbaum: A Black Swan ETF?

    Ben Carlson: Rocket Men Precision

    Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

  • RPM Jumps on Agreement with Elliot Management
    , June 28th, 2018 at 9:52 am

    RPM International (RPM) is in the news today. RPM is never in the news so the idea that they’re in the news is itself newsworthy.

    The company has announced an agreement with Elliott Management, an activist investor, to enhance shareholder value.

    First off, RPM will get two new members on the board. The board will also form an Operating Improvement Committee. This committee will “focus on operational and financial initiatives to create and enhance shareholder value. Certain of these initiatives will center around setting and achieving new company margin targets based on top-performing industry standards and optimization of RPM’s balance sheet, including streamlining working capital and implementing new capital allocation guidelines and capital return plans.”

    RPM will now be more transparent regarding their financial goals. They’ll provide an update by November 30.

    “Over the past year, RPM’s Board and management have begun working on initiatives to drive greater efficiency across our operations while maintaining our growth momentum,” said Mr. Sullivan. “We have made some progress in reducing SG&A and identified key opportunities to improve manufacturing efficiencies, lower operating costs, and improve working capital. The initiatives announced today position us to progress significantly on these plans. Both Kirk and John add new perspectives and proven operational track records to our Board, and we look forward to benefitting from their expertise and experience as we take action to drive operational efficiencies, long-term performance, and value creation.”

    Jeff Rosenbaum, Portfolio Manager at Elliott Management, said, “We are pleased to have worked constructively with RPM’s Board and management team on the initiatives announced today. RPM has an outstanding collection of leading brands, and we believe the company has significant potential for further operating, financial, and balance sheet improvements. Kirk Andrews brings strong portfolio and operational review and execution experience with his leadership in NRG’s recent $855 million cost and margin enhancement program. And John Ballbach brings strong industry know-how and leadership skills from his work as a Valspar senior executive. They will both add immediate value to RPM’s Board and newly formed Operating Improvement Committee. We are confident that this ‘no stone unturned’ review will lead to several hundred basis points of margin improvement, capital returned to shareholders, and superior overall results for the Company.”

  • Q1 GDP Growth Revised to 2.0%
    , June 28th, 2018 at 8:53 am

    This morning, the government revised the economic growth numbers for the first quarter of this year. According to the new data, the US economy grew, in real terms, at a 2% annualized rate for Q1.

    That’s been about the average for the recovery. What’s interesting is that the recovery has been less than the average of the last several decades.

    There’s been talk of the economy ramping up to a faster growth rate. So far, the numbers say that hasn’t happened. Of course, this is for Q1 which began six months ago and ended three months ago, so Q2 could be a different story. The Atlanta Fed thinks Q2 came in at 4.5%.

    I hope so. That’s a very good number, and it could signal that things are ramping up. We’ll get our first look at the Q2 numbers in late July.

    Here’s a look at the year-over-year growth rate in real GDP.

  • Morning News: June 28, 2018
    , June 28th, 2018 at 7:10 am

    Surging Oil Prices Are Doing Nothing for Stocks in 2018

    Gold Marks Third Straight Decline and Another 6-Month Low

    BOE Warns of Growing Risks in Global Debt Markets

    Ford Fiestas Aren’t Tools of War, Automakers Say in Trump Retort

    Vanguard Group Goes Greener With Two ESG ETFs

    Elon Musk Races to Exit Tesla’s ‘Production Hell’

    T-Mobile, Sprint Bosses Defend Wireless Merger

    The New GE Could Use Some Berkshire Spirit

    Why Canopy Growth Corp’s Shares Plunged 12% Today

    Google Exec Says Microsoft Beat Search Giant to Buy GitHub

    MoviePass Owner Dips Below 25 Cents as AMC Debuts Rival Service

    Amazon Plans Start-Up Delivery Services for Its Own Packages

    Nick Maggiulli: You See What You Want To See

    Cullen Roche: How Blogging Changed Wall Street

    Michael Batnick: Animal Spirits: Individual Alpha

    Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

  • Ross Stores Hits New High
    , June 27th, 2018 at 11:55 am

    On May 25, shares of Ross Stores (ROST) fell 7% after the deep-discount retailer reported earnings. I thought the earnings were just fine, but traders apparently disagreed.

    This is from the CWS Market Review of June 1:

    Ross Stores (ROST) reported fiscal Q1 adjusted earnings of $1.11 per share. Earlier, the company had projected earnings of $1.03 to $1.07 per share. They made 82 cents per share for last year’s Q1.

    There were a few accounting items to adjust for. Ross said they were helped in Q1 by 17 cents per share due to tax reform plus two cents per share thanks to “the favorable timing of packaway-related expenses that we expect to reverse in subsequent quarters.”

    Q1 sales rose 9% to $3.6 billion, and comparable-stores sales were up 3%. Ross had been expecting 1% to 2%. I knew that forecast was too low. The company said it was hurt by poor weather during the quarter. I’m usually pretty skeptical of weather as an excuse. Ross’s operating margin fell to 15.1%. That’s still pretty good.

    For fiscal Q2, Ross expects earnings of 95 to 99 cents per share. They see same-store sales growth of 1% to 2%. That’s pretty low. The good news is that Ross raised its full-year guidance. The old range was $3.86 to $4.03 per share, and the new range is $3.92 to $4.05 per share.

    Pretty good, but still, shares of Ross dropped in one day from $82.96 to $77.34. Here we are one month later and ROST touched $87.22 this morning.

    This is why we focus on high-quality names. They may get knocked around, but quality shines through.

  • Morning News: June 27, 2018
    , June 27th, 2018 at 6:43 am

    Hedge Fund Managers See Echo of Past Crashes in Markets

    China’s ‘Big Mama’ Steps In as Yuan Tumbles Further

    Trump’s Trade War Revives Fears China Will Devalue Yuan

    The Trade War Finally Got Real

    Trump Threatens Harley-Davidson With Taxes ‘Like Never Before’ and Predicts Its Eventual Collapse

    The Culture Clash Behind GE’s Quick Exit From Baker Hughes Stake

    Complete And Total Nonsense

    Facebook Loosens Ban on Cryptocurrency Ads for Approved Vendors

    Facebook Abandons its Plans to Build Giant Drones and Lays Off 16 Employees

    Uber Regains Temporary License to Operate in London After Promising to Stop Being Terrible

    We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is In The Air.

    Google Retires DoubleClick, AdWords Brand Names

    Roger Nusbaum: What You Need Might Cost More Than Three Basis Points

    Ben Carlson: My Evolution on Asset Allocation

    Joshua Brown: How to Chop Up Your Portfolio

    Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

  • High Beta vs. Low Vol
    , June 26th, 2018 at 8:04 am

    Here’s an intra-day look at High Beta vs. Low Vol ETFs over the past two weeks. Low Vol hasn’t moved much while High Beta has been knocked about.

    In financial markets, it’s interesting how often a big move like yesterday’s is quietly hinted at in the prior few days. The gap between the two gradually got bigger, until it completely blew apart yesterday.

  • FactSet Earns $2.18 per Share
    , June 26th, 2018 at 7:10 am

    This morning FactSet (FDS) reported fiscal Q3 earnings of $2.18 per share. That beat Wall Street’s estimate by five cents per share. Revenues increased 8.9% to $339.9 million compared.

    Thanks to the good earnings, FactSet bumped up its full-year earnings forecast. The old range was $8.35 to $8.55 per share. The new range is $8.37 to $8.62 per share.

    The CEO said, “We are making progress integrating and cross selling our acquisitions resulting in important wins this quarter, particularly within Analytics. We continue to innovate with the launch of the Open:FactSet marketplace and enhancing our risk offering. We believe we have a solid pipeline for the fourth quarter and expect to finish fiscal 2018 in our guidance range.”

    A key metric for FactSet is Annual Subscription Value or ASV. For Q3, ASV rose 5.3% to $1.36 billion. At the end of the quarter, FactSet had 4,975 clients. That’s an increase of 80 clients. User count rose by 860 to 89,506.

    FactSet’s operating margin fell to 31.0% last quarter compared with 31.9% a year ago. The drop reflects restructuring actions and certain one-time administrative expenses.

    The CEO said, “We made good progress on our annual and medium term goals this quarter. The restructuring actions we initiated this quarter help us to optimize costs and benefit margins in the future. With our balanced capital allocation framework including our robust share buyback program and an increase in dividends, we continued to return value to shareholders.”

    For the first nine months of the year, FDS has earned $6.34 per share. The new outlook implies Q4 earnings of $2.03 to $2.28 per share. Wall Street had been expecting $2.19 per share.

  • Morning News: June 26, 2018
    , June 26th, 2018 at 7:04 am

    Dow Jones Cuts Losses; Is Donald Trump About To Blink In China Trade War?

    The Supreme Court Just Issued a Ruling Affecting the Credit Card Industry — and Silicon Valley, Too

    Judge Dismisses Climate Suits Targeting Big Oil Companies

    GE’s Exit From the Dow Will Change the Index’s Calculation In An Important Way

    GE Is To Spin Off Health Care Division In Bid to Streamline

    Harley-Davidson To Shift Some Production Overseas Due To Trade War

    With Cryptocurrencies in Freefall, One Big Firm Doubles Down

    BMW Warns of U.K. Pullback If There’s No Brexit Deal

    Apple’s Tim Cook Weighs In On Social Issues

    How to Solve the Plastic Crisis

    Kinder Morgan, EagleClaw, Apache to Develop Permian Highway Pipeline

    McDonald’s Wants to Win Breakfast by Selling the Best Part of the Muffin

    Joshua Brown: Three Uncelebrated Edges

    Ben Carlson: The Best Free Investing Tools on the Web

    Howard Lindzon: Momentum Monday – I Wish It Was Friday

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