Member Articles

Revenue Growth at LinkedIn Remains Strong But Shares Are Expensive

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Business networking leader LinkedIn (click ticker for report: ) reported relatively strong third quarter results last Thursday afternoon. Revenue growth continued its robust path, surging 81% year-over-year to a consensus beating $252 million. Excluding several items, earnings accelerated 267% year-over-year to $0.22 per share—more than double the consensus estimate. Unlike most firms’ non-GAAP items, which exclude “one-time” expenses, LinkedIn’s earnings exclude very real costs like stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible asset acquisitions—perhaps non-cash, but still material, in our view. Regardless, the company’s third quarter results reflected relatively strong performance. Talent (Hiring) Solutions revenue increased 95% year-over-year to $138.4 million. The segment continues to steal market share away the old line of online hiring solutions, including Monster Worldwide (click ticker … Read more

Valuentum’s DCF Valuation Model Template for Individual Investors

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Have you ever wanted to model a company just like a stock analyst? As part of Valuentum’s mission to serve the individual investor, we’ve developed a discounted cash-flow model that you can use to estimate the value of any operating firm that you wish. The model, built by Brian Nelson, who has developed valuation models and has trained hundreds of financial analysts for such large organizations as Morningstar, offers individual investors the opportunity to truly peer into the analytics of this process and learn the in’s and out’s of valuation. What’s more, we’ve made it easy for you. In just 30 minutes of your time, you can build a full income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, including both historical data and your very own forecasts. Plus, you can see … Read more

AIG Beats Estimates; Shares Remain Attractive

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Thursday afternoon, insurance giant AIG (click ticker for report: ) reported it swung to a profit for its third quarter. The company earned after-tax operating income of $1.00 per share, compared to a loss of $1.58 per share during the third quarter of 2011 and consensus estimates of $0.86 per share. Equally impressive, book value increased 10% sequentially to $61.49 per share. However, the US Treasury’s 15.9% stake in the company continues to weigh on the firm’s stock price performance, as the timing of share sales remains uncertain. Regardless, AIG’s operating performance is far more important to the company’s long-term return outlook than US Treasury sales, in our view. Performance, though relatively strong based on headlines numbers, was a mixed … Read more

Downstream Profits Alleviate E&P Weakness at Exxon Mobil

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Diversified oil giant Exxon Mobil (click ticker for report: ) reported weak third quarter results Thursday morning. The firm saw revenue decline 7% year-over-year to $115.7 billion, which was slightly better than consensus expectations. Earnings per share fell just 2% year-over-year to $2.09, which also exceeded consensus estimates. Exxon’s third quarter reflected the divergence between E&P (exploration & production) versus downstream refining. However, unlike ConocoPhillips (click ticker for report: ), which spun-off Phillips 66 (click ticker for report: ), Exxon owns both businesses, thus allowing this quarter’s weakness in E&P to be offset by downstream operations. E&P (also known as upstream) earnings fell 29% year-over-year to $5.9 billion due to waning oil and gas production, which fell 7.5%. Chemical earnings … Read more

Priceline Posts Fantastic Third-Quarter Results

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Online travel service and hotel reservations firm Priceline (click ticker for report: ) reported fantastic third-quarter results Thursday that showed solid gross travel bookings expansion and better-than-expected performance in Europe. Our fair value estimate remains unchanged. The company’s revenue advanced 17.4% from the year-ago period thanks to solid performance in its international operations, where sales grew 42% on a local currency basis. Third-quarter travel bookings increased 25.2% and 33.8% on a local currency basis from the same period a year ago. Image Source: Priceline Priceline’s operating income jumped 22.6% and GAAP earnings per share increased over 27% during the period. On a non-GAAP basis, earnings per share increased roughly 25% from last year’s quarter, to $12.40, better than consensus expectations of … Read more

Chevron Reports Difficult Third-Quarter Results But We Like Its Cash Flow Profile

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Chevron (click ticker for report: ) reported lower revenue and earnings in its third quarter Friday. Sales and other operating revenue fell roughly $5 billion, while net income dropped about $2.5 billion (or about 33%) from the same period a year ago. Both its upstream and downstream operations suffered as a result of difficult year-over-year comparisons, scheduled maintenance downtime, and negative foreign currency movements. We don’t expect to make a material change to our fair value estimate, however. The firm’s global net oil-equivalent production was 2.52 million barrels per day in the quarter, down from 2.6 million barrels per day in the year-ago period. Planned maintenance downtime, expected field declines, and shut-ins of the Frade Field in Brazil and in … Read more

Starbucks Posts Solid Fiscal Fourth-Quarter Results on Strong Comparable Store Sales Expansion

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On Thursday, Starbucks (click ticker for report: ) reported solid fiscal fourth-quarter results that showed strong comparable store sales growth and impressive profitability gains. The firm also announced a 24% increase in its dividend, but its projected 1.6% dividend yield is still too minute to consider the company for addition to the portfolio of our Dividend Growth Newsletter. We don’t expect any change to our fair value estimate to be material. The coffee giant’s revenue advanced 11% thanks to global comparable sales growth of 6%, comprising of 5 percentage points of higher traffic and the balance coming from an increase in the average ticket. The firm’s Americas growth was strong on moderately better pricing trends compared to consolidated performance, revealing the resiliency … Read more

Waste Management and Republic Services Post Poor Third-Quarter Results

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Waste Management (click ticker for report: ) and Republic Services (click ticker for report: ) posted weak third-quarter results this week. We’re taking a closer look at our valuation models for both garbage haulers. Waste Management continues to restructure its operations to address its cost structure, while Republic Services just announced a restructuring plan of its own during the third quarter. Both continue to revise down their respective earnings outlooks as a result of weak recycling commodity pricing, which is overwhelming their modest core pricing strength. Volume trends have also been lackluster, though the impact of Hurricane Sandy may provide a moderate boost in coming quarters. Specifically, Waste Management cut its 2012 earnings guidance to the range of $2.08-$2.13 per … Read more

October Auto Sales Were a Tad Light; We’re Not Worried

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After Ford (click ticker for report: ) and General Motors (click ticker for report: ) posted fantastic third quarter results, industry-wide auto sales came in slightly lighter than expected in October, as many cite Hurricane Sandy as hurting industry-wide unit sales by as many as 300,000 units. Let’s take a look at a few companies. Ford Best Ideas Newsletter holding Ford announced an excellent quarter on Tuesday, and shares have rallied since trading resumed Wednesday. The firm’s October results were decent, with sales growing 0.4% year-over-year (retail up 2%), but they came in below consensus estimates of 3.5% expansion. More pressing, Alan Mulally confirmed that he will remain CEO until “at least” 2014, but President Mark Fields was promoted to … Read more

Valuentum’s November Edition of Its Dividend Growth Newsletter!

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Since the previous edition of our Dividend Growth Newsletter, we received some welcome news from a couple constituents in our portfolio (please see page 5). Oil and gas pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Partners (KMP) raised its distribution 9% from the year-ago period, marking the 45th increase since current management took over in 1997. Phillips 66 (PSX), which we received after ConocoPhillips spun off its refining operations earlier this year, upped its dividend by an impressive 25%. Our Valuentum Dividend Cushion™ process continues to identify firms that are poised to raise their payouts significantly, while warning investors in advance of dividend cuts (as in SuperValu’s case). We remain on track to achieve our goal of generating a high-single-digit return for the … Read more