Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Oct 23, 2024

Boeing Burning Through Cash
Image: Boeing’s shares have seen better days. The big red flag with Boeing is its cash flow performance. The aerospace giant burned through $1.3 billion in operating cash flow in the third quarter due to lower commercial widebody deliveries and unfavorable working capital timing, and after factoring in capital spending of $611 million in the period, cash burn in terms of negative free cash flow was roughly $2 billion in the quarter. Through the first nine months of the year, Boeing has burned through over $10.2 billion in free cash flow. Boeing’s balance sheet isn’t as strong as it once was either, with $10.5 billion in cash and marketable securities versus consolidated debt of $57.7 billion. Inventories swelled to $83.3 billion at the end of its September quarter versus $79.7 billion at the end of last year. The company does have $20 billion undrawn on its credit facilities, however. We don’t think Boeing is a top idea for investors, but we do like its total company backlog of $510.5 billion, which includes over 5,400 commercial airplanes. We prefer Honeywell as our top aerospace idea and Lockheed Martin as our top defense play.

Aug 9, 2024

Paper: Value and Momentum Within Stocks, Too
Abstract: This paper strives to advance the field of finance in four ways: 1) it extends the theory of the “The Arithmetic of Active Management” to the investor level; 2) it addresses certain data problems of factor-based methods, namely with respect to value and book-to-market ratios, while introducing price-to-fair-value ratios in a factor-based approach; 3) it may lay the foundation for academic literature regarding the Valuentum, the value-timing, and ultra-momentum factors; and 4) it walks through the potential relative outperformance that may be harvested at the intersection of relevant, unique and compensated factors within individual stocks.

Apr 2, 2024

RTX Ends Year with Record Backlog, Shares Yield ~2.4%
Image Source: RTX. With the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas wars still raging, geopolitical tensions continue to be elevated, playing into the hands of defense contracts such as RTX. With an attractive commercial portfolio to boot, RTX is poised to continue to capitalize on both original equipment and higher-margin after-market commercial aerospace sales, too. We’re fans of RTX, and the firm looks to be moving past a costly recall associated with its Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines. Shares yield ~2.4% at this time.

Mar 27, 2024

Boeing Shakes Up Executive Team
Image Source: Kanesue. We like the shake-up in the executive suite at Boeing, and while there is much work to do to get Boeing back on track to improve relations with the public regarding the safety of their planes following a number of incidents the past few years, we're optimistic the changes will be a means to that end. Boeing continues to benefit from its oligopolistic position in the aircraft making industry, and its backlog of unfulfilled deliveries remains robust. We're not changing our fair value estimate of Boeing as a result of the management shakeup, but we don't have any plans of adding Boeing to any newsletter portfolio at this time either.

Oct 23, 2023

Lockheed Martin Represents Key Aerospace & Defense Exposure
On October 17, Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio holding Lockheed Martin reported decent third-quarter 2023 results with the firm growing revenue roughly 1.8% on a year-over-year basis, and the firm beating the consensus estimate for non-GAAP diluted earnings per share. We like Lockheed as our aerospace and defense exposure more than Boeing, given the latter’s long list of troubles and deteriorated financial health, punctuated in part by troubles during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of life related to its 737 MAX platform. We think Lockheed offers a much better risk/reward and a healthy dividend to boot. Lockheed Martin yields ~2.8% at the time of this writing.

Jan 26, 2023

Market-Cap Weighted S&P 500 Breaks Out; Have We Already Seen the Bottom?
Image: The market-cap weighted S&P 500 (SPY) has broken through its downtrend. The markets could be headed meaningfully higher. Image Source: TradingView. The market-cap weighted S&P 500 has broken out of the technical downtrend that defined 2022 following the equal-weight breakout that preceded it. The pace of inflation looks like it peaked in June 2022, and while myriad risks to both the economy and stock market remain, fourth-quarter 2022 earnings season is shaping up better than feared. We maintain our view that the markets remain at critical technical levels, and we continue to monitor earnings season and technical developments closely.

Dec 29, 2022

Dividend Growth Giant Lockheed Martin’s Share Price Surges 35%+ in 2022
Image: Lockheed Martin’s shares have been bolstered by a robust share buyback program during the fourth quarter of 2022. Though we still expect shares to be resilient, some technical consolidation may be necessary. Image Source: TradingView. Lockheed Martin’s aggressive buybacks during the fourth quarter of 2022 may have driven its price up to lofty levels, but we continue to like shares in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio heading into 2023. The company’s free cash flow generation remains robust, its backlog has firmed up, and geopolitical tensions around the globe continue to intensify. The company’s equity yields ~2.5% at the time of this writing.

Nov 7, 2022

We’ve Updated Our Fair Value Estimate of Boeing; Has Aerospace Bottomed?
Image: Boeing is expecting to turn the corner with respect to positive free cash flow in 2022 and grow it to ~$10 billion annually by 2025/2026. We think this is achievable. Image Source: Boeing. The breakout of COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the airline business and the commercial aircraft-making business alike. But has the commercial aerospace industry finally bottomed?

Apr 26, 2022

Dividend Growth Idea Lockheed Martin Doing Its Best to Arm Western Allies
Image Shown: Dividend growth idea Lockheed Martin Corporation is very shareholder friendly. The defense contractor is doing its best to arm Ukraine and other Western allies during these difficult times. Image Source: Lockheed Martin Corporation – First Quarter of Fiscal 2022 IR Earnings Presentation. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and simmering geopolitical tensions in East Asia between Western aligned nations and China over Taiwan and other issues have created a backdrop that is conducive to significant increases in national defense spending. Though we hope peace prevails soon, the realities on the ground in Ukraine and elsewhere call for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (‘NATO’) member nations and other Western aligned nations to ramp up their military budgets to deter future threats and to prepare for worst case scenarios.

Mar 7, 2022

Valuentum Weekly: Outsized Energy Exposure Continues to Buoy Newsletter Portfolios
Image: Light crude oil futures once traded for roughly -$40 (negative $40) during the COVID-19 crisis, but have now rocketed to more than $120 in recent trading. Image Source: TradingView. The S&P 500, as measured by the SPY, is down 9% year-to-date, a modest pullback, in our view, particularly in light of the fantastic performance the past few years. Though not necessarily welcome, a down year every now and then for the broader market indexes and a modest bear market can only be expected, at times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, as measured by the DIA, is down more than 7% year-to-date (not too bad), while the Nasdaq--as measured by the QQQ--and 'disruptive innovation' stocks--as measured by the Ark Innovation ETF--have fallen more than 15% and 36%, respectively, so far this year (data from Seeking Alpha). We like how the simulated newsletter portfolios are positioned. Energy resource prices continue to surge (with WTI crude oil prices skyrocketing north of $120 per barrel at last check), and they are bringing energy equities higher along with them. The simulated Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, simulated Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio, and simulated High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio are all materially overweight energy equities relative to the energy sector’s weighting in the S&P 500, and we expect to maintain such high tactical "exposure." Both the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF and the Vanguard Energy ETF soared to 13-year highs last week. Our favorite energy ideas are the largest two energy majors, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and both have hefty 'weightings' in each of the three aforementioned simulated newsletter portfolios. Russian equities, as measured by the RSX, are down nearly 80% so far this year, and we're pleased to say that we've largely avoided the fall out. We continue to like the broader areas of U.S.-heavy, large cap growth and big cap tech when it comes to long-term secular exposure, and we continue to like energy as a tactical overweight for the foreseeable future across the simulated newsletter portfolios, as much as we did even prior to the huge advance in energy resource prices and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.