Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

Symbol Keyword

Aug 27, 2024

Toll Brothers Expects Demand to Remain Solid Into 2025
Image: Toll Brothers stock has done quite well during the past couple years. For its fiscal year 2024 guidance, Toll Brothers expects deliveries of 10,650-10,750 units (was 10,400-10,800) with an average delivered price per home of $975,000. Its adjusted home sales gross margin is targeted at 28.3% for fiscal 2024 (was 28%), while SG&A as a percentage of home sales revenue is expected at 9.4% for the year. Toll Brothers ended its fiscal third quarter with $893.4 million of cash and cash equivalents and $2.8 billion in total debt. Its net debt-to-capital ratio stood at 19.6% at the end of the fiscal third quarter. Though Toll Brothers’ backlog faced declines in its fiscal third quarter, we liked the increased guidance across its key homebuilding metrics.

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.

Jun 18, 2024

Lennar Navigating Fluctuating Interest Rate Environment Well
Image: Lennar has been a strong performer since the beginning of 2023. We liked the quarterly update from Lennar, and while we won’t be adding this homebuilder to any newsletter portfolio, we’re interpreting its performance as another positive data point regarding the macroeconomic environment.

Apr 19, 2024

Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week of April 19
Let's take a look at firms raising/lowering their dividends this week.

Mar 31, 2024

Toll Brothers Notes Strong Start to Spring Selling Season
Toll Brothers raised its full-year fiscal 2024 guidance across key metrics, and the company noted that it has seen a "marked increase in demand coinciding with the start of the spring selling season." Though we don’t include any homebuilder in the simulated newsletter portfolios, it’s good to see things are progressing well at Toll Brothers.

Mar 11, 2024

How Some Members Use Valuentum’s Investment Services
We serve a wide variety of investors, including dividend growth investors, value investors, and pure Valuentum investors, among others. Many different types of investors and professionals use our research and financial analysis in a whole host of applications from individual stock-selection to the evaluation of closed-end funds to an overlay in a money-management setting and beyond. The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio seeks to find stocks that have good value and good momentum characteristics and typically targets capital appreciation potential over a longer-term horizon. The Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio seeks to find underpriced dividend growth gems that generate strong levels of free cash flow and have pristine, fortress balance sheets, translating into excellent Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios. The High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio seeks to find some of the highest-yielding stocks supported by strong credit profiles and solid business models, but not always robust traditional free cash flow. Ideas in this newsletter offer higher-yielding opportunities, but also much higher capital and income risk. We also offer a full suite of products to financial advisers (gold level) that range from a more extensive Excel-based screening tool (the DataScreener) to 'Ideas' and 'Dividend' publications that are released on a quarterly basis. Our research product includes hundreds of stock reports, fair values, fair value ranges, associated commentary, as well as dividend reports with Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios and expected dividend growth rates. Silver and gold-level members can add the Valuentum Exclusive or additional options commentary/ideas to their plans. The Exclusive publication is a part of the institutional (platinum) level membership.

Sep 20, 2023

Fed Rate Decision, UAW Strike Continues, Microsoft Ups Payout
Image Source: Mike Mozart. If you’re thinking like us about the ongoing Fed rate-hiking cycle, you’re probably thinking that perhaps we’ll see another rate hike or two down the road, even if the Fed pauses at today’s September 20 meeting. However, whether the Fed pauses from here on out or executes a couple more hikes, it really shouldn’t matter much to long-term investors. From where we stand, the conversation about interest rates should now be shifting away from worries about elevated inflation to the future positive prospects that correspond to the work that the Fed has already done. With the market-cap weighted S&P 500 just a stone’s throw away from all-time highs, despite aggressive contractionary monetary policy, we believe the market may start to view the existing levels of “high” near-term interest rates as dry powder for the Fed to stimulate the economy in the future, if or when it’s needed. The Fed has now built up a very nice insurance policy with little damage done to the U.S. stock market, and we think equities, particularly the stylistic area of large cap growth, may continue to reward investors as such a positive view is eventually factored in. New highs may once again be in the cards, and we remain bullish on the equity markets today, despite the ominous volatility experienced the past 20+ months.

Jul 14, 2023

Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week of July 14
Let's take a look at firms raising/lowering their dividends this week.

Feb 21, 2023

Home Depot’s Comps, Operating Income Fall in Q4; Hikes Dividend 10%
Image Source: Mike Mozart. On February 21, home improvement retailer Home Depot reported weak fourth quarter 2022 results that showed comparable store sales for the period falling 0.3% and operating income dropping 1.5% from the same period a year ago. Diluted earnings per share advanced 2.8% from last year’s quarter. The company is dealing with a weakened consumer spending environment and difficult comparisons from pandemic-driven demand of a year ago. Home Depot raised its dividend payout to 10%, to $2.09 per share, or $8.36 per share on an annualized basis. That translates into a forward estimated dividend yield of ~2.6%.

Oct 30, 2022

Something New!
Hi everyone: To stay true to our mission, you'll find something new regarding our methodology. In the coming weeks, you'll see this table in our work going forward.