Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Feb 2, 2022

Alphabet and PayPal Report Fourth-Quarter 2021 Results
Video: Valuentum's President Brian Michael Nelson, CFA, walks through the fourth-quarter 2021 results of Alphabet and PayPal.

Jan 28, 2022

Visa Remains One of Our Favorite Ideas
Image Shown: Visa Inc, one of our favorite companies, has been growing robustly of late. Image Source: Visa Inc – First Quarter of Fiscal 2022 IR Earnings Presentation. On January 27, Visa reported first quarter earnings for fiscal 2022 (period ended December 31, 2021) that beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. Shares of V shot higher after its results were made public. We include Visa as a “top-weighted” idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and remain huge fans of the company. Our fair value estimate sits at $255 per share of V, well above where Visa is trading at as of this writing, indicating the payment processing giant has ample room to run higher from current levels. Shares of V yield a modest ~0.7% as of this writing.

Jan 22, 2022

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater
Image: Erica Nicol. Junk tech should continue to collapse, but the stylistic area of large cap growth and big cap tech should remain resilient. Moderately elevated levels of inflation coupled with interest rates hovering at all-time lows isn’t a terrible combination. In fact, it’s not bad at all. The markets are digesting the huge gains of the past few years so far in 2022, and the excesses in ARKK funds, crypto, SPACs, and meme stocks are being rid from the system. Our best ideas are “outperforming” the very benchmarks that are outperforming everyone else. The BIN portfolio is down 6.4% and the DGN portfolio is down 3.2% year to date. The SPY is down 7.8%, while the average investor may be doing much worse. Our timing to exit some very speculative ideas in the Exclusive publication has been impeccable. Beware of “best-fitted” backtest data regarding sequence of return risks. Research is to help you navigate the future, not the past. We remain bullish on stocks for the long haul and grow more and more excited as our simulated newsletter portfolios continue to hold up very well. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Stick with the largest, strongest growth names. We still like large cap growth and big cap tech, though we are tactical overweight in the largest energy stocks (e.g. XOM, CVX, XLE). The latest short idea in the Exclusive publication has collapsed aggressively since highlight January 9, and we remain encouraged by the resilience of ideas in the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio and ESG Newsletter portfolio. Our options idea generation remains ongoing.

Dec 26, 2021

VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 2021 Valuentum Exclusive Call: Inflation Is Good
Valuentum's President Brian Michael Nelson, CFA, explains why investors should not fear inflation, why government agencies such as the Fed and Treasury are prioritizing something other than price discovery, why the 10-year Treasury rate is a must-watch metric, and why Valuentum prefers the moaty constituents in large cap growth due to their net cash rich balance sheets, tremendous free cash flow generating potential, and secular growth tailwinds.

Dec 3, 2021

Valuentum Weekly: Nothing Surprising, Well-Positioned!
Image source: Cathie Wood's flagship ETF, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) has fallen more than 40% from its 52-week high. This is nothing short of a complete and utter bloodbath for such an actively-managed fund, in our view. We note this for context. We're not just talking about one or two or five stocks that are down 40% from 52-week highs, but the *entire fund.* Investors have to keep things in perspective. It's perfectly reasonable within the context of a portfolio to have a few stocks off 10%, 20%, or maybe even 50% from all-time highs. However, if your entire portfolio is down 40%+ from 52-week highs, you're doing something wrong.We're finally getting a shake out of the substantial excesses in the market. Entities such as DocuSign are down more than 40% during the trading session December 3, 2021. All-star funds such as the ARK Innovation ETF with well-known fund managers are down over 40% from all-time highs. It's a bloodbath out there if you're not positioned correctly. I can only imagine the sheer panic that's going on right now. It's laughable, but we sometimes get flak if we have one or two or five companies in a couple portfolios of 20-40 stocks that trail the index. My goodness, what must these investors then be saying to fund managers who are down 40%+ from 52-week highs, and whose funds are down 20%-30% on the year when the S&P 500 is up over 20%. It's clear that Valuentum customers demand a lot more from us than even the best, highest-profile managers out there, and we appreciate that. Thank you. A lot of the traditional IBD and Motley Fool stocks look to be stumbling as well. But we're sitting pretty at Valuentum, and here's why.

Nov 22, 2021

ICYMI: The PayPal Wave Recedes, We Still Like Shares
Image Source: PayPal. We knew something wasn’t quite lining up at digital-payments provider PayPal when the rumor mill started to turn with reports it was interested in scooping up Pinterest for a pretty penny. PayPal has since put to rest rumors about buying Pinterest, but it left investors with a sour outlook when it issued third-quarter results November 8. Though the market wasn’t happy with the forecast for the fourth quarter of 2021 and into 2022, the company continues to grow revenue at a robust pace, and we expect several key initiatives to drive sustainable top-line expansion for many years to come. Our fair value estimate stands north of $270 per share.

Nov 15, 2021

Hut 8 Mining Is an Interesting Play on Cryptocurrencies
Image Source: Hut 8 Mining Corporation – November 2021 IR Presentation. Executive Summary: We are intrigued by Hut 8 Mining’s business model. By growing its bitcoin balance over time and covering its operating expenses by lending out its bitcoin hoard, generating so-called fiat yield, Hut 8 Mining is effectively a bet that a combination of growth in the price of bitcoin and growth in its bitcoin hoard will provide a major boost to its net asset value (‘NAV’) over time. Should the price of bitcoin tank, however, that would weigh negatively on its business, though things would likely not be as bad as it first appears given that Hut 8 Mining is set up to make money in almost every bitcoin pricing environment. As long as there is investor demand out there to borrow its bitcoins, and that broad interest in cryptocurrencies holds up well going forward, Hut 8 Mining should be able to continue growing its revenue as it grows the amount of bitcoin it can lend out on average per quarter. Obviously, of course, the firm would do better if the price of bitcoin stays the same (currently at roughly USD$64,700 for one bitcoin as of this writing) or increases. From our perspective, Hut 8 Mining is better positioned to capitalize on the cryptocurrency craze, in our view, than many of the other firms out there that are mining and continuously selling off their bitcoin holdings or actively buying bitcoin on the open market seeking to flip those alternative digital assets for a profit down the road (the “greater fool theory” in action). We are keeping an eye on Hut 8 Mining, though in this particular case, we must caution that the intrinsic value of alternative digital currencies like bitcoin is zero. The value is entirely in the eyes of the beholder.

Nov 12, 2021

Hard Work and the Trust That Binds
Image: Terry Johnson. It’s easy to forget how much we’ve been through the past two years. Often, we forget how helpful the warning that markets were going to crash was the weekend before they did on February 22, 2020, “Is a Stock Market Crash Coming? – Coronavirus Update and P/E Ratios,” how we thought dollar-cost-averaging made sense at the bottom in March 2020, and how we went “all-in” in April 29, 2020, “ALERT: Going to “Fully Invested” – The Fed and Treasury Have Your Back,” when we saw the writing was on the wall for this blow off top. If nothing else, these three moves alone during the past couple years have paid for a lifetime of subscriptions.

Nov 3, 2021

Large Cap Growth Has More Room To Run
“The stylistic area of large cap growth has been one of our favorite areas because of the strong net cash rich, free cash flow generating, secular growth powerhouses that make up much of the space. The image is a rundown of the key Valuentum statistics for the top 15 holdings of the Schwab U.S. Large Cap Growth ETF (SCHG). We believe where large cap growth goes, so does the broader market, considering the hefty weightings of some of these stocks in other broad-based indices. Based on the high end of our fair value estimate range for this group of bellwethers, the broader U.S. markets still have room to run, to the tune of 7%+, despite the many highs already reached during 2021. Though traditional valuation multiples may seem stretched by most measures, many market bellwethers have huge net cash positions and tremendous free cash flow growth potential. We expect the equity markets to continue to be led by large cap growth.” – Brian Nelson, CFA

Nov 1, 2021

FinTech Stocks Still Attractive, Market Overreacting to Visa’s Cross-Border Travel Outlook
Image: Visa continues to rake in the free cash flow. Though its outlook is clouded somewhat by recovering cross-border travel transaction volumes, we still like its asset-light, free-cash-flow rich business model. Cryptocurrency trading is all the rage these days, but when it comes down to it, the average consumer isn’t using crypto to pay for everyday goods and services. We believe fintech is a great way to play the firm foundations of asset-light, free-cash-flow generating entities that are exposed to crypto adoption but not pure plays to crypto’s success, which is far from guaranteed. Cloudy outlooks from Visa and Mastercard regarding cross-border travel activity have many fintech investors somewhat cautious heading into 2022, but we couldn’t be bigger fans of the group. Visa and PayPal remain two of our favorite fintech ideas.