Nelson: I Have Been Wrong About the Prospect of Near-Term Inflationary-Driven Earnings Tailwinds

Transcript During the past several weeks, we’ve grown increasingly concerned about the health of consumer-tied entities across not only the consumer staples but also the consumer discretionary spaces. Many consumer staples entities, while raising prices, aren’t raising them fast enough to drive operating-income and bottom-line expansion, while many consumer-discretionary companies are facing higher freight and logistics costs and weaker performance in China, perhaps best revealed by Nike’s most recently-reported quarter, where inventory advanced 23% compared to the prior-year period. The tell-tale sign about the health of the consumer may be Amazon (AMZN) Prime Day, which is coming up on July 12-13, but based on many of the reports we’ve monitored this past earnings season, even if sales are strong on … Read more

Dividend Growth Idea Honeywell Capitalizing on Recovering Aerospace Industry

Image Shown: Dividend growth idea Honeywell International Inc increased its full-year guidance for 2022 during its first quarter earnings update. We continue to be big fans of the name as the aerospace industry steadily rebounds. Image Source: Honeywell International Inc – First Quarter of 2022 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan On April 29, Honeywell International Inc (HON) reported first quarter 2022 earnings that beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates as its business continues to rebound from the worst of the coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic. Due to its strong performance, management raised the company’s full-year sales and earnings guidance for 2022 in conjunction with its latest earnings update. We continue to like Honeywell as an idea in the Dividend Growth … Read more

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

Image: Erica Nicol Takeaways: 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 … Read more

Hard Work and the Trust That Binds

Image Source: Terry Johnson By Brian Nelson, CFA We’ll have our traditional Valuentum Weekly email coming out on Sunday, and I’m excited to say our team is putting the finishing touches on our technology industry update, so we’ll have a whole bunch of fresh reports for you to look at Sunday evening/Monday morning. 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 … Read more

Supply Chain Issues Won’t Disrupt Honeywell’s Free Cash Flow Trajectory

Image: Honeywell’s third-quarter 2021 results were mighty impressive. We continue to like what we see at this industrial dividend growth giant. Image Source: Honeywell By Brian Nelson, CFA On Friday, October 22, Dividend Growth Newsletter idea Honeywell (HON) reported mixed third-quarter results where revenue growth (+8.7%) fell just short of expectations, while non-GAAP earnings per share bested the consensus mark by a modest margin. GAAP earnings fell just shy of the market’s views heading into the results, but we continue to like Honeywell as an idea in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio. The quarterly headlines were impressive. Organic sales advanced 8% in the quarter, with expansion in all four of its business segments. The company’s operating margin leapt 180 basis … Read more

Fastenal’s Latest Earnings Update Indicates US Economic Recovery Continues

Image Source: Fastenal Company – Third Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan On October 12, Fastenal Company (FAST) reported third quarter 2021 earnings that beat top-line consensus estimates and matched bottom-line consensus estimates. The company’s latest earnings report reinforces our thesis that the US economy is continuing to recover from the worst of the coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic. In 2020, Fastenal generated over 85% of its total sales in the US. Fastenal provides products and services in the decentralized maintenance, repair & operation (‘MRO’) industry, a space where the company attempts to gain an advantage over distribution by locating its operations as close as possible to the economic point of contract with its customers. Earnings Update Within its … Read more

ICYMI — Video: Exclusive 2020 — Furthering the Financial Discipline

ICYMI — Video: Exclusive 2020 — Furthering the Financial Discipline — — In this 40+ minute video jam-packed with must-watch content, Valuentum’s President Brian Nelson talks about the Theory of Universal Valuation and how his work is furthering the financial discipline. Learn the pitfalls of factor investing and modern portfolio theory and how the efficient markets hypothesis holds little substance in the wake of COVID-19. He’ll talk about which companies Valuentum likes and why, and which areas he’s avoiding. This and more in Valuentum’s 2020 Exclusive conference call.   Note: This video was originally published August 2, 2020.    To watch the video >>   The Theory of Universal Valuation —– Valuentum members have access to our 16-page stock reports, … Read more

ALERT: Raising Cash in the Newsletter Portfolios

January 27, 2021 ALERT: Raising Cash in the Newsletter Portfolios We are raising the cash position in the simulated Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and simulated Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio to 10%-20%. — By Brian Nelson, CFA — Our research has been absolutely fantastic for a long time, but 2020 may have been our best year yet. You can read the 2020 recap here. With the S&P 500 trading within our fair value estimate range of 3,530-3,920 (and the markets rolling over while showing signs of abnormal behavior), we’re raising the cash position in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio to 10%-20%. — For more conservative investors, the high end of this range may even be larger, especially … Read more

Cat or Deere or Neither?

Image: Deere equipment. Deere’s stock has been a high-flyer during the past several months. By Brian Nelson, CFA The SPDR S&P Metals and Mining ETF (XME) measures a broad swath of entities tied to the metals and mining sector, weighting names such as Cleveland Cliffs (CLF), United States Steel (X), Arconic Corp (ARNC), Worthington Industries (WOR), and Freeport-McMoran Inc. (FCX) near the top. It also includes one of our favorite miners, Newmont Corp (NEM), but we generally don’t like the metals and mining space, more generally. Year-to-date, the sector is down ~17% and ~11% during the past 12 months; meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up ~7% year-to-date as it has advanced ~12% during the past 12 months. Metals and mining … Read more

Lockheed Martin Beats Expectations and Raises Guidance Yet Again

Image Shown: Lockheed Martin continued to grow its revenues and segment operating profit in the third quarter of fiscal 2020. Image Source: Lockheed Martin Corporation – Third Quarter of Fiscal 2020 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan On October 20, Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) reported third quarter earnings for fiscal 2020 (period ended September 27, 2020) that beat consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. Lockheed Martin’s GAAP sales rose by 9% year-over-year, hitting $16.5 billion, in part due to the company increasing its F-35 aircraft deliveries to 31 in the fiscal third quarter from 28 in the same quarter last fiscal year. Additionally, all four of Lockheed Martin’s core business segments (‘Aeronautics,’ ‘Missiles and Fire Control,’ ‘Rotary and Mission Systems’ and … Read more