Valuentum Economic Castleâ„¢ Rating Update

Read: Keeping the Horse Before the Cart: Valuentum’s Economic Castle™ Rating The Economic Castle Focuses on the Magnitude of Economic Value Creation The Valuentum Economic Castle™ rating is an enhancement of the competitive advantage framework (commonly known as economic moat analysis) that has become widespread and ubiquitous within the investing world. Whereas an economic moat framework evaluates a firm on the basis of the sustainability and durability of its competitive advantages, Valuentum’s Economic Castle™ rating evaluates a firm on the basis of the firm’s future economic profit spread (return on invested capital less its weighted average cost of capital). The companies with the strongest Valuentum Economic Castle™ ratings are poised to generate the most economic value for shareholders in the … Read more

Baidu Dollars Likely Shifting to Alibaba Near Term; Raising Our Fair Value of Yahoo

Valuentum previewed the valuation of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in October 2013. Today, we’ve updated our analysis of the company in the table below and have raised our intrinsic value estimate to approximately $100 billion from $75 billion previously. This revision has had a relatively large per-share upward re-valuation of the shares of 24%-owner Yahoo (YHOO) in its 16-page report. Softbank, which owns more than 35% of Alibaba, will also see a more optimistic slant towards its own valuation in coming periods. Our updated valuation details of Alibaba are shown below. The previous table had a typo regarding the long-term growth rate of the perpetuity calculation, which has been corrected in the table above. Though we think our forecasts are … Read more

I’d rather lose half of my clients than lose half of my clients’ money.

“I’d rather lose half of my clients than lose half of my clients’ money.” – Jean-Marie Eveillard (First Eagle Global) Josh Brown, who runs the blog The Reformed Broker, wrote an excellent piece today on how irrational clients and customers can bring down even the best of money managers. We think it’s a very informative read. Pasted below is an excerpt from the intro, accompanied by the list of the top 25 most overvalued stocks on the market today on the basis of our research. There is a link to continue reading the piece from Josh at the bottom of the table, too.  Something tells me there are some serious blow-ups on the horizon for professional managers. I feel this … Read more

Plenty of Growth Ahead for Chinese Internet Companies

The Chinese Internet space has been a fantastic growth story through the course of 2013. Shares of Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio holding Baidu (click ticker for report: ), Qihoo (QIHU), Sohu.com (click ticker for report: ), and Tencent (click ticker for report: ) are all up at least 50% year-to-date. What do all of these companies have in common? They all have exposure to China’s rapidly-growing Internet usage as well as the country’s Internet search market. Search growth in China is phenomenal. Image Source: China Internet Watch In the second quarter of 2013, the value of the Chinese search market surged approximately 35% year-over-year (shown above), lapping a very robust growth rate well above 50% during the same period of 2012. Chinese search … Read more