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Hi everyone! — We continue to be huge believers in the concept of enterprise valuation, which emphasizes the key cash-based sources of intrinsic value–net cash on the balance sheet and strong and growing future expected free cash flows. Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) and Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) remain two of the most underpriced ideas on the market today, and we remain huge fans of their tremendous long-term investment prospects. — There are a couple things worth reminding readers, however. A good relevant rule of thumb I learned early in my career working for my first portfolio manager is that a stock’s return in the near term is driven roughly 40% by the market, 30% by the industry it operates in, and 30% … Read more

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

Valuentum’s Dividend Growth Strategy ‘Outperforming’

Image: The Valuentum Dividend Growth strategy has delivered thus far in 2022. With the S&P 500, as measured by the SPY, down 18.1% (negative 18.1%) thus far in 2022 and the S&P Dividend ETF (SDY) down 6.7% (negative 6.7%), the Valuentum dividend growth strategy, as measured by the hypothetical performance of the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio (as shown above), is down an estimated 4.6% (negative 4.6%) so far in 2022, all on a price-only basis. Though two percentage points better than the S&P High Yield Dividend Dividend Aristocrats Index doesn’t seem like much, the large cap tilt of the simulated Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio makes such “outperformance” significant and material. The benefits of a dividend growth strategy, in general, have also … Read more

Albemarle Raises Guidance Twice in One Month!

Image Shown: An overview of Albemarle Corporation’s business profile. We include Albemarle as an idea in our ESG Newsletter portfolio. Image Source: Albemarle Corporation – May 2022 IR Presentation By Callum Turcan When the specialty chemicals company Albemarle Corporation (ALB) published its first quarter 2022 earnings report on May 4, the firm boosted its full-year guidance in a big way. That guidance boost was attributed to outperformance at its lithium operations and to a lesser extent, its bromine operations, which offset major inflationary headwinds facing its refining catalysts operations. In the wake of favorable contract negotiations covering sales of lithium derivatives and related products, Albemarle further boosted its full-year guidance in late May (on May 23). Two favorable guidance increases … Read more

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. This note was emailed to members Sunday, March 6, 2022. Markets   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 … 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

Dividend Growth Stocks Soar!

Dear members: — We’re watching one of the strongest stock market rallies we’ve seen in some time during the trading session December 7. At the time of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 500 points, the S&P is up nearly 100, while the NASDAQ is up a tremendous 440+. We continue to like what we see. — Almost every idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio is up today, led by Chipotle (CMG) +5.9%, PayPal (PYPL) +3.3%, Domino’s (DPZ) +3.1%, Apple (AAPL) +2.9% and Alphabet (GOOG) +2.9%. — We’re loving the moves by Valuentum-style stocks today, and we’re even more excited to report that every idea in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio is advancing today, as shown below. We know … 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

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 … Read more

Newmont’s Third Quarter Earnings Disappoints Though Management Remains Very Shareholder Friendly

Image Shown: Though Newmont Corporation’s third quarter earnings disappointed, the gold miner remains very shareholder friendly. Image Source: Newmont Corporation – Third Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan One of our favorite mining plays is the gold miner Newmont Corporation (NEM), which has producing assets around the world including in Australia (EWA), Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Mexico (EWW), Peru, Suriname, Canada (EWC), and the US. Newmont has a robust development pipeline in those countries via new producing mines and expansion projects (roughly 88% of Newmont’s reserves are in the Americas and Australia), along with potential upside in Japan, Ethiopia, Colombia, and elsewhere. The company’s management team is incredibly shareholder friendly (its quarterly payout has grown from … Read more