VDC

Earnings Roundup: Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark

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We love the business models of consumer staples, but recent fundamental performance hasn’t been great, and valuations are a bit stretched. Unilever is blaming natural disasters in the US for its underlying sales growth shortfalls, Procter & Gamble has to deliver now that it defeated Nelson Peltz, and Kimberly-Clark’s meager top-line expansion may not support its valuation. A good business does not always make a good stock. By Brian Nelson, CFA Consumer staples stocks (VDC, FSTA, XLP) are fundamentally-sound entities that sell everyday items that consumers need regardless of the ups and downs of the economic cycle. That makes their business models quite resilient through thick and thin, but it also means that many are household companies that everybody knows … Read more

The Wisdom of Oaktree’s Howard Marks

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Image Source: emmolos The latest memo from Oaktree’s Howard Marks here should be read and then read again. The section on passive investing is an absolute treasure. “Passive investing is done in vehicles that make no judgments about the soundness of companies and the fairness of prices.  More than $1 billion is flowing daily to “passive managers” (there’s an oxymoron for you) who buy regardless of price.  I’ve always viewed index funds as “freeloaders” who make use of the consensus decisions of active investors for free.  How comfortable can investors be these days, now that fewer and fewer active decisions are being made?” — Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Financial Tech Services: ACIW, EPAY, FDC, FIS, FISV, FLT, GPN, MA, MELI, … Read more

Adviser Fees on Indexed Assets Can Eat Up Your Nest Egg?

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Indexing sounds like an easy way to track the market’s performance, but if your indexed assets are held in financial advisors’ accounts, it can come with a big cost: significant underperformance. Over 20 years, we estimate in this hypothetical example that the cumulative cost as a result of a 1% annual financial advisor fee on indexed assets can amount to as much as 66% of a saver’s initial investment — just for holding an index fund. Please be careful out there!

Systemic Risk in These Frothy Times

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Let’s talk about index investing, market valuations, and mention how a few ideas in the Best Ideas Newsletter are doing. By Brian Nelson, CFA For most investors during most parts of the economic cycle, index investing (VOO), or holding a broad basket of stocks that approximate the returns of a large market index may make a lot of sense. I have always said this from the very beginning: Individual stock selection is not for everyone. What may not be well-known, however, is that index funds have experienced multi-year periods of both outperformance and underperformance relative to actively-managed funds since the dawning of the very first index fund many decades ago. I’m worried that some investors today may not have this … Read more

Podcast: Markets In Motion

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The Valuentum analyst team covers market moving information that is top of mind from consumer staples valuations, the political election cycle, utility valuations, energy resource pricing, biotech considerations, Brexit uncertainty and beyond. ~8 minutes. Tickerized for several consumer staples entities and ETFs, several companies in the energy sector, emerging market vehicles and more.

What Was Once Resistance Is Now Support

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The S&P 500 (SPY) hit another new high February 13 after basing for much of the past few months. What once was resistance is now support. We find the resilience of the equity markets almost hard-to-believe. Geopolitical uncertainty, threats of an interest rate hike, foreign currency headwinds, slowing growth in the US and China, damage across the energy sector (XLE) and many other commodities, and the list goes on and on… Yet, the broader equity markets continue to notch new highs…this time on news of a whopping 0.3% growth in the Eurozone economy for the fourth quarter. Yes, you read that correctly: 30 basis points, three tenths of one percent, of expansion in a quarter that’s already in the past. … Read more

Coca-Cola Continues to Grow Steadily

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Global beverage giant Coca-Cola (click ticker for report: ) reported solid third-quarter results Tuesday morning. The soda giant saw revenues increase 1% (6% currency neutral) year-over-year to $12.3 billion, roughly in-line with consensus expectations. Comparable earnings fell 2% year-over-year to $0.51 per share, also in-line with consensus estimates. Not surprisingly, North America remained relatively strong, with volumes growing 2% year-over-year during the quarter and revenues up 5% year-over-year. With obesity backlash en vogue, the segment leaders included Coke Zero (up 9%), Seagram (up 11%), juices (up 6%), and Powerade, which grew 9%. We expect these trends to continue, and we wouldn’t be too shocked to see Coke Zero eventually become one of Coca-Cola’s top North American products, in the realm … Read more

Philip Morris’ Transformation Continues

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Image Shown: Philip Morris International Inc’s IQOS offering, a heated tobacco unit product (also classified as a “reduced risk product” by the company) that seeks to replicate the experience of traditional cigarettes for smokers in a bid to get those users to switch over to an offering the company views as relatively “safer,” has continued to post solid user base growth of late. We are big fans of Philip Morris and its ongoing transformation and include shares of PM as an idea in the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio. Image Source: Philip Morris International Inc – Second Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan On July 20, the company behind the Marlboro cigarette brand (excluding sales of the … Read more