Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Aug 27, 2022

Video: We Expect A Huge Market Flush! Looking to "Raise" Incremental Cash
Video: Valuentum's Brian Nelson, CFA, breaks down the current market environment, highlighting reasons for the poor market sentiment driven by "tapped out" consumers and investors alike. He expects a big market "flush," and a challenging next couple years but remains a big fan of stocks for the long haul. Valuentum continues to seek to "raise" incremental cash in the simulated newsletter portfolios as it prepares to weather the storm. Video length: ~10 minutes.

Aug 19, 2022

Nelson: The 16 Most Important Steps To Understand The Stock Market
Image Source: Tim Green. We outline the '16 Most Important Steps to Understand the Stock Market.' We think it's important to take a read of these key stock market tenets when things are going great -- and perhaps even more important when things aren't going your way. This continues to be a working document.

Jul 11, 2022

Valuentum's Unmatched Product Suite
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. and Alphabet Inc. remain two of the most underpriced ideas on the market today, and we remain huge fans of their tremendous long-term investment prospects.

Jul 4, 2022

Nelson: I Have Been Wrong About the Prospect of Near-Term Inflationary-Driven Earnings Tailwinds
"Though I have been clearly wrong on my near-term thesis for inflation-driven earnings expansion, we still did great sorting through investment idea considerations. Through late June, for example, the simulated Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio has generated 4-5 percentage points of alpha relative to the S&P 500, as measured by the SPY. The simulated Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio is down only modestly this year, also performing better than traditional benchmarks. The simulated High Yield Dividend Newsletter is generating “alpha” against comparable benchmarks, and the Exclusive publication continues to deliver, with both capital appreciation ideas and short idea considerations generating fantastic success rates. ESG and options-idea generation have also been great. With all this being said, in the long run, I believe nominal earnings will expand rapidly from 2021 levels, which is why I remain bullish on stocks. I believe markets tend to overestimate earnings in the near term and underestimate them in the long run. The intelligent investor knows, too, that the most money is made during recessions and bear markets, where steady reinvestment and dollar cost averaging help to better position portfolios for higher returns over the longer run. The newsletter portfolios are well-positioned for continued “outperformance,” in our view, and while we may make a few tweaks to them, we’re not making any material changes at this time."

Jun 2, 2022

Shares of Top Biotech Idea Vertex Pharma Volatile But Company Fundamentals Sound
Image Shown: Shares of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc have surged higher during the past year. We continue to like the biotech firm in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. The biopharmaceutical space is full of attractive investment opportunities, though early-stage firms without commercialized drug portfolios are quite risky investments given their lack of meaningful revenues and sizable negative cash flows. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, has a commercialized portfolio of therapeutics that treat cystic fibrosis (‘CF’) which enables the biotech firm to generate substantial revenues and cash flows. We include Vertex Pharma as an idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio.

May 23, 2022

PRESENTATION: AAII Greensboro May Program -- The Ultimate Dividend Growth Investing Tool
PRESENTATION: AAII Greensboro May Program -- The Ultimate Dividend Growth Investing Tool.

Apr 21, 2022

Dividend Growth Idea UnitedHealth Group Boosts Guidance
Image Shown: Dividend growth idea UnitedHealth Group Inc has seen its share price surge higher over the past year. One of our favorite dividend growth ideas is UnitedHealth Group. The company runs an expansive portfolio of domestic health care operations including large health insurance businesses, pharmacy benefits managers (‘PBMs’) and specialty pharmacy businesses, outpatient surgical centers, in-home health care service providers, analytical services, and services geared towards administrative activities, among many other operations involving health care. Its four business reporting segments are Optum Health (national health care delivery platform), Optum Insight (services, analytics, and platforms aimed at generating insights and efficiencies while improving patient outcomes), Optum Rx (portfolio of pharmacy care services), and UnitedHealthcare (portfolio of health insurance businesses). Shares of UNH yield ~1.1% as of this writing.

Apr 20, 2022

Shares of Newsletter Portfolio Idea Johnson & Johnson Off to the Races!
Image Shown: Shares of Johnson & Johnson, an idea in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios, are shifting higher. On April 19, Johnson & Johnson reported first-quarter earnings for 2022 that missed consensus top-line estimates but beat consensus bottom-line estimates. The company lowered its guidance for 2022, but shares of JNJ rallied during regular trading hours that day as its underlying performance remains strong. J&J suspended guidance for its coronavirus ('COVID-19') vaccine sales, though we want to stress that these sales were not needle-moving as it concerns our estimate of the company’s fair value. The firm was selling the vaccines on a not-for-profit basis and didn’t intend to change that until the end of this year or until 2023 (or potentially never). J&J also pushed through a 7% sequential increase in its dividend on April 19, with 2022 marking its 60th consecutive year of payout increases, earning the firm the coveted Dividend Aristocrat status. We include shares of JNJ in both the Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios. Shares of JNJ yield ~2.5% as of this writing. Johnson & Johnson’s business model is in the process of getting fundamentally altered due to the planned separation of its consumer health business from its pharmaceutical and medical devices operations, which is expected to occur within less than two years. As we have noted in the past, J&J is also steadily working on putting its various legal issues behind it, though its planned business separation along with its legal issues fundamentally altered its proposition as a straightforward dividend growth opportunity. We continue to like J&J in our newsletter portfolios, though we are keeping a close eye on how its business separation strategy will ultimately pan out. Let's dig into the details in this article.

Apr 7, 2022

Best Biotech Idea Vertex Pharma Outperforming Struggling Peers, Its New Treatment for Pain a Game Changer in the Fight Against the Opioid Epidemic
Image: Vertex Pharma has advanced more than 18% since the beginning of 2021, trouncing the performance of the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF by an incredible margin. The outperformance gap stands at more than 50+ percentage points at the time of this writing. We were blown away by the phase II results released March 31 at Vertex Pharma for its non-opioid, non-addictive pain killer, the NaV1.8 inhibitor VX-548, and we think the molecule has the potential to provide a solution to the widespread opioid crisis in a meaningful way. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tens of thousands of deaths each year are “attributed to overdosing on synthetic opioids.” The company’s phase II results for VX-548 provide “proof of concept” in order to push the study to more advanced studies, and we are highly encouraged. We also note that the long-term revenue and earnings potential for VX-548 is not included in our valuation model for Vertex Pharma and would offer pure incremental upside to our fair value estimate. VX-548 could be a game-changer in the fight against the opioid epidemic, in our view.

Feb 5, 2022

Our Thoughts on Big Pharma’s Calendar Fourth Quarter Earnings Reports
Image Source: Merck & Company Inc – Fourth Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation. We include the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF in the Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios to gain broad exposure to the health care sector. Instead of betting on one entity's pipeline (which could be hit or miss), we like the exposure to lots and lots of "shots on goal" when it comes to the vast collective pipeline in the XLV ETF. We wrote up the calendar fourth-quarter results of the top two weightings in the XLV ETF, United Health and Johnson & Johnson recently. We continue to like UNH a lot, but JNJ's story has become a lot more complicated for dividend growth investors in recent months. Let's have a look at some of the other key holdings in the XLV ETF, however. We'll cover the calendar fourth-quarter earnings reports from four heavyweights in the pharmaceutical arena (ABBV, GILD, LLY, and MRK). Additionally, we'll cover the performance of some of their top-selling treatments that have already received regulatory approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (‘FDA’) and key clinical trials that could produce new commercial growth opportunities. The coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic has become more manageable during the past year or so after several vaccines and therapeutics for the virus were discovered in record time. While headwinds from the pandemic remain, the health care sector is steadily recovering and this space is home to plenty of attractive opportunities for capital appreciation and income seeking investors. XLV, UNH, JNJ, and VRTX are a few that we like a lot.