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Recent Articles
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JPMorgan Cautious on Geopolitical Tensions and Inflationary Pressures
Apr 12, 2024
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Image Source: Hakan Dahlstrom.
On April 12, JPMorgan reported mixed first-quarter 2024 results. JPMorgan is one of our favorite banks, in part due to strong leadership at the top and solid fortress-like balance sheet. Though we don’t include any individual bank in the newsletter portfolios, we do think the Financial Select Sector SPDR makes sense for diversification reasons, as showcased in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. Shares of JPMorgan yield ~2.4% at the time of this writing.
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Fastenal Puts Up Mixed First Quarter Results
Apr 11, 2024
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Image: Fastenal reported mixed first quarter 2024 results. We like its business model quite a bit.
On April 11, Fastenal Company reported mixed first-quarter fiscal 2024 results with revenue and earnings per share coming in slightly lower than expectations. Net sales advanced 1.9% for the three-month period ending March 31. The company noted that adverse weather impacted sales in its first quarter by about 10 to 30 basis points on a net basis. Operating income nudged lower in the quarter modestly, while net income advanced 0.9% in the period on a year-over-year basis. Diluted earnings per share was roughly flat in the quarter on a year-over-year basis, increasing 0.6% from the same period a year ago. We like Fastenal’s business model quite a bit, and shares yield ~2.1% at the time of this writing.
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Delta Reports Strong March Quarter; Airline Stocks are Too Risky for Our Taste
Apr 10, 2024
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Image Source: Colin Brown.
Delta’s quarter ending in March was solid, and its full year outlook was encouraging. In general, however, we don’t like airline equities. The extreme ticket price transparency creates an ultra-competitive environment, and overcapacity is always a concern. We view airlines as merely trading vehicles on the health of the global economy and the trajectory of crude oil prices. Delta is operating well, but it will never be able to escape the challenges of its industry, and for those reasons we remain on the sidelines with respect to shares.
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How Well Do Enterprise-Cash-Flow-Derived Fair Value Estimates Predict Future Stock Prices? -- And Thoughts on Behavioral Valuation
Apr 10, 2024
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Abstract: This paper attempts to solidify the efficacy of the predictive power of fair value estimates for stocks, as derived by the discounted enterprise cash flow (free cash flow to the firm) process. The piece emphasizes the difference between share prices and estimated fair (intrinsic) values and offers an overview of the discounted enterprise cash flow model, what causes fair value estimates to change, and what drivers may be most important within the context of the discounted enterprise cash flow model. The work examines the importance of both art and science in discounted enterprise cash flow valuation, and introduces the topic of behavioral valuation. An explanation of the methods used in the study include the creation of price-to-fair value comparisons and subsequent share-price performance of companies relative to their respective price-to-fair value ratios. The study in this work measures the predictive power of fair value estimates through eight subsequent time periods, or approximately 3 years. The subsets of data are broken into “undervalued” and “overvalued” stock groupings, and the predictive power of fair value estimates is then evaluated for each category.
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