Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Mar 11, 2024

How Some Members Use Valuentum’s Investment Services
We serve a wide variety of investors, including dividend growth investors, value investors, and pure Valuentum investors, among others. Many different types of investors and professionals use our research and financial analysis in a whole host of applications from individual stock-selection to the evaluation of closed-end funds to an overlay in a money-management setting and beyond. The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio seeks to find stocks that have good value and good momentum characteristics and typically targets capital appreciation potential over a longer-term horizon. The Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio seeks to find underpriced dividend growth gems that generate strong levels of free cash flow and have pristine, fortress balance sheets, translating into excellent Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios. The High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio seeks to find some of the highest-yielding stocks supported by strong credit profiles and solid business models, but not always robust traditional free cash flow. Ideas in this newsletter offer higher-yielding opportunities, but also much higher capital and income risk. We also offer a full suite of products to financial advisers (gold level) that range from a more extensive Excel-based screening tool (the DataScreener) to 'Ideas' and 'Dividend' publications that are released on a quarterly basis. Our research product includes hundreds of stock reports, fair values, fair value ranges, associated commentary, as well as dividend reports with Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios and expected dividend growth rates. Silver and gold-level members can add the Valuentum Exclusive or additional options commentary/ideas to their plans. The Exclusive publication is a part of the institutional (platinum) level membership.

Nov 1, 2023

Caterpillar's Pricing Power Remains Phenomenal
Image: Price realization remains a key driver behind Caterpillar’s strong performance. On October 31, Caterpillar reported better-than-expected third-quarter results, with revenue advancing 12% and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share handily beating the consensus forecast. Caterpillar continues to benefit from significant pricing power, but the firm is also experiencing volume increases. The firm's adjusted operating profit margin expanded to 20.8% in the third quarter compared to 16.5% for the third quarter of 2022. Caterpillar ended the third quarter with $6.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents, short-term borrowings of ~$4.2 billion, and long-term debt of ~$1 billion and ~$7.6 billion in its ‘Machinery, Energy & Transportation’ and ‘Financial Products’ divisions, respectively. Its balance sheet, while not showcasing a net cash position, remains very healthy, in our view, especially in the context of its free cash flow generation. Through the first nine months of 2023, the maker of mining and construction equipment’s cash flow from operations soared to ~$8.9 billion, as it shelled out just ~$1.06 billion in capital expenditures, a number that excludes equipment leased to others (~$1.2 billion). Free cash flow generation at the firm remains excellent, and we like that it continues to focus on dividend growth. We continue to like the pricing power witnessed within Caterpillar’s operations of late, and we’re sticking with our above-market $262 fair value estimate for now.

May 30, 2023

Paper: Value and Momentum Within Stocks, Too
Abstract: This paper strives to advance the field of finance in four ways: 1) it extends the theory of the “The Arithmetic of Active Management” to the investor level; 2) it addresses certain data problems of factor-based methods, namely with respect to value and book-to-market ratios, while introducing price-to-fair-value ratios in a factor-based approach; 3) it may lay the foundation for academic literature regarding the Valuentum, the value-timing, and ultra-momentum factors; and 4) it walks through the potential relative outperformance that may be harvested at the intersection of relevant, unique and compensated factors within individual stocks.

Dec 24, 2022

Raising Our Fair Value Estimate of Dividend Aristocrat Caterpillar
Image: Caterpillar’s financial momentum is impressive. Image Source: Caterpillar. Things are looking good for Caterpillar, and the company’s free cash flow strength continues to support its payout and Dividend Aristocrat status. Caterpillar’s results are cyclical and exhibit operating leverage, which cuts both ways, but the firm’s pricing power is working wonders on its financials at the moment. Higher dealer inventories due in part to timing and labor shortages, foreign currency headwinds, and weakening dynamics in the residential construction market and in Europe and China are concerns, but the company’s strong performance warrants a fair value estimate increase, in our view. Though we like Caterpillar quite a bit, we’re not looking to add shares to any simulated newsletter portfolio at this time, however.

Nov 16, 2022

Efficacy of the Dividend Cushion Ratio
The Dividend Cushion ratio is one of the most powerful financial tools an income or dividend growth investor can use in conjunction with qualitative dividend analysis. The ratio is one-of-a-kind in that it is both free-cash-flow based and forward looking. Since its creation in 2012, the Dividend Cushion ratio has forewarned readers of approximately 50 dividend cuts. We estimate its efficacy at ~90%.

Nov 7, 2022

We’ve Updated Our Fair Value Estimate of Boeing; Has Aerospace Bottomed?
Image: Boeing is expecting to turn the corner with respect to positive free cash flow in 2022 and grow it to ~$10 billion annually by 2025/2026. We think this is achievable. Image Source: Boeing. The breakout of COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the airline business and the commercial aircraft-making business alike. But has the commercial aerospace industry finally bottomed?

Oct 30, 2022

Something New!
Hi everyone: To stay true to our mission, you'll find something new regarding our methodology. In the coming weeks, you'll see this table in our work going forward.

Oct 20, 2022

Announcing Valuentum’s Customer Appreciation Day Winners!
Let's see who won an autographed copy of Value Trap and what they said about Valuentum's research! We applaud all of our members in their quest to preserve and generate long-term wealth. Keep going strong!

Oct 19, 2022

New Payment Option! Valuentum Research Update!
We're excited to say that we're adding additional payment flexibility at Valuentum. Many members have expressed interest in paying via other providers, and we have added Square to the mix. You can use credit or debit card or bank (ACH) to pay via invoice. With all of the goings-on in the financial technology and payments space, we wanted to continue to provide members options to pay their memberships how they want and through who they want. You can always reach out to us at info@valuentum.com.

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.