Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Jan 5, 2025

Keeping the Horse Before the Cart: Valuentum’s Economic Castle™ Rating
Image shown: An examination of the problem that might arise by focusing exclusively on companies that have economic moats, or sustainable and durable competitive advantages.Without an economic castle, an economic moat doesn’t matter. Let's examine Valuentum's Economic Castle™ rating.

Jan 1, 2025

The Price-to-Earnings Ratio Demystified
Let's examine the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. The key takeaways are: 1) without using a discounted cash-flow model, the P/E ratio that should be applied to a company's future expected earnings stream can never be appropriately calculated, and by extension, 2) when investors assign an arbitrary price-to-earnings multiple to a company’s earnings (based on historical trends or industry peers or the market multiple), they are essentially making estimates for all of the drivers behind a discounted cash-flow model in one fell swoop (and sometimes hastily). As earnings for next year are often within sight and can be estimated with some confidence (though this certainly varies among firms), calculating the price-to-earnings ratio via a discounted cash-flow process, in our opinion, is of far greater importance than worrying about whether a firm will beat or miss earnings in its next fiscal year. Because the P/E ratio is a discounted cash-flow model that considers the long-term qualitative dynamics of a particular entity, cash-flow analysis remains the first and most important pillar of our Valuentum Buying Index. And finally, investors cannot ignore valuation analysis or the future. Valuation is an important driver behind stock prices, and it is based on future expectations that can only be estimated. This is just a fact of the markets.

Oct 2, 2024

Nike In the Midst of a CEO Transition, Withdraws Full Year Guidance
Image: Nike’s shares have been under pressure as the firm continues to underperform. Nike is in the midst of a management transition with Elliott Hill returning to the company in the capacity of President and CEO effective October 14. Looking to the second quarter of fiscal 2025, Nike expects revenue to be down in the 8%-10% range and gross margins to be down roughly 150 basis points, pointing to higher promotions and channel mix headwinds. Though Nike has a storied brand, unmatched by rivals, it has fallen on difficult times, and we’re staying on the sidelines with respect to shares. Shares yield 1.7% at the time of this writing.

Sep 26, 2024

An Important Measure of Leverage for Dividend-Growth and Income-Oriented Shareholders, One That Is Dividend-Adjusted
As more and more investors rely on company dividends for income, dividends, in our view, have become more debt-like commitments in nature, especially from the perspective of dividend-growth or income-oriented shareholders. Years ago, we rolled out a measure of financial leverage that considers both the company’s debt and the present value of its future expected cash dividend obligations, which, in the eyes of die-hard dividend-growth or income-oriented shareholders, may be implicitly assumed to be debt-like commitments in substance. We think this leverage ratio can be used in conjunction with the Dividend Cushion ratio to gain additional insight into the dividend-paying financial health of an entity.

Jul 18, 2024

Crown Castle’s AFFO In Excess of Cash Dividends Paid
Image: Crown Castle’s shares look to be bottoming, and the firm’s AFFO is expected to remain well above cash dividends paid during 2024. Crown Castle reiterated its outlook for 2024 that it issued on June 11. It expects site rental billings of $5.74-$5.78 billion, site rental revenues in the range of $6.317-$6.362 billion, adjusted EBITDA between $4.143-$4.193 billion, and AFFO per share in the range of $6.91-$7.02. Though Crown Castle’s full year performance reveals pressure, the company’s AFFO remains in excess of its annual dividend rate of $6.26, and with a dividend yield of ~5.9%, we think it makes the cut for inclusion to the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio.

Jul 3, 2024

High Yield Dividend Income Investing Is Not as Easy as Chasing the Highest Yield
Image: EpicTop10.com. The skills to successfully invest for long-term capital gains or long-term dividend growth are much different than those required for generating high yield dividend income. Income investing is a much different proposition. However, the skills do center on a similar equity evaluation process, but one that requires an acknowledgement and heightened awareness of considerably greater downside risks. Income investing, or high yield dividend income investing, should at times be considered among the riskiest forms of investing, as many high dividend-yielding securities tend to trade closer to the characteristics of junk-rated bonds than they do most net cash rich and free cash flow generating powerhouses that we like so much in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio.

Jun 10, 2024

Update: Frequently Asked Questions About Valuentum Securities, Inc.
Valuentum (val∙u∙n∙tum) [val-yoo-en-tuh-m] Securities Inc. is an independent investment research publisher, offering premium equity reports and dividend reports, as well as commentary across all sectors/companies, a Best Ideas Newsletter (spanning market caps, asset classes), a Dividend Growth Newsletter, modeling tools/products, and more. Independence and integrity remain our core, and we strive to be a champion of the investor. Valuentum is based in the Chicagoland area. Valuentum is not a money manager, broker, or financial advisor. Valuentum is a publisher of financial information. We address a number of questions from both subscribers and visitors to our site.

Apr 19, 2024

Netflix to Stop Reporting Membership Numbers Starting Next Year
Image: Netflix still has a lot of room for growth. From where we stand, Netflix has won the streaming wars. Nearly 270 million households across 190+ countries subscribe to its content, and with estimates that there are more than two people per household, management emphasized that it has an audience of more than a half a billion people. Netflix has further room for growth, too, as it notes that its share of TV viewing is less than 10% in every country. Management pointed to content such as the boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, as well as live programming such as WWE Raw as a couple examples to keep audiences entertained. We like Netflix, but we can’t get comfortable adding it to any newsletter portfolio at this time.

Apr 10, 2024

How Well Do Enterprise-Cash-Flow-Derived Fair Value Estimates Predict Future Stock Prices? -- And Thoughts on Behavioral Valuation
 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.

Apr 5, 2024

The Dividend Cushion Beats the Aristocrats
A prolonged period of low interest rates has driven income investors to dividend growth investing as a way to achieve retirement goals. Traditional dividend growth analysis has rested on evaluating a company’s dividend payout ratio and its track record of historical consecutive annual dividend increases. A supplement to these approaches, the forward-looking, cash-flow-based Dividend Cushion ratio maps a company’s future expected free cash flows to its future expected cash dividends paid (after considering balance sheet health) and has shown to be a superior indicator of both dividend growth (risk) and total return relative to other dividend growth analytical processes. The results in this paper showcase the outperformance of a select number of high-yielding equities with strong Dividend Cushion ratios relative to both S&P 500 firms and companies with decades of consecutive annual dividend increases.