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Fundamental data is updated weekly, as of the prior weekend. Please download the Full Report and Dividend Report for any changes.
Latest Valuentum Commentary

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 16, 2022
The Castle Trumps the Moat
Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett has popularized the concept of an “economic moat,” perhaps best described in common language as sustainable competitive advantages. Whereas economic moat analysis focuses on the duration of a firm’s economic profit stream, as measured by return on invested capital less the costs of which to attain that capital, economic castle analysis focuses on the magnitude of economic profit creation over the realizable near term. Unlike the substantial duration risk inherent to predicting economic profits 20, 30 or more years into the future, the economic castle framework posits that the strongest performing companies during certain phases of the economic cycle will be those that generate the most economic value over the foreseeable future. The results in this paper showcase the aggregate outperformance of a select number of outsize economic-profit creators within the Valuentum Economic Castle Index relative to both S&P 500 firms and companies with “wide” economic moats.
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.
Feb 4, 2022
Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week February 4
Let's take a look at companies that raised/lowered their dividend this week.
Jan 30, 2022
Our Favorite Biotech Vertex Pharma Powers Ahead, Leaps 6%+
Image: Vertex Pharma continues to soar toward our fair value estimate. The biotech arena is difficult to navigate, which is why we tend to play it a bit more conservative than most. Vertex Pharma has an established, cash-flow generating portfolio of cystic fibrosis therapies, which has helped to establish a net cash rich balance sheet and a steady stream of robust free cash flow, unlike many biotechs that need external capital and are at risk of never reaching commercialization. We’re excited about Vertex’s clinical pipeline of potentially transformative genetic therapies, and we like its exposure to CRISPR gene-editing technology, which could be a huge business in the years ahead. Vertex Pharma remains our favorite biotech play and an idea in the simulated Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio.
Jan 25, 2022
Johnson & Johnson’s Pending Split-Up, Talc Liabilities, New CEO Add Complexity to a Once-Clean Dividend Growth Story
Image Shown: J&J continues to face legal liabilities due to talcum powder lawsuits. Image Source: Mike Mozart. We prefer simple dividend growth stories. Unfortunately, J&J is no longer one of them. A split of Johnson & Johnson’s consumer products division from its medical device and pharma divisions in the next 18-24 months means that dividend growth investors will have added complexity as a new CEO takes the helm, all the while the board manages its growing talc liabilities during a global pandemic. Shares of J&J haven’t been as strong a performer as other stocks on the market the past five years, but we still like its firm foundation and nice combination of dividend yield and potential dividend growth for now. That may change in the coming months to years, however.
Jan 22, 2022
Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater
Image: Erica Nicol. Junk tech should continue to collapse, but the stylistic area of large cap growth and big cap tech should remain resilient. Moderately elevated levels of inflation coupled with interest rates hovering at all-time lows isn’t a terrible combination. In fact, it’s not bad at all. The markets are digesting the huge gains of the past few years so far in 2022, and the excesses in ARKK funds, crypto, SPACs, and meme stocks are being rid from the system. Our best ideas are “outperforming” the very benchmarks that are outperforming everyone else. The BIN portfolio is down 6.4% and the DGN portfolio is down 3.2% year to date. The SPY is down 7.8%, while the average investor may be doing much worse. Our timing to exit some very speculative ideas in the Exclusive publication has been impeccable. Beware of “best-fitted” backtest data regarding sequence of return risks. Research is to help you navigate the future, not the past. We remain bullish on stocks for the long haul and grow more and more excited as our simulated newsletter portfolios continue to hold up very well. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Stick with the largest, strongest growth names. We still like large cap growth and big cap tech, though we are tactical overweight in the largest energy stocks (e.g. XOM, CVX, XLE). The latest short idea in the Exclusive publication has collapsed aggressively since highlight January 9, and we remain encouraged by the resilience of ideas in the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio and ESG Newsletter portfolio. Our options idea generation remains ongoing.
Dec 26, 2021
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 2021 Valuentum Exclusive Call: Inflation Is Good
Valuentum's President Brian Michael Nelson, CFA, explains why investors should not fear inflation, why government agencies such as the Fed and Treasury are prioritizing something other than price discovery, why the 10-year Treasury rate is a must-watch metric, and why Valuentum prefers the moaty constituents in large cap growth due to their net cash rich balance sheets, tremendous free cash flow generating potential, and secular growth tailwinds.


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The High Yield Dividend Newsletter, Best Ideas Newsletter, Dividend Growth Newsletter, Nelson Exclusive publication, and any reports, articles and content found on this website are for information purposes only and should not be considered a solicitation to buy or sell any security. The sources of the data used on this website are believed by Valuentum to be reliable, but the data’s accuracy, completeness or interpretation cannot be guaranteed. Valuentum is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for results obtained from the use of its newsletters, reports, commentary, or publications and accepts no liability for how readers may choose to utilize the content. Valuentum is not a money manager, is not a registered investment advisor and does not offer brokerage or investment banking services. Valuentum, its employees, and affiliates may have long, short or derivative positions in the stock or stocks mentioned on this site.