Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Sep 27, 2021

Update on High-Yielding AT&T
Image Source: AT&T Inc – Second Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation. The communications and media giant AT&T Inc is pivoting back to its roots, a strategy that we think will pay off handsomely in the long run, though there have been plenty of rough bumps along the way. Management has finally found a strategy that AT&T can stick with. We include AT&T as an idea in the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio and shares of T yield ~7.7% as of this writing (note that the company will rightsize its dividend in the coming quarters, resulting in a yield adjustment lower).

Aug 16, 2021

Best Idea Disney’s Video Streaming Business Booms
Image Shown: The Walt Disney Company’s video streaming growth ambitions showed signs of significant progress last fiscal quarter. Image Source: The Walt Disney Company – Third Quarter of Fiscal 2021 Earnings Press Release. On August 12, The Walt Disney Company reported third quarter earnings for fiscal 2021 (period ended July 3, 2021) that beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. Disney’s video streaming services reported a sharp uptick in paid subscribers while the financial performance of the segment that includes its theme park and resort operations staged an immense rebound. We continue to be huge fans of Disney’s capital appreciation potential and include shares of DIS as an idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio.

Jul 27, 2021

High-Yielding AT&T Remains Free Cash Flow Cow
Image Shown: AT&T Inc’s core businesses in the wireless and fiber arenas continue to gain subscribers at a rapid pace, while its HBO/HBO Max offerings are also growing at a nice clip. Image Source: AT&T Inc – Second Quarter of 2021 IR Earnings Presentation. On July 22, AT&T reported second quarter 2021 earnings that beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. The company added 1,156,000 net postpaid customers to its core ‘Mobility’ business including 789,000 net postpaid phone customers, aided by its lowest churn rates ever at just below 0.7%. AT&T also added 174,000 net prepaid phone customers while its AT&T Fiber business added 246,000 net customers last quarter. We include shares of AT&T as an idea in the High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio (more on that here), and shares of T yield ~7.4% as of this writing.

Jun 1, 2021

ICYMI -- Video: Exclusive 2020 -- Furthering the Financial Discipline
In this 40+ minute video jam-packed with must-watch content, Valuentum's President Brian Nelson talks about the Theory of Universal Valuation and how his work is furthering the financial discipline. Learn the pitfalls of factor investing and modern portfolio theory and how the efficient markets hypothesis holds little substance in the wake of COVID-19. He'll talk about what companies Valuentum likes and why, and which areas he's avoiding. This and more in Valuentum's 2020 Exclusive conference call.

Apr 8, 2021

The Best Years Are Ahead
The wind is at our backs. The Federal Reserve, Treasury, and regulatory bodies of the U.S. may have no choice but to keep U.S. markets moving higher. The likelihood of the S&P 500 reaching 2,000 ever again seems remote, and I would not be surprised to see 5,000 on the S&P 500 before we see 2,500-3,000, if the latter may be in the cards. The S&P 500 is trading at ~4,100 at the time of this writing. The high end of our fair value range on the S&P 500 remains just shy of 4,000, but I foresee a massive shift in long-term capital out of traditional bonds into equities this decade (and markets to remain overpriced for some time). Bond yields are paltry and will likely stay that way for some time, requiring advisors to rethink their asset mixes. The stock market looks to be the place to be long term, as it has always been. With all the tools at the disposal of government officials, economic collapse (as in the Great Depression) may no longer be even a minor probability in the decades to come--unlike in the past with the capitalistic mindset that governed the Federal Reserve before the “Lehman collapse."

Mar 16, 2021

Roblox Goes Public; Strong Balance Sheet and Expected Free Cash Flow
Image Source: Roblox Corporation – S-1/A SEC Filing. Roblox Corp recently went public through a direct listing on March 10, 2021. The video game platform company has an extensive growth runway with multiple avenues to further expand its business. We are impressed with its free cash flow generating abilities, pristine balance sheet, and strong growth rates of late. Roblox’s outlook for 2021 indicates its growth story is expected to continue this year in earnest. Capital appreciation seeking investors should take a deeper look at Roblox, though we caution that its co-founder, CEO, and chairman controls most of the company’s voting power.

Feb 8, 2021

Stock Market Outlook for 2021
2020 was one from the history books and a year that will live on in infamy. That said, we are excited for the future as global health authorities are steadily putting an end to the public health crisis created by COVID-19, aided by the quick discovery of safe and viable vaccines. Tech, fintech, and payment processing firms were all big winners in 2020, and we expect that to continue being the case in 2021. Digital advertising, cloud-computing, and e-commerce activities are set to continue dominating their respective fields. Cybersecurity demand is moving higher and the constant threats posed by both governments (usually nations that are hostile to Western interests) and non-state actors highlights how crucial these services are. Retailers with omni-channel selling capabilities are well-positioned to ride the global economic recovery upwards. Green energy firms will continue to grow at a brisk pace in 2021, though the oil & gas industry appears ready for a comeback. The adoption of 5G wireless technologies and smartphones will create immense growth opportunities for smartphone makers, semiconductor players and telecommunications giants. Video streaming services have become ubiquitous over the past decade with room to continue growing as households “cut the cord” and instead opt for several video streaming packages. We’re not too big of fans of old industrial names given their capital-intensive nature relative to capital-light technology or fintech, but there are select names that have appeal. Cryptocurrencies have taken the market by storm as we turn the calendar into 2021, but the traditional banking system remains healthy enough to withstand another shock should it be on the horizon. Our fair value estimate of the S&P 500 remains $3,530-$3,920, but we may still be on a roller coaster ride for the year. Here’s to a great 2021!

Jan 27, 2021

ALERT: Raising Cash in the Newsletter Portfolios
Our research has been absolutely fantastic for a long time, but 2020 may have been our best year yet. With the S&P 500 trading within our fair value estimate range of 3,530-3,920 (and the markets rolling over while showing signs of abnormal behavior), we're raising the cash position in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio to 10%-20%. For more conservative investors, the high end of this range may even be larger, especially considering the vast "gains" from the March 2020 bottom and the increased systemic risks arising from price-agnostic trading (read Value Trap). The individual holdings will be reduced in proportion to arrive at the new targeted cash weighting in the respective simulated newsletter portfolios. The High Yield Dividend Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter are scheduled for release February 1. We'll have more to say soon.

Nov 19, 2020

Videogaming Business Becoming More and More Attractive
Image Shown: The video game industry has been placing a much greater emphasis on growing their mobile gaming operations in recent years. Part of that strategy has involved leveraging existing IP and well-known gaming titles to appeal to a wide range of users. Image Source: Electronic Arts Inc – Second Quarter of Fiscal 2021 IR Earnings Presentation. As households have largely been “cocooning” indoors to ride out the ongoing coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic, demand for digitally provided entertainment options has grown considerably. NPD Group, an industry-tracking firm, estimates that US video game sales (software and hardware combined) will reach $13.4 billion in total in across November and December of this year. That would be up 24% from year-ago levels, and note this is only looking at the US market, which is estimated to have 244 million consumers of video game content according to NPD Group. Many of those consumers are considered casual video game players, playing mobile games on their smartphones and tablets, though NPD Group noted the number of more dedicated gamers (measured by hours played per week) is on the rise in both nominal and absolute terms. Mobile gaming options generally rely on in-game transactions, called microtransactions, to generate revenue. Usually those offerings include aesthetic upgrades or the ability to progress through the video game at a faster pace. For more conventional video game offerings--those normally played on PCs or consoles--video game companies have increasingly been successful in selling add-on content via high-margin digital packages (and in some instances, microtransactions have also been successfully implemented). Longer term, the rise of e-sports offers another revenue generating opportunity for companies in the video game and digital advertising world. Though a nascent part of the video game industry, initial levels of interest have been impressive. Beyond rising demand for video streaming services, demand for video games, a (usually) cost-effective entertainment option, has also held up incredibly well during the pandemic with several big video game publishers reporting strong financial results of late, too. Furthermore, Microsoft Corporation and Sony Corporation recently launched their next-generation consoles, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, respectively. In theory, the console refresh cycle combined with growing demand for indoors entertainment options should provide the video game industry with several major growth catalysts in the coming quarters. One of the key positive attributes of the the video game publishing industry, generally speaking, is that these companies have strong balance sheets and stellar cash flow profiles (meaning a relatively modest amount of capital expenditures are required to maintain a certain level of revenues, and thus putting the firm in a position to better generate free cash flows). However, the performance of these companies can swing wildly depending on how well their blockbuster properties perform. The hit-or-miss nature of their operations has been a big reason why we haven’t added any videogame stock to the newsletter portfolios in the past, but their business models have become more and more attractive as the years have gone on. In this note, let’s get into the details of Activision Blizzard Inc, Electronic Arts Inc, and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc, while we discuss broader industry trends.

Sep 23, 2020

Microsoft Makes a Clever Acquisition
Image Shown: An overview of the performance of some of Microsoft Corporation’s business segments during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, including highlights from its ‘Xbox content and services’ segment. We continue to like shares of Microsoft as a holding in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios. Image Source: Microsoft Corporation – Fourth Quarter of Fiscal 2020 Earnings PowerPoint Presentation. On September 21, Microsoft Corp announced it was acquiring ZeniMax Media, owner of the videogame developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in cash. Bethesda is perhaps best known for AAA franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, among other well-known franchises including DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored. Please note that Bethesda makes videogames for both seasoned and casual gamers for console, PC, and mobile devices. More recently, Bethesda has experimented with launching iterations of game titles that were previously geared towards seasoned gamers on consoles and PCs on mobile devices that are geared towards more casual gamers. This can be seen through the 2019 launch of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls: Blades videogame on Apple iOS powered devices and devices powered by Alphabet Android. Bethesda later launch The Elder Scrolls: Blades on Nintendo's Switch console, which is a handheld device. Previously, titles within The Elder Scrolls universe such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were made for consoles and PCs, and these games were geared more so towards seasoned gamers. We see this leveraging of IP as a clever move by Bethesda.