Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Oct 3, 2023

Big Cap Tech and Large Cap Growth Remain Safe Havens
Image: The stylistic area of large cap growth, which is heavily represented in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, is doing fantastic so far in 2023. Brian here. I wanted to write this brief note to check in with you as the market continues to be a bit jittery following the highs it reached in late July. The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio put up a great year of relative outperformance during 2022 versus the market-cap weighted S&P 500, and their exposure to the areas of big cap tech and large cap growth have helped them follow through during 2023. It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying just on valuation multiples and dividend yields, but we have to continue to emphasize that it is our view that enterprise valuation is the key determinant of equity prices and returns, and it should not be surprising that big cap tech and large cap growth, with their huge net cash positions and strong expected free cash flows, have dominated returns so far in 2023.

Sep 20, 2023

ICYMI: Questions for Valuentum’s Brian Nelson
Valuentum's President Brian Nelson, CFA, answers your questions.

Aug 5, 2023

ICYMI -- Shocking?!?! Utility Dividends Aren’t Always Safe
Image Source: Oran V. There is plenty to like about the business models of utilities. Regulated utilities, for one, are monopolies in their operating regions, providing an essential service to businesses and customers. This, coupled with the fact that the returns of regulated utilities are set by a regulatory body within a defined ratemaking process, causes the sector to be full of operators that boast steadily-growing earnings that appear to be materially dependable. As we note in this article, however, a surprisingly large number of utilities in our coverage universe have cut their dividends in the past. Are the dividends of utilities as safe as many make them out to be? Let’s dig in.

Jul 11, 2023

NextEra Energy Expects 10% Annual Dividend Growth
Image Source: Nextera Energy. We think the utility sector is generally overrepresented in many dividend-oriented and income-producing portfolios, but we think NextEra Energy is a good fit for the well-diversified ESG Newsletter portfolio given its vast renewable resource assets. Shares of Nextera Energy have fallen more than 20% since the beginning of 2022, while the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF is down more than 8% over the same time period. Shares of Nextera Energy yield ~2.6%.

Jul 11, 2023

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.

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.

Apr 25, 2023

Small Cell Deployments a Growth Avenue for Tower Operator Crown Castle
Image: Crown Castle has grown its dividend payout at a compound annual growth rate of ~9% during the past several years. Image Source: Crown Castle. Crown Castle remains one of our favorite income ideas thanks in part to its free-cash-flow rich, asset-light, contractual recurring revenue business model that is tied to long-term secular growth trends in mobile device data usage. The REIT’s forward estimated dividend yield stands at ~5%.

Mar 24, 2023

How the Payment of a Dividend Impacts Intrinsic Value Estimation
"Dividends are a transfer of cash to the shareholders that the shareholders already owned."In this purely educational article, using historical data from 3M, let’s walk through the mechanics of how the payment of a dividend impacts the intrinsic value of a company. The takeaways may be somewhat counterintuitive but are nonetheless very important for members to understand.

Feb 17, 2023

Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week of February 17
Let's take a look at firms raising/lowering their dividends this week.

Dec 27, 2022

Exclusive Call: What To Expect From Valuentum in 2023
Video: 2022 was a successful year by almost every measure from the simulated Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and simulated Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio to the simulated High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio and Exclusive publication and beyond. There were some disappointments in 2022, of course, but the year showed the value of a Valuentum membership. Join President of Investment Research Brian Nelson on this year's Exclusive conference call to learn what to expect from Valuentum in 2023. Cheers!