Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Feb 21, 2024

Market Darling Nvidia Delivers in Fiscal Fourth Quarter
Image: Nvidia has been a market darling, and the company did not disappoint in its fourth-quarter fiscal 2024 report. We like what we’re seeing at Nvidia these days, and what it implies for big cap tech and large cap growth, and we expect ongoing strength at the company. Competition from AMD and others is looming, but Nvidia continues to capture the lion’s share of AI investment at this time, and that will likely continue for some time yet. Speculative investors have made a bundle on Nvidia during the past 12-18 months, but we’ve been quite satisfied with the performance of Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio holding, the Technology Select Sector SPDR, which includes Nvidia as one of its top three holdings. Nvidia’s shares are showing strength after the quarterly report.

Feb 9, 2024

Earnings Roundup: PEP, DIS, ARM, PM
Image Source: Arm Holdings. Pepsi issued an outlook for 2024 that came in lower than what the Street was expecting, but we like the diversification of having a strong brand entity such as Pepsi in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. Disney is working hard to get back on track, and cost-cutting efforts have significantly helped its free cash flow generation. The firm is buying back stock, too, and recently upped its semi-annual dividend payout by 50%. Arm Holdings plc surprised the market in a big way, sending shares almost 50% higher following the report. The company's lucrative royalty business model and attractive exposure to artificial intelligence has investors extremely excited. Philip Morris is targeting strong organic revenue growth in 2024 thanks in part to Zyn growth, and we like the strong foundation that its free cash flow provides in supporting its dividend.

Feb 6, 2024

Palantir’s Fourth-Quarter Results Showcase Strong Trends in Artificial Intelligence
Image: Palantir’s revenue continues to march higher, and the company’s performance continues to showcase the growing strength in artificial intelligence. Source: Palantir. We liked Palantir’s quarterly results, but we wanted to bring to members’ attention the commentary surrounding artificial intelligence [AI]: "Our results reflect both the strength of our software and the surging demand that we are seeing across industries and sectors for artificial intelligence platforms, including large language models, that are capable of integrating with the tangle of existing technical infrastructure that organizations have been constructing for years...The demand for large language models from commercial institutions in the United States continues to be unrelenting. Every part of our organization is focused on the rollout of our Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which has gone from a prototype to a product in months. And our momentum with AIP is now significantly contributing to new revenue and new customers."

Nov 2, 2023

AMD Continues to Enhance Artificial Intelligence Capabilities
On October 31, Advanced Micro Devices reported solid third-quarter results with revenue advancing 4% on a year-over-year basis and non-GAAP earnings per share coming in slightly better than expectations, with net income up more than four-fold, to $299 million. Management expressed excitement about demand for its Ryzen 7000 series PC processors and noted that its data center business is progressing well thanks to its 4th Gen EPYC CPU portfolio and Instinct MI300 accelerator shipments across various markets, including artificial intelligence [AI].

Aug 23, 2023

“A New Computing Era Has Begun” -- Nvidia Delivers Yet Again
When we first wrote that Nvidia would power this market higher back in May, the firm had just put up one of the most prolific earnings beats I had ever seen. I’d have to go back almost 20 years to the invention of Apple’s iPod click-wheel technology to remember something that came close. Well, on August 23, Nvidia just put up another monster quarter, this one the second of its fiscal year 2024, beating top-line and bottom-line consensus estimates by a huge margin for the period ending July 30. We’ve raised our fair value estimate of Nvidia considerably following the blockbuster second-quarter performance and third-quarter outlook, released today, and the race is on to adopt artificial intelligence [AI].

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.

May 25, 2023

Nvidia Rockets Higher to Propel Large Cap Growth
Image: Nvidia powers higher after releasing better-than-expected second-quarter fiscal 2024 guidance. The company continues to be a driver behind the outperformance of large cap growth as a stylistic area. We haven’t seen a quarterly guidance beat like this since Synaptics put up a monster quarter when Apple started using its innovative click-wheel technology in the first-generation iPod, almost 20 years ago. Nvidia Corp.'s outlook for the second quarter of its fiscal 2024 was phenomenal thanks to tremendous interest in its chips that power artificial intelligence [AI]. We expect a material increase in our fair value estimate of Nvidia, but shares remain quite pricey, in our view. Revenue during Nvidia’s fiscal second quarter is expected to be ~$11 billion versus consensus that had been looking at ~$7 billion, implying a forward outlook more than 50% better than what the Street was looking for. Interestingly, Synaptics’ click-wheel technology started the wave of Apple products, which have been the go-to tech platform for years, and Nvidia may very well be the driving force behind AI proliferation, the next great technology platform.

May 23, 2023

Call Me Unconcerned
Image: Large cap growth has dominated returns the past five years. The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio continues to have significant exposure to this area. We’re taking it slow this time of year. With the area of large cap growth nearly doubling since the beginning of 2018, trouncing the return of the broader market, dividend growth strategies, the area of small cap value and general REIT indices, it’s just hard to find much wrong with staying pat. The proliferation of artificial intelligence will likely propel big cap tech and large cap growth to new highs, while small cap value may continue to be weighed down by the banks--and dividend-oriented strategies may face continued pressure from rising interest rates and tired real estate markets. Things were a bit murky during 2022, but thanks for keeping the faith.

May 22, 2023

Nice! -- NASDAQ-100 Follows Through on Breakout
Image: NASDAQ-100 breaks through August 2022 resistance.

Nov 13, 2022

ASML Launches Big Buyback; Lithography Systems Well Positioned for Demand Growth
Image: ASML has been one of the most successful semiconductor companies thanks in part to the firm’s advanced lithography systems that continue to meet customer demands for size and cost efficiencies. Image Source: ASML. We think ASML Holding is in a sweet spot in the semiconductor space as its lithography systems position the industry well along the path of Moore’s Law. Strong past investments have given it a leadership position, and we expect ASML to capture a significant amount of its addressable market from smartphones to personal computing and beyond, all the while it pays a dividend and buys back stock along the way. A continued focus on research & development and capital spending, while maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet should be expected. The firm’s recent Investor Day was a positive catalyst for shares and eased the worst of the concerns regarding the intermediate-term impact of Sino-American tensions on the semiconductor space. We continue to like shares of ASML Holding.