Split (1)

train · ~16.3M rows (showing the first 2.16M)

text stringlengths 1 675k ⌀
ICYMI: BTS x Uniqlo, Virgil Abloh's Latest for Louis Vuitton & Linen and Biker Shorts A must-read roundup of our most popular stories of the week. You're welcome. Sure, we're all glued to our phones/tablets/laptops/watches that barely tell time, but even the best of us miss out on some important #content from time to time. That's why, in case you missed it, we've rounded up our most popular stories of the week to help you stay in the loop. No need to thank us just toast a brunch mimosa in our honor when you're discussing who did what over your avocado toast. Photo: Giphy UNIQLO AND K-POP SENSATION BTS TEAM UP FOR A BT21 COLLABORATION The seven-member band printed their charming animated characters on a range of graphic T-shirts. A BIT OF A BARE CHEST WAS A STREET STYLE HIT AT MILAN FASHION WEEK MEN'S Unbutton some of your shirt, or all of it. Photo: Giphy SEE EVERY LOOK FROM VIRGIL ABLOH'S SPRING 2020 COLLECTION FOR LOUIS VUITTON Just in from the runway in Paris. 21 PAIRS OF LINEN SHORTS TO LIGHTEN UP YOUR SUMMER WARDROBE Swap your denim cutoffs for something breezier. Photo: Giphy 23 PAIRS OF BIKER SHORTS FOR AN EASY, COMFORTABLE SUMMER OUTFIT Add your favorite T-shirt or button-down and you're good to go. Well, there you have it. All the must-read, watercooler-ready fashion news you needed to know. Wait, what's the fashion equivalent of water cooler? A prosecco fountain? How do we get one of those? Photo: Giphy Homepage photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for dcp Sign up for our daily newsletter and get the latest industry news in your inbox every day.
The Most Important Marijuana Growth Chart You'll Ever See Right now, few industries offer greater long-term growth potential than the legal marijuana industry. On Wall Street, peak sales projections for the cannabis industry have come inas high as $166 billion. The analyst behind this lofty forecast,Bank of America's Christopher Carey, also suggests that marijuana could disrupt industries that today combine for $2.6 trillion in annual sales. It's these estimates for rapid sales growth that have pushed cannabis stock valuation (at times) into the stratosphere. With tens of billions of dollars' worth being sold annually in the black market, worldwide weed legalizations could easily move a majority of these sales to legal channels in the years to come. If that's the case, even the loftiest sales projections from Wall Street over the next 5 or 10 years may be attainable. Image source: Getty Images. Wall Street's sales projections rarely provide much insight on how they arrive at their lofty future sales figures. But that's not the case with the 350-plus-page "State of the Legal Cannabis Markets" report released on Thursday, June 20, by the duo ofArcview Market ResearchandBDS Analytics. The new report details every nook, cranny, and bud, or where growth will be sprouting through 2024 in the legal cannabis industry. The headline figure that I'm sure everyone wants to know is what total worldwide sales will look like by the time 2024 rolls around. According to actual legal pot sales figures from Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics between 2014 and 2018 and estimates between 2019 and 2024, here's how things shake out: • 2014:$3.4 billion • 2015:$4.8 billion • 2016:$6.7 billion • 2017:$9.1 billion • 2018:$10.9 billion • 2019:$14.9 billion • 2020:$19.3 billion • 2021:$24.4 billion • 2022:$30.7 billion • 2023:$36.2 billion • 2024:$40.6 billion For those of you keeping score at home, this works out to a compound annual growth rate of 28.2% over a decade and 24.5% over the six-year period between the end of 2018 and the end of 2024. Image source: Getty Images. You'll note that growth tapered off significantly in 2018 as regulatory issues and supply chain problems wreaked havoc in California,as well as in Canadain the early stages of its recreational legalization process. However, based on the report's forecast, many of these supply issues will resolve themselves shortly, leading to a rapid rise in legal sales. Arcview and BDS Analytics also offer year-by-year breakdowns of global medical and recreational sales. After adult-use revenue hit $6.1 billion in 2018, to go along with $4.8 billion in medical marijuana sales, the duo will be looking for recreational revenue to expand to $26.7 billion by 2024, with an accompanying $13.9 billion in medical weed sales. Over this six-year period, recreational pot sales growth will handily outpace medical weed growth, since medical patients in recreationally legal countries or states will simply bypass a costly doctor's visit to purchase legal cannabis. Additionally, we should see the bulk of this $40.6 billion in sales generated in North America. Even though spending outside of North America (i.e., Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the rest of the world) will skyrocket from $517 million in 2018 to an estimated $5.4 billion by 2024, Canada's nearly $4.8 billion in sales and the United States' nearly $30 billion in sales will account for the bulk of global cannabis revenue in 2024. While these are all exciting figures and speak to the amazing growth potential of the legal pot industry, they still don't divulge what I believe to be the most important data set of the "State of the Legal Cannabis Markets" report -- namely, the breakdown of $44.8 billion in projected cannabinoid-based spending in the U.S. in 2024. This figure is higher than the aforementioned global sales figure because it also includes general retail sales and pharmaceutical cannabinoid revenue. The following chart breaks down just how drastically the U.S. pot industry is expected to change between 2018 and 2024. Data source: Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics. All figures in billions of U.S. dollars. First of all, you'll note that sales of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing products in licensed U.S. dispensaries will almost triple from $8.6 billion in 2018 to $24.7 billion in 2024. THC is the psychoactive cannabinoid that gets users high. Although we've been hearing a lot about cannabidiol (CBD), the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid that's best known for its perceived medical benefit, it's important to recognize that an estimated 55% of 2024 sales will still be based on buzzy THC products. Mind you, this doesn't mean that this $24.7 billion in sales will primarily be dried cannabis flower. New-generation pot users have made it very clear that they prefer to consume THC via derivatives rather than by smoking dried flower. Derivative products include oils, capsules, topicals, sprays, concentrates, vapes, edibles, and infused beverages. This push toward derivatives is a big reason why Canadian growerHEXO(NYSEMKT: HEXO)recently signed atwo-year extraction agreementwithValens GroWorksfor an aggregate of at least 80,000 kilos of hemp and cannabis biomass. Already partnered withMolson Coors Brewingto create a line of nonalcoholic cannabis-infused beverages in Canada, HEXO aims to broaden its product portfolio to include a number of alternative consumption options. HEXO also recently created a U.S. subsidiary that'll provide CBD-infused products via hemp extraction in eight states. Maybe the biggest surprise is just how quicklygeneral retail storesare expected to become major cannabinoid players for non-THC products (i.e., CBD oils, topicals, capsules, and so on). After generating a mere $0.6 billion in sales in 2018, general retailers should see $12.6 billion in non-THC product sales by 2024 in the United States. Image source: Getty Images. Much of this CBD growth boom follows the passage of the farm bill in December. This bill legalized the industrial production of hemp and hemp-derived CBD throughout the United States. As a result, major CBD players, such asCharlotte's Web(NASDAQOTH: CWBHF)andCV Sciences(NASDAQOTH: CVSI), have seen their retail presence soar. Charlotte's Web's retail door count rose from 3,680 at the end of December tomore than 6,000 by the end of March, whereas CV Sciences' retail door count has more than doubled in 5.5 months (through June 12) to almost 4,600 stores. Not surprisingly, Charlotte's Web and CV Sciences are two of a very small handful of pot stocks to be profitable on a recurring basis, and they should remain profitable if these forecasted growth figures are accurate. Lastly, Arcview and BDS Analytics foresee pharmaceutical-based cannabinoid sales shooting from $0.1 billion in 2018 to approximately $2.2 billion by 2024. Cannabinoid-based drug developers likeGW Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ: GWPH)will play a major role in this growth. GW Pharmaceuticals' lead drug Epidiolex became the first cannabis-derived drug togain Food and Drug Administration approvalin June 2018. Wall Street is looking for GW Pharmaceuticals' key drug, designed to treat two rare forms of childhood-onset epilepsy, to potentially generate more than $1 billion in sales by 2023. The key takeaways here are: • Licensed dispensaries and THC-focused products will remain important, so don't forget about them; and • General retailers and ancillary players are the likely beneficiaries of the rise of CBD. The more you know, the better you'll be able to take advantage of this potentially once-in-a-generation growth opportunity known as the legal cannabis industry. More From The Motley Fool • Beginner's Guide to Investing in Marijuana Stocks • Marijuana Stocks Are Overhyped: 10 Better Buys for You Now • Your 2019 Guide to Investing in Marijuana Stocks Sean Williamsowns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool owns shares of Molson Coors Brewing. The Motley Fool recommends HEXO. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Could PG&E's Bankruptcy Chill the Renewable Power Market? Renewable power, like solar and wind farms, has been a hot space in the utility sector. Companies from large regulated utilities likeNextEra Energy(NYSE: NEE)to upstarts likeClearway Energy(NYSE: CWEN)have jumped into the space. One of the key niches here is selling power under long-term contracts to others, which has been assumed to be a safe business. But PG&E's bankruptcy suggests that may not be the case. Here's what you need to know and why at least one big industry participant has shied away from building renewable power for others. There's no question that renewable power is hot today. The global warming issue in the headlines is a big push. But also driving the shift toward renewables are increasingly stringent environmental regulations and government mandates for "clean" electricity production. It should come as little surprise that renewable power has been one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity in recent years. It's also projected to be among the fastest-growing sources in the future, too. Image source: Getty Images. That's backed by an investment boom in the space. On one side of the equation are giants like NextEra Energy. This utility hastwo sides to its business: a regulated utility operation in Florida that backstops its investments in its Energy Resources Division, which is where it builds renewable power projects. The power from those projects is generally sold under long-term contract to other companies, notably other utilities. The two divisions provide a modicum of balance to the company's top and bottom lines. At the other end of the spectrum are relatively small companies like Clearway Energy. Basically, the main business here is owning renewable power assets and selling the power under long-term contracts to third parties. (It owns five facilities labeled as conventional, representing about a third of its capacity; the rest is "clean" energy of some sort.) The sanctity of its long-term contracts is all that underpins the company's future revenue and earnings. Historically, that hasn't been a problem, but it's still the early days in the push toward renewable power. Which brings upSouthern Company(NYSE: SO). Like NextEra, it owns regulated assets and a renewable power business. But during the company'sfourth-quarter 2018 conference call, CEO Thomas Fanning and CFO Andrew Evans both expressed concern about the renewable power space. Essentially,Southern was pulling backfrom building renewable power for other companies because of increasing risks. That included contract-related issues (less desirable returns and protections) and counterparty-related risks (less desirable customers, financially speaking). This pair's statements didn't really make any waves at the time; it looked like a historically conservative company was just being, well, conservative. That all changed in early June when a judge decided thatbankrupt PG&Ecould reject contracts it signed for renewable power. NextEra (eight contracts) and Clearway (six) both operate renewable power projects that sell electricity to PG&E. The ruling is actually a little complex in that it technically stated that the bankruptcy court has jurisdiction over the PG&E bankruptcy process and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can't get involved in the contract issues here. But the effect is that FERC, which would prefer to see reliable and safe power markets, can't at this point stop PG&E from killing contracts with key suppliers. Rejecting these contracts could have the end effect of impacting grid reliability. Here's the thing: Those contracts were signed at a point when renewable power was more expensive. They are, effectively, above market today. So, working through bankruptcy, PG&E is right to push back and try to lower its costs by reworking these contracts. Suppliers like NextEra and Clearway, however, have more at stake. There are only just so many customers to whom they can sell the power these assets generate, and accepting lower rates will hit their top and bottom lines. They are between a rock and a hard place. But, to paraphrase Warren Buffett, when the tide goes out you see who's not wearing swim trunks. And in this case, NextEra Energy's diversified business model is clearly the stronger one. Maybe it takes a hit on the handful of projects selling power to PG&E, but it can handle the blow because of its size, financial strength, and the large foundation provided by its regulated assets in Florida. It didn't even bother to make a public statement about the issue. NEE financial debt to EBITDA (TTM)data byYCharts Clearway is a completely different story. Renewable power projects are basically the core of its business. Add in a highly leveraged balance sheet, and the hit from PG&E's bankruptcy could be big trouble. To management's credit, it acted quickly, but shareholders may not be so happy. Even before the court ruling noted above came out, Clearway had announced that PG&E's bankruptcy had pushed it to trim its dividend by 40%. It's a good thing it acted in advance, since the worst-case scenario looks like it is unfolding and there's really no backstop to protect investors. Clearway isn't the only relatively small renewable power company out there, but it highlights the very real risks in the space that Southern has been noting. Small, focused renewable power companies have few options but to keep growing their renewable asset base, but the risks inherent to their business models are no longer hypothetical -- they are very real. What happens now is anyone's guess, but it's likely that increasing caution will be the norm in the renewable power industry. For investors, meanwhile, the outcome here highlights once again why taking a cautious,diversifiedstance can be so valuable. And that means sticking to giants like NextEra and Southern -- companies that have more to backstop their businesses (and dividends) than just renewable power contracts that may or may not be as safe as Wall Street thought they were. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Reuben Gregg Brewerowns shares of Southern Company. The Motley Fool recommends NextEra Energy. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Verified Organic, Treum launch Ethereum blockchain solution for organic hemp production Verified Organic has kicked off the first phase of a project that tracks organic hemp production for Integrated CBD from seed to sale, using the Ethereum blockchain. This has launched in partnership with Treum, (formerly Viant.io), a supply chain platform backed by ConsenSys. The aim is to ensure quality, reduce fraud and improve compliance in the organic agriculture supply chain. Heres how it works: To input data about the planting process, Treum developed the Verified Organic Web platform for managers and the mobile application that works online and offline for farmers. Integrated CBD managers can use the web-enabled blockchain platform to register organic certificates and manage assets like seeds, crops, fields, fertiliser, pesticide, and equipment. With its offline functionality, the mobile application enables farmers to continuously capture data, even when internet connectivity might be poor. Data is then cryptographically hashed to the public Ethereum blockchain. Due to the immutable and distributed nature of blockchains, users can view and trust the claims about the hemp or resulting CBD oil, from seed to sale. Each step of the farming process recorded in the mobile application has additional documentation tagged to it including paid invoices, COAs, third party lab tests, and additional certifications. On 7th June, Integrated CBDs farming team used the Verified Organic mobile app to record the first hemp seed planting in Yuma County, Arizona, and it could not have gone smoother, says Jenny Vatrenko, Verified Organics President. The Treum teams hard work in building an exceptionally intuitive application ensured that we went live without a hitch. And now the very first hemp crop planted in Arizona since the passing of the Farm Bill is being tracked using Verified Organic, allowing consumers to know exactly what inputs went into the growing and processing of Verified Organic CBD. According to Jeff Dreyer, Integrated CBDs COO: The CBD market is expanding rapidly, and we are looking forward to providing our customers with the highest quality, sustainably grown products available, using Verified Organics blockchain technology to foster trust and transparency in our organic farming and extraction process. Story continues Blockchain networks enable supply chains to operate with a level of transparency and accountability that consumers have been increasingly demanding, but have previously been unable to attain, says Joseph Lubin, Co-creator of Ethereum and Founder of ConsenSys. We are excited about Treums partnership with Verified Organic, and look forward to the re-engineering of trust between mass consumers and global producers who manufacture, trade and distribute the goods we use every day. The post Verified Organic, Treum launch Ethereum blockchain solution for organic hemp production appeared first on Coin Rivet .
Should You Be Concerned About Global Blood Therapeutics, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GBT) Historical Volatility? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! If you're interested in Global Blood Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:GBT), then you might want to consider its beta (a measure of share price volatility) in order to understand how the stock could impact your portfolio. Modern finance theory considers volatility to be a measure of risk, and there are two main types of price volatility. The first category is company specific volatility. This can be dealt with by limiting your exposure to any particular stock. The second type is the broader market volatility, which you cannot diversify away, since it arises from macroeconomic factors which directly affects all the stocks on the market. Some stocks see their prices move in concert with the market. Others tend towards stronger, gentler or unrelated price movements. Beta can be a useful tool to understand how much a stock is influenced by market risk (volatility). However, Warren Buffett said 'volatility is far from synonymous with risk' in his 2014 letter to investors. So, while useful, beta is not the only metric to consider. To use beta as an investor, you must first understand that the overall market has a beta of one. Any stock with a beta of greater than one is considered more volatile than the market, while those with a beta below one are either less volatile or poorly correlated with the market. Check out our latest analysis for Global Blood Therapeutics Looking at the last five years, Global Blood Therapeutics has a beta of 1.78. The fact that this is well above 1 indicates that its share price movements have shown sensitivity to overall market volatility. If the past is any guide, we would expect that Global Blood Therapeutics shares will rise quicker than the markets in times of optimism, but fall faster in times of pessimism. Many would argue that beta is useful in position sizing, but fundamental metrics such as revenue and earnings are more important overall. You can see Global Blood Therapeutics's revenue and earnings in the image below. Global Blood Therapeutics is a fairly large company. It has a market capitalisation of US$3.6b, which means it is probably on the radar of most investors. It has a relatively high beta, suggesting it may be somehow leveraged to macroeconomic conditions. For example, it might be a high growth stock with lots of investors trading the shares. It's notable when large companies to have high beta values, because it usually takes substantial capital flows to move their share prices. Beta only tells us that the Global Blood Therapeutics share price is sensitive to broader market movements. This could indicate that it is a high growth company, or is heavily influenced by sentiment because it is speculative. Alternatively, it could have operating leverage in its business model. Ultimately, beta is an interesting metric, but there's plenty more to learn. This article aims to educate investors about beta values, but it's well worth looking at important company-specific fundamentals such as Global Blood Therapeutics’s financial health and performance track record. I highly recommend you dive deeper by considering the following: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for GBT’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor GBT’s outlook. 2. Past Track Record: Has GBT been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look atthe free visual representations of GBT's historicalsfor more clarity. 3. Other Interesting Stocks: It's worth checking to see how GBT measures up against other companies on valuation. You could start with thisfree list of prospective options. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
At US$51.16, Is It Time To Put LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) On Your Watch List? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP), which is in the it business, and is based in United States, received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the NYSE over the last few months, increasing to $62.04 at one point, and dropping to the lows of $49.92. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether LiveRamp Holdings's current trading price of $51.16 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Let’s take a look at LiveRamp Holdings’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change. See our latest analysis for LiveRamp Holdings The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my valuation model. It’s trading around 15.26% above my intrinsic value, which means if you buy LiveRamp Holdings today, you’d be paying a relatively reasonable price for it. And if you believe the company’s true value is $44.39, there’s only an insignificant downside when the price falls to its real value. Is there another opportunity to buy low in the future? Since LiveRamp Holdings’s share price is quite volatile, we could potentially see it sink lower (or rise higher) in the future, giving us another chance to buy. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for how much the stock moves relative to the rest of the market. Future outlook is an important aspect when you’re looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so let’s also take a look at the company's future expectations. LiveRamp Holdings’s earnings over the next few years are expected to increase by 57%, indicating a highly optimistic future ahead. This should lead to more robust cash flows, feeding into a higher share value. Are you a shareholder?RAMP’s optimistic future growth appears to have been factored into the current share price, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value? Are you a potential investor?If you’ve been keeping an eye on RAMP, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the positive outlook is encouraging for the company, which means it’s worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop. Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on LiveRamp Holdings. You can find everything you need to know about LiveRamp Holdings inthe latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in LiveRamp Holdings, you can use our free platform to see my list of over50 other stocks with a high growth potential. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Do Institutions Own Shares In Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Every investor in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership. Pfizer is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of US$242b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about PFE. See our latest analysis for Pfizer Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing. We can see that Pfizer does have institutional investors; and they hold 75% of the stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Pfizer's earnings history, below. Of course, the future is what really matters. Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Hedge funds don't have many shares in Pfizer. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily. While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. Our data suggests that insiders own under 1% of Pfizer Inc. in their own names. As it is a large company, we'd only expect insiders to own a small percentage of it. But it's worth noting that they own US$161m worth of shares. It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checkingif those insiders have been buying. The general public, with a 24% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Many find it usefulto take an in depth look at how a company has performed in the past. You can accessthisdetailed graphof past earnings, revenue and cash flow. But ultimatelyit is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look atthis free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Here's the Social Security Advice You Really Want Social Securityis a critical part of every American's financial life, and making smart choices about your benefits is one of the most important decisions you'll make with your money. That's why so many people seek out advice on the best way to handle Social Security, and why you'll find that Social Security is one of the most popular topics among those offering advice on financial planning. Over the years, there's been a subtle but persistent shift in the way that you'll see Social Security topics get covered. Even though the underlying way that Social Security works hasn't seen any major changes over that time frame, the most common Social Security advice you'll see looks a lot different. Understanding the reason for that shift is important not just to make the best Social Security decision for your own personal situation but also to put all the financial guidance you receive into the right perspective. Image source: Getty Images. Back in the mid-2000s when I first started writing about Social Security for The Motley Fool, the predominant mindset among financial planners was that the longer you waited to claim retirement benefits, the better off you'd be. Commonly, those writing on the topic would point to the upsides for delaying your benefits: • Monthly payments can be 75% largerif you claim at 70 than if you claim at 62. • The fact that Social Security is guaranteed for life makes it valuable as longevity insurance, and waiting longer to claim is equivalent to spending money to get larger prospective payments in the future. • Your retirement benefit decision has an impact onsurvivor benefitsfor any family members eligible to receive them on your work history, and the longer you wait, the more those surviving family members can get as well. Usually, you'd find a few counterarguments within those articles, coming up with situations in which you'd be better off claiming earlier. You'd also see acknowledgements that for many, waiting simply wasn't a financially viable option. However, the primary point that planners tried to make was that in general, waiting was the right move. Yet by the mid-2010s, that mindset had changed. Suddenly, a host of planners made exactly the opposite argument:Claiming Social Security earlywas actually a smart move. New arguments emerged, including Social Security's own assertion that its payment structure is designed to be claim-date neutral from an actuarial standpoint. Some point to uncertainty about Social Security's future as a reason to grab as much as you can sooner rather than later, and you'll also find more emphasis on the possibility that you won't live to your full life expectancy as a reason not to wait. It'd be natural to look to Social Security itself to explain the change. If there had been any major reform to the program, it might provide the rationale for the shift in sentiment. Yet there weren't any truly large amendments to Social Security's laws. Instead, what changed was the way that financial planners reacted to their audience. Rather than trying to force late-claiming strategies down their clients' throats like a parent trying to get toddlers to eat their vegetables, planners acknowledged thatmost peoplewantedto take their benefits as earlyas they could. After often fruitless attempts to convince their clients otherwise, planners instead inverted their perspective. From there, people's natural tendency towardconfirmation biascreated a feedback loop that heightened the extent of the shift. Readers responded much more favorably to advice telling them that they were smart to do what they were inclined to do anyway. Planners seeking larger audiences saw the favorable attention their peers were getting, and more jumped onto the bandwagon. Even now, you can still see differences in the viewership that people get when they suggest early claiming is the right move compared to those whose opinion is to wait. Financial planning is a business, and like any other business, it depends on customers who are willing to pay attention to what planners suggest. As you're seeking financial advice for your own personal situation, it's important always to put whatever you read into the perspective of the planner who's providing it to you. Knowing that context will help you understand any incentives that could possibly have an influence on what you're reading -- and help protect you from simply accepting something you agree with as fact without further thought. Social Security is a tough area to grasp in full, and one-size-fits-all advice is impossible. That doesn't make what financial planners say about Social Security worthless, but it does make it vital to be able to apply general knowledge well to your own specific situation. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Is There An Opportunity With Pfizer Inc.'s (NYSE:PFE) 50% Undervaluation? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Does the June share price for Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. I will be using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. View our latest analysis for Pfizer We're using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company's growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. To begin with, we have to get estimates of the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars: [{"": "Levered FCF ($, Millions)", "2019": "$15.36k", "2020": "$16.68k", "2021": "$17.23k", "2022": "$21.96k", "2023": "$24.86k", "2024": "$27.22k", "2025": "$29.25k", "2026": "$31.02k", "2027": "$32.59k", "2028": "$34.01k"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x4", "2020": "Analyst x6", "2021": "Analyst x4", "2022": "Analyst x1", "2023": "Analyst x1", "2024": "Est @ 9.49%", "2025": "Est @ 7.46%", "2026": "Est @ 6.04%", "2027": "Est @ 5.05%", "2028": "Est @ 4.35%"}, {"": "Present Value ($, Millions) Discounted @ 7.83%", "2019": "$14.24k", "2020": "$14.35k", "2021": "$13.75k", "2022": "$16.25k", "2023": "$17.06k", "2024": "$17.32k", "2025": "$17.26k", "2026": "$16.98k", "2027": "$16.54k", "2028": "$16.01k"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= $159.75b "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.7%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 7.8%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$34b × (1 + 2.7%) ÷ (7.8% – 2.7%) = US$685b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= $US$685b ÷ ( 1 + 7.8%)10= $322.66b The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is $482.41b. To get the intrinsic value per share, we divide this by the total number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of $86.89. Relative to the current share price of $43.67, the company appears quite undervalued at a 50% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company's future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Pfizer as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 7.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.855. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For Pfizer, There are three pertinent factors you should further research: 1. Financial Health: Does PFE have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does PFE's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of PFE? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the NYSE every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
3 Stocks to Buy With Dividends Yielding More Than 6% Yield-seeking investors often feel they need to take on more risk to score a bigger payout. However, not allhigh-yield dividend stockscarry high levels of risk. Some entities, for example, have above-average yields because they must pay out a larger portion of their cash flow to satisfy an Internal Revenue Service requirement. One such vehicle ismaster limited partnerships(MLPs), which don't have to pay corporate income taxes as long as they pass virtually all their taxable income on to investors. Because of that, most MLPs pay generous high-yielding distributions. That's certainly the case withmidstream energy companiesEnterprise Products Partners(NYSE: EPD),Crestwood Equity Partners(NYSE: CEQP), andMPLX(NYSE: MPLX), which all yield more than 6%. Enterprise Products Partners is one of the largest midstream companies in North America. The MLP operates more than 49,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines as well as storage, processing, and export facilities. Customers typically sign long-term, fee-based contracts to use the capacity of Enterprise's assets, which provides the company with a steady stream of cash flow. The MLP currently distributes about 60% of that money to investors in support of a payout that yields 6%. Enterprise Products Partners uses the rest of that money, as well as its top-tier balance sheet, to expand its midstream footprint. The MLP currently has $5 billion of growth projects under construction, which will grow its cash flow at a moderate pace over the next few years. That should enable the company to continue increasing its high-yielding distribution, which it has done in each of the last 59 straight quarters. Crestwood Equity Partners is a much smaller MLP that primarily focuses on gathering and processing natural gas. Those operations, however, provides the company with stable cash flow backed primarily by fee-based contracts. That enables the company to pay out an attractive distribution, which currently yields 6.8%. Aside from that high yield, the other attraction with Crestwood Equity Partners is its growth prospects. The midstream company recently made aneedle-moving acquisition, which will accelerate its growth profile. That transaction enabled it to take full control of one of its fastest-growing assets and now has the company on track to expand cash flow per share at a more than 20% compound annual rate through 2020. That's the fastest growth rate in its peer group, which makes Crestwood an ideal option for investors who want both a high yield and a rapid growth rate. MPLX has grown into a large-scale MLP over the years through a combination of acquisitions and expansion projects. The company is in the process of completinganother needle-moving transactionthat will broaden its midstream footprint and enhance its growth prospects. Furthermore, the deal will supply the company with even more cash to support its 8.4%-yielding distribution to investors. MPLX should have the fuel to continue increasing that payout in the coming years. Driving that view is the growing backlog of expansion projects MPLX has underway. The MLP has several pipelines, processing, storage, and export projects under construction and recently agreed to invest in a large-scale oil pipeline project andapproved a new gas pipeline project. As these assets enter service over the next few years, they should supply MPLX with enough incremental cash flow to continue increasing its payout at a healthy pace. That would enable the company to maintain its current streak of boosting its distribution, which recently reached 25 consecutive quarters. These three MLPs generate gobs of cash flow as oil and gas pass through their midstream assets. That gives them the money not only to pay high-yielding dividends but invest in expanding their operations. That combination of growth and income could enable investors to earn strong total returns, which is what makes these high-yield stocks such attractive buys these days. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Matthew DiLalloowns shares of Crestwood Equity Partners LP and Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool recommends Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Does The Data Make Wi2Wi Corporation (CVE:YTY) An Attractive Investment? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! As an investor, I look for investments which does not compromise one fundamental factor for another. By this I mean, I look at stocks holistically, from their financial health to their future outlook. In the case of Wi2Wi Corporation (CVE:YTY), it is a company with great financial health as well as a an impressive track record of performance. Below, I've touched on some key aspects you should know on a high level. For those interested in understanding where the figures come from and want to see the analysis, read the fullreport on Wi2Wi here. In the previous year, YTY has ramped up its bottom line by 10%, with its latest earnings level surpassing its average level over the last five years. Not only did YTY outperformed its past performance, its growth also exceeded the Communications industry expansion, which generated a -22% earnings growth. This is an notable feat for the company. YTY's strong financial health means that all of its upcoming liability payments are able to be met by its current cash and short-term investment holdings. This implies that YTY manages its cash and cost levels well, which is a key determinant of the company’s health. Looking at YTY's capital structure, the company has no debt on its balance sheet. This implies that the company is running its operations purely on off equity funding. which is typically normal for a small-cap company. Investors’ risk associated with debt is virtually non-existent and the company has plenty of headroom to grow debt in the future, should the need arise. For Wi2Wi, I've put together three essential factors you should look at: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for YTY’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor YTY’s outlook. 2. Valuation: What is YTY worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether YTY is currently mispriced by the market. 3. Other Attractive Alternatives: Are there other well-rounded stocks you could be holding instead of YTY? Exploreour interactive list of stocks with large potentialto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
One Dead, 10 Injured in South Bend Pub Shooting Sergio Flores/Reuters One person has died and at least 10 people have been injured after a gunman opened fire at local pub in South Bend, Indiana, police said Sunday morning. Local police and the Metro Homicide squad were called to a reported mass shooting at 2 a.m. at Kelly’s Pub in South Bend, Indiana. Local news ABC 57 reports that several victims were taken to area hospitals with gunshot wounds. There is no information on the shooter or motive for the crime. South Bend Mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to give a town hall meeting on Sunday to address concerns after a police shooting last week. This story is developing. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. View comments
5 Most Popular Marijuana Stocks on the Market Right Now What are the most popular marijuana stocks on the market right now? It depends on how you measure popularity. Probably the best way to evaluate the popularity of a stock is to look at its average dailytrading volume. This number provides a great barometer of investor interest in a given stock. You might argue that some very unpopular stocks could have high average trading volumes as investors sell off the stock. While that might be true, remember that there's a buyer on the other end of every one of those transactions. Based on average trading volume, the most popular marijuana stocks on the market right now areAphria(NYSE: APHA),Aurora Cannabis(NYSE: ACB),Canopy Growth(NYSE: CGC),Cronos Group(NASDAQ: CRON), andHEXO(NYSEMKT: HEXO)(TSX: HEXO). This list, by the way, is in alphabetical order and only includes the stocks of companies with a primary focus in the cannabis industry. You might be surprised at how these marijuana stocks rank in terms of their popularity based on average trading volumes, though. Image source: Getty Images. Aurora Cannabis claims the prize as the most popular marijuana stock. And it isn't a close contest. Aurora's average daily trading volume over the last three months is over 17.9 million shares -- nearly three times the second-most-popular marijuana stock's average volume. There are several reasons behind Aurora's popularity with investors. One is thatanalysts have jumped on the stock's bandwagon. Another is that Aurora claims the second-highest market share in Canada's adult-use recreational marijuana market and is the leader in international medical cannabis sales. In addition,Aurora's efforts to find a big partner from outside the cannabis industryhave attracted investors who suspect the company will make one or more deals that send its stock even higher. Cronos Group somewhat surprisingly ranks as the second-most-popular marijuana stock right now. An average of nearly 6.3 million shares of Cronos traded hands each day over the last three months. In contrast to Aurora,analysts have piled onwith negative outlooks for Cronos. However, investors appear to be anticipating that the company will put the$1.8 billion it received from tobacco giantAltria(NYSE: MO)to use in ways that will fuel future growth. Although Canopy Growth is the top marijuana stock in terms of market cap, it stands in third place in terms of popularity among investors. Canopy's average daily trading volume over the last three months is a little over 5 million shares. Canopy has remained highly visible to the investor community with its aggressive expansion efforts. In January, the company announced plans to enter the U.S. hemp market by building a hemp production facility in New York state. Canopy made an even bigger splash in April with itsproposed acquisition of U.S.-based cannabis operatorAcreage Holdings(NASDAQOTH: ACRGF). HEXO claims the No. 4 spot on our list of the most popular marijuana stocks. Its average trading volume of nearly 4.7 million shares isn't too far behind Canopy Growth. Like Aurora, HEXO hasbenefited from some positive analyst coverage. HEXO's 30% market share in Quebec's adult-use recreational marijuana market has also attracted the eyes of investors. In addition, the company's joint venture withMolson Coors Brewing(NYSE: TAP)to develop cannabis-infused beverages for the upcoming expanded market in Canada has some anticipating even stronger growth for HEXO in the near future. It wasn't all that long ago that Aphria might have been viewed as one of the mostunpopularmarijuana stocks. Now, though, Aphria ranks fifth in popularity based on its average daily trading volume of 4.2 million shares. My view is that many investors realize that Aphria perhaps hasthe most upside potentialover the near term of any of the top Canadian marijuana stocks. Aphria trails only Aurora and Canopy Growth in terms of production capacity. It's in solid shape in Canadian and international markets. Most importantly, Aphria's valuation looks attractive relative to its production capacity. In high school, being voted most popular was just one of the honors that students could receive. Another one was "most likely to succeed." This second distinction is what investors should focus on more than popularity when it comes to buying stocks. Which of these popular marijuana stocks is the most likely to succeed? My view is that it comes down to which company scores best overall on the three Cs -- capacity, cash, and connections. Capacity and cash are self-explanatory. By connections, I'm referring to key partnerships with major companies. Using these three Cs, I think that Canopy Growth is the most likely to succeed among these stocks. The company has tremendous production capacity, trailing only Aurora. It has the most cash. Canopy also has a big partner,Constellation Brands(NYSE: STZ), with a great track record in launching consumer brands. Although Canopy Growth might not be the most popular marijuana stock right now, it seems to have the best shot at achieving huge success over the long run. More From The Motley Fool • Beginner's Guide to Investing in Marijuana Stocks • Marijuana Stocks Are Overhyped: 10 Better Buys for You Now • Your 2019 Guide to Investing in Marijuana Stocks Keith Speightshas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Constellation Brands, and HEXO. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
An Examination Of Wi2Wi Corporation (CVE:YTY) Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Attractive stocks have exceptional fundamentals. In the case of Wi2Wi Corporation (CVE:YTY), there's is a company with great financial health as well as a a strong history of performance. Below is a brief commentary on these key aspects. For those interested in digger a bit deeper into my commentary, take a look at thereport on Wi2Wi here. YTY delivered a bottom-line expansion of 10% in the prior year, with its most recent earnings level surpassing its average level over the last five years. Not only did YTY outperformed its past performance, its growth also exceeded the Communications industry expansion, which generated a -22% earnings growth. This paints a buoyant picture for the company. YTY's strong financial health means that all of its upcoming liability payments are able to be met by its current cash and short-term investment holdings. This indicates that YTY has sufficient cash flows and proper cash management in place, which is a crucial insight into the health of the company. YTY currently has no debt on its balance sheet. This means it is running its business only on equity capital funding, which is typically normal for a small-cap company. Investors’ risk associated with debt is virtually non-existent and the company has plenty of headroom to grow debt in the future, should the need arise. For Wi2Wi, I've compiled three fundamental factors you should further research: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for YTY’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor YTY’s outlook. 2. Valuation: What is YTY worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether YTY is currently mispriced by the market. 3. Other Attractive Alternatives: Are there other well-rounded stocks you could be holding instead of YTY? Exploreour interactive list of stocks with large potentialto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Those Who Purchased ATAC Resources (CVE:ATC) Shares Five Years Ago Have A 79% Loss To Show For It Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! ATAC Resources Ltd.(CVE:ATC) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 20% in the last month. But will that heal all the wounds inflicted over 5 years of declines? Unlikely. In fact, the share price has tumbled down a mountain to land 79% lower after that period. While the recent increase might be a green shoot, we're certainly hesitant to rejoice. The fundamental business performance will ultimately determine if the turnaround can be sustained. Check out our latest analysis for ATAC Resources With zero revenue generated over twelve months, we don't think that ATAC Resources has proved its business plan yet. We can't help wondering why it's publicly listed so early in its journey. Are venture capitalists not interested? So it seems shareholders are too busy dreaming about the progress to come than dwelling on the current (lack of) revenue. It seems likely some shareholders believe that ATAC Resources will find or develop a valuable new mine before too long. We think companies that have neither significant revenues nor profits are pretty high risk. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some such companies do very well over the long term, others become hyped up by promoters before eventually falling back down to earth, and going bankrupt (or being recapitalized). It certainly is a dangerous place to invest, as ATAC Resources investors might realise. Our data indicates that ATAC Resources had CA$3,233,547 more in total liabilities than it had cash, when it last reported in March 2019. That makes it extremely high risk, in our view. But with the share price diving 27% per year, over 5 years, it's probably fair to say that some shareholders no longer believe the company will succeed. You can see in the image below, how ATAC Resources's cash levels have changed over time (click to see the values). It can be extremely risky to invest in a company that doesn't even have revenue. There's no way to know its value easily. Would it bother you if insiders were selling the stock? I would feel more nervous about the company if that were so. It only takes a moment for you tocheck whether we have identified any insider sales recently. While the broader market gained around 0.8% in the last year, ATAC Resources shareholders lost 56%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 27% per year over five years. We realise that Buffett has said investors should 'buy when there is blood on the streets', but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. You might want to assessthis data-rich visualizationof its earnings, revenue and cash flow. But note:ATAC Resources may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at thisfreelist of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast). Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on CA exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Comedian Jason Jones: This career is 'a marathon' Comedian Jason Jones was on Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" for nearly a decade before landing at TBS for his show "The Detour." But slow and steady wins the race for Jones, he told Jen Rogers onYahoo Finance's My Three Cents. “I was on a very successful show. A lot of me wanted to leave that show because of frustrations or whatever, not enough time on the air, but I stayed because it was the right thing to do. It was the patient route to go," he said. Jones credits that patience and his work ethic (he still holds the record for the most field shoots in "The Daily Show" history) for his success today. He says he learned both growing up in Canada, watching his hard-working parents -- especially his father who worked in steel mills. “Their parents made them work; my parents made us work,” explained Jones who got his first job (a paper route) at age 13. “There's no expectations in our life. I think we just want to work for everything. I think maybe that's where it comes from.” Before his big break, Jones waited tables for 15 long years. Along the way, he took small acting gigs, including what he calls one of his worst jobs: dubbing a popular Japanese television drama into English. “We didn’t really have scripts and we’d always throw in the phrase ‘You know what I’m talking about?” he recalled, laughing. “They're so bad. So, so terrible.” Today, Jones is at the top of his game, as the star and executive producer of “The Detour”, which he created with his wife, Samantha Bee. (He also serves as executive producer of her TBS series, “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”.) Looking back, he’s grateful that he stayed on “The Daily Show” for so many years. "It's a marathon, this career. Everyone thinks it's a sprint, and they want it now, now, now, now. What I did have was patience, because it got me to where I am. I didn't jump too fast," Jones recalled. His advice to his younger self today? "I think the thing I would go back and say to myself is, ‘Quit being so frustrated, man. Just be cool.’ Ultimately, I still made the right choice to stay and be patient, but I would go, ‘Relax. Take a breath. Just enjoy life. You got it pretty good right now.’" My Three Centsis a weekly interview series that explores celebrities’ history with — and relationship to — money. Find it exclusively onYahoo Finance. Jen Rogers is an anchor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter@JenSaidIt. Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance More from My Three Cents • ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ star Ellie Kemper explains why it’s okay to be a quitter • Star Comedian Nick Kroll has ‘a major opinion about Facebook as a stock’ Follow Yahoo Finance onTwitter,Facebook,Instagram,Flipboard,SmartNews,LinkedIn,YouTube, andreddit.
How Many Hospitality Properties Trust (NASDAQ:HPT) Shares Do Institutions Own? Want to participate in a short research study ? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! A look at the shareholders of Hospitality Properties Trust ( NASDAQ:HPT ) can tell us which group is most powerful. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership. Hospitality Properties Trust is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of US$4.1b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. In the chart below below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about HPT. Check out our latest analysis for Hospitality Properties Trust NasdaqGS:HPT Ownership Summary, June 23rd 2019 What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Hospitality Properties Trust? Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index. Hospitality Properties Trust already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own 78% of the company. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Hospitality Properties Trust, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. NasdaqGS:HPT Income Statement, June 23rd 2019 Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Hospitality Properties Trust is not owned by hedge funds. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future. Story continues Insider Ownership Of Hospitality Properties Trust The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions. Our most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of Hospitality Properties Trust. It is a pretty big company, so it would be possible for board members to own a meaningful interest in the company, without owning much of a proportional interest. In this case, they own around US$13m worth of shares (at current prices). Arguably, recent buying and selling is just as important to consider. You can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling. General Public Ownership The general public holds a 21% stake in HPT. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders. Next Steps: While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. I like to dive deeper into how a company has performed in the past. You can access this interactive graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free . If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts . NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com . This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
What Kind Of Investor Owns Most Of Hospitality Properties Trust (NASDAQ:HPT)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! If you want to know who really controls Hospitality Properties Trust (NASDAQ:HPT), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership. Hospitality Properties Trust has a market capitalization of US$4.1b, so it's too big to fly under the radar. We'd expect to see both institutions and retail investors owning a portion of the company. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about HPT. See our latest analysis for Hospitality Properties Trust Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices. We can see that Hospitality Properties Trust does have institutional investors; and they hold 78% of the stock. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone, since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Hospitality Properties Trust, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Hedge funds don't have many shares in Hospitality Properties Trust. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too. The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions. Our most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of Hospitality Properties Trust. Keep in mind that it's a big company, and the insiders own US$13m worth of shares. The absolute value might be more important than the proportional share. It is always good to see at least some insider ownership, but it might be worth checkingif those insiders have been selling. The general public, with a 21% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders. While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. I like to dive deeperinto how a company has performed in the past. You can accessthisinteractive graphof past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free. Ultimatelythe future is most important. You can access thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Roper Technologies, Inc.'s (NYSE:ROP) Earnings Grew 7.6%, Did It Beat Long-Term Trend? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Understanding Roper Technologies, Inc.'s (NYSE:ROP) performance as a company requires examining more than earnings from one point in time. Today I will take you through a basic sense check to gain perspective on how Roper Technologies is doing by evaluating its latest earnings with its longer term trend as well as its industry peers' performance over the same period. See our latest analysis for Roper Technologies ROP's trailing twelve-month earnings (from 31 March 2019) of US$1.1b has increased by 7.6% compared to the previous year. However, this one-year growth rate has been lower than its average earnings growth rate over the past 5 years of 13%, indicating the rate at which ROP is growing has slowed down. Why could this be happening? Well, let’s take a look at what’s transpiring with margins and if the entire industry is facing the same headwind. In terms of returns from investment, Roper Technologies has fallen short of achieving a 20% return on equity (ROE), recording 14% instead. Furthermore, its return on assets (ROA) of 8.3% is below the US Industrials industry of 11%, indicating Roper Technologies's are utilized less efficiently. And finally, its return on capital (ROC), which also accounts for Roper Technologies’s debt level, has declined over the past 3 years from 11% to 10%. This correlates with an increase in debt holding, with debt-to-equity ratio rising from 53% to 55% over the past 5 years. While past data is useful, it doesn’t tell the whole story. While Roper Technologies has a good historical track record with positive growth and profitability, there's no certainty that this will extrapolate into the future. I recommend you continue to research Roper Technologies to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ROP’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor ROP’s outlook. 2. Financial Health: Are ROP’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out ourfinancial health checks here. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 March 2019. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
With EPS Growth And More, Roper Technologies (NYSE:ROP) Is Interesting Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! For beginners, it can seem like a good idea (and an exciting prospect) to buy a company that tells a good story to investors, even if it completely lacks a track record of revenue and profit. Unfortunately, high risk investments often have little probability of ever paying off, and many investors pay a price to learn their lesson. If, on the other hand, you like companies that have revenue, and even earn profits, then you may well be interested inRoper Technologies(NYSE:ROP). While profit is not necessarily a social good, it's easy to admire a business than can consistently produce it. Loss-making companies are always racing against time to reach financial sustainability, but time is often a friend of the profitable company, especially if it is growing. See our latest analysis for Roper Technologies As one of my mentors once told me, share price follows earnings per share (EPS). Therefore, there are plenty of investors who like to buy shares in companies that are growing EPS. Roper Technologies managed to grow EPS by 16% per year, over three years. That's a good rate of growth, if it can be sustained. I like to see top-line growth as an indication that growth is sustainable, and I look for a high earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margin to point to a competitive moat (though some companies with low margins also have moats). Roper Technologies maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 12% to US$5.3b. That's a real positive. You can take a look at the company's revenue and earnings growth trend, in the chart below. For finer detail, click on the image. Of course the knack is to find stocks that have their best days in the future, not in the past. You could base your opinion on past performance, of course, but you may also want tocheck this interactive graph of professional analyst EPS forecasts for Roper Technologies. Since Roper Technologies has a market capitalization of US$38b, we wouldn't expect insiders to hold a large percentage of shares. But we are reassured by the fact they have invested in the company. Notably, they have an enormous stake in the company, worth US$204m. I would find that kind of skin in the game quite encouraging, if I owned shares, since it would ensure that the leaders of the company would also experience my success, or failure, with the stock. One important encouraging feature of Roper Technologies is that it is growing profits. If that's not enough on its own, there is also the rather notable levels of insider ownership. That combination appeals to me, for one. So yes, I do think the stock is worth keeping an eye on. Of course, identifying quality businesses is only half the battle; investors need to know whether the stock is undervalued. So you might want to consider thisfreediscounted cashflow valuationof Roper Technologies. Although Roper Technologies certainly looks good to me, I would like it more if insiders were buying up shares. If you like to see insider buying, too, then thisfreelist of growing companies that insiders are buying, could be exactly what you're looking for. Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Seaspan Corporation (NYSE:SSW): Time For A Financial Health Check Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Small and large cap stocks are widely popular for a variety of reasons, however, mid-cap companies such as Seaspan Corporation (NYSE:SSW), with a market cap of US$2.1b, often get neglected by retail investors. However, history shows that overlooked mid-cap companies have performed better on a risk-adjusted manner than the smaller and larger segment of the market. SSW’s financial liquidity and debt position will be analysed in this article, to get an idea of whether the company can fund opportunities for strategic growth and maintain strength through economic downturns. Note that this information is centred entirely on financial health and is a top-level understanding, so I encourage you to look furtherinto SSW here. Check out our latest analysis for Seaspan SSW's debt levels surged from US$4.4b to US$5.0b over the last 12 months , which accounts for long term debt. With this growth in debt, SSW currently has US$626m remaining in cash and short-term investments to keep the business going. Additionally, SSW has generated US$537m in operating cash flow over the same time period, leading to an operating cash to total debt ratio of 11%, signalling that SSW’s debt is not covered by operating cash. Looking at SSW’s US$1b in current liabilities, the company arguably has a rather low level of current assets relative its obligations, with the current ratio last standing at 0.95x. The current ratio is calculated by dividing current assets by current liabilities. With total debt exceeding equity, SSW is considered a highly levered company. This is not uncommon for a mid-cap company given that debt tends to be lower-cost and at times, more accessible. We can test if SSW’s debt levels are sustainable by measuring interest payments against earnings of a company. Ideally, earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) should cover net interest by at least three times. For SSW, the ratio of 2.22x suggests that interest is not strongly covered, which means that debtors may be less inclined to loan the company more money, reducing its headroom for growth through debt. SSW’s high cash coverage means that, although its debt levels are high, the company is able to utilise its borrowings efficiently in order to generate cash flow. Though its low liquidity raises concerns over whether current asset management practices are properly implemented for the mid-cap. Keep in mind I haven't considered other factors such as how SSW has been performing in the past. I recommend you continue to research Seaspan to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for SSW’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor SSW’s outlook. 2. Valuation: What is SSW worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether SSW is currently mispriced by the market. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Here's What the Average Older American Has in a 401(k) Once you reach your mid-60s, retirement is just around the corner, which means you have limited time to boost your savings before your career comes to a close. Unfortunately, many Americans risk running low on money in retirement, and it's all because their savings aren't as robust as they should be. The average 401(k) balance among workers 65 and older is $192,877, according toVanguard's "How America Saves 2019" report. That might seem like a lot of money, but in reality, it's a fairly small sum over the course of what could be a 30-year retirement. Furthermore, while the average 401(k) balance among older Americans is $192,877, themedianbalance is just $58,035. And when the median is much lower than the average, it means that most adults 65 and over havelessthan the average, not more. Now to be fair, these figures represent Vanguard retirement plans only. But given that Vanguard serves more than 5 million participants, it's a pretty decent sample size. And it should serve as a wake-up call for those older Americans who are about to retire with inadequate savings. A savings balance of $192,877 might seem like a lot of money initially, but when we break down that sum on a yearly basis, it actually amounts to very little. If you follow the4% rule, which states that if you begin by withdrawing 4% of your savings balance your first year of retirement and then adjust subsequent withdrawals for inflation, $192,877 gives you just $7,715 in annual income. That's less than $650 a month. Granted, you'll most likely have Social Security income on top of the money you're able to withdraw from savings, but keep in mind that theaverage recipient todayonly collects $1,461 a month, or $17,532 a year, in benefits. Combined with the average savings balance, that's roughly $2,100 a month, or just over $25,000 a year, to live on, which is not a whole lot. So what should you do if you're nearing retirement without enough savings? For one thing, consider working longer. Extending your career will allow you to leave your existing savings untapped for a few extra years, thereby allowing you to stretch that money further. Additionally, if you're able to work, say, three years more than planned, and contribute $10,000 a year to your 401(k) during that time, you'll have $30,000 more to work with in retirement, not including potential investment growth. That additional $30,000 then gives you $1,200 more per year, or $100 more per month, in usable income. Working longer could also enable you to hold off on filing for Social Security, and that's important, because for each year youdelay benefits past full retirement age(which is either 66, 67, or somewhere in between, depending on your year of birth), you'll boost those payments by 8% a year. For example, delaying a $1,461 monthly benefit for three years would raise each monthly payment to $1,812, thereby giving you an extra $350 per month of income, or $4,200 a year. In addition to extending your career, it pays to consider working in some capacity during retirement if you're short on savings. Earning even $100 a week could alter your financial picture for the better. Plus, working is an inexpensive way to fill your free time, and if you're low on retirement income, it's a good way to avoid getting bored. While it's encouraging to see that older Americans havesomesavings for their golden years, even a number as seemingly impressive as $192,877 may not cut it. If you're nearing retirement, take an honest look at your savings, and adjust your plans as necessary so you don't wind up cash-strapped once your career ends. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) Insiders Have Been Selling Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So before you buy or sellVerint Systems Inc.(NASDAQ:VRNT), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling. Most investors know that it is quite permissible for company leaders, such as directors of the board, to buy and sell stock on the market. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information. Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. For example, a Harvard Universitystudyfound that 'insider purchases earn abnormal returns of more than 6% per year.' View our latest analysis for Verint Systems In the last twelve months, the biggest single sale by an insider was when the Chairman, Dan Bodner, sold US$4.9m worth of shares at a price of US$63.20 per share. That means that an insider was selling shares at around the current price of US$55.36. We generally don't like to see insider selling, but the lower the sale price, the more it concerns us. Given that the sale took place at around current prices, it makes us a little cautious but is hardly a major concern. We note that in the last year insiders divested 349k shares for a total of US$19m. Insiders in Verint Systems didn't buy any shares in the last year. You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction! I will like Verint Systems better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out thisfreelist of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying. The last three months saw significant insider selling at Verint Systems. Specifically, insiders ditched US$11m worth of shares in that time, and we didn't record any purchases whatsoever. Overall this makes us a bit cautious, but it's not the be all and end all. Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. A high insider ownership often makes company leadership more mindful of shareholder interests. Insiders own 1.4% of Verint Systems shares, worth about US$50m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders. Insiders sold stock recently, but they haven't been buying. Looking to the last twelve months, our data doesn't show any insider buying. On the plus side, Verint Systems makes money, and is growing profits. Insiders own shares, but we're still pretty cautious, given the history of sales. We're in no rush to buy! Of course,the future is what matters most. So if you are interested in Verint Systems, you should check out thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. Of courseVerint Systems may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see thisfreecollection of high quality companies. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. (NYSE:NGVC) Insiders Have Been Selling Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So shareholders might well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling shares inNatural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc.(NYSE:NGVC). It is perfectly legal for company insiders, including board members, to buy and sell stock in a company. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information. We don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But equally, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. For example, a Harvard Universitystudyfound that 'insider purchases earn abnormal returns of more than 6% per year.' See our latest analysis for Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by the , Lark Isely, for US$190k worth of shares, at about US$19.00 per share. While we don't usually like to see insider selling, it's more concerning if the sales take price at a lower price. It's of some comfort that this sale was conducted at a price well above the current share price, which is US$9.61. So it may not tell us anything about how insiders feel about the current share price. In the last twelve months insiders netted US$243k for 12484 shares sold. In the last year Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage insiders didn't buy any company stock. You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction! For those who like to findwinning investmentsthisfreelist of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage insiders own 47% of the company, currently worth about US$101m based on the recent share price. Most shareholders would be happy to see this sort of insider ownership, since it suggests that management incentives are well aligned with other shareholders. There haven't been any insider transactions in the last three months -- that doesn't mean much. It's heartening that insiders own plenty of stock, but we'd like to see more insider buying, since the last year of Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage insider transactions don't fill us with confidence. Of course,the future is what matters most. So if you are interested in Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, you should check out thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss thisfreelist of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Do Institutions Own Shares In Performant Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:PFMT)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! A look at the shareholders of Performant Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:PFMT) can tell us which group is most powerful. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership. Performant Financial is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of US$60m, which means it wouldn't have the attention of many institutional investors. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholder can tell us about PFMT. Check out our latest analysis for Performant Financial Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing. We can see that Performant Financial does have institutional investors; and they hold 36% of the stock. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Performant Financial, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. It would appear that 12% of Performant Financial shares are controlled by hedge funds. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. There is some analyst coverage of the stock, but it could still become more well known, with time. The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances. I can report that insiders do own shares in Performant Financial Corporation. It has a market capitalization of just US$60m, and insiders have US$2.8m worth of shares, in their own names. This shows at least some alignment, but I usually like to see larger insider holdings. You canclick here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling. The general public, with a 14% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. With a stake of 32%, private equity firms could influence the PFMT board. Sometimes we see private equity stick around for the long term, but generally speaking they have a shorter investment horizon and -- as the name suggests -- don't invest in public companies much. After some time they may look to sell and redeploy capital elsewhere. While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. I always like to check for ahistory of revenue growth. You can too, by accessing this free chart ofhistoric revenue and earnings in thisdetailed graph. Ultimatelythe future is most important. You can access thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Stella McCartney: "I didn’t have a huge amount of money as a kid" Sir Paul McCartney and his daughter Stella after the Stella McCartney Spring/Summer 2008 collection fashion show during Paris Fashion Week. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty Images) Stella McCartney had to buy clothes from second-hand shops as a child - as her mega rich parents didn’t give her much cash. The world renowned fashion designer said Beatle Paul McCartney and wife Linda, were ‘really clever’ for attempting to make their children’s childhood as normal as possible. Talking to Net-a-Porter, the 47-year-old said: “I’ve grown up in a family that doesn’t chuck stuff away. Read more: Stella McCartney remembers Lagerfeld: ‘You will be very missed’ “And it sounds silly, but I didn’t have a huge amount of money as a kid. My mum and dad were really clever; I went to a comprehensive school and I wasn’t given a load of cash, so I would go to vintage and second-hand shops and markets to buy clothes. “I think that’s kind of the future, and I would encourage kids to rent clothes and buy second-hand because you don’t have to always go for that quick fix. It’s way more exciting and cooler.” McCartney went on to explain her mother, animal rights activist and vegetarian food entrepreneur Linda McCartney was her ‘big inspiration’. Talking of her mum, who died from breast cancer in 1998, McCartney said: “My mum was my big inspiration. “I think she had the coolest sense of style ever, but for me it was cool because it was her. It was a true reflection of her really not giving a s**t what people thought and, being the wife of a Beatle, I think that’s pretty impressive. Beatles star Paul McCartney with his wife Linda and members of their family, Heather (left), 17, James, 2, Stella (centre), 8, and Mary, 10, at Heathrow Airport in London as they left for New York on Concorde. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images) “It’s not that she was overtly confident, it’s just that she really knew herself and wasn’t afraid to be herself. So I admire women who have a real level of honesty through what they wear.” Read more: Sir Paul McCartney celebrates decade of Meat Free Monday with viral campaign It was recently announced McCartney has designed tennis kits for the upcoming Wimbledon tournament. The designs were created using material made from plastic waste taken from beaches before reaching the ocean, and a synthetic fibre made from plastic bottles and old clothes.
4 Big Reasons Bitcoin’s Price Will Probably Not Stop at $20K This Time As bitcoin’s price keeps settingnew yearly highs, the question on everyone’s mind right now is whether it’s different this time. Let’s take a closer look at why this rally is nothing like the “bubble” in 2017. Bitcoin all-time performance. Source: coin360.com As many experts pointed out, BTC going above the key psychological $10,000 mark is likely to trigger FOMO (i.e., fear of missing out), according to Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, whoaddsthat bitcoin can now easily take out its all-time highs. Other market analysts, such as Tone Vays, however, disagree. HetoldCointelegraph: “I actually don’t think it’s important at all. The $10,000 benchmark did nothing to slow down price back in 2017. And it looks like it did nothing to slow down the prices here in 2019.” Bitcoin broke through into the mainstream in late 2017. At the time, its historic surge to nearly $20,000 was driven mainly by retail investors. This time, however, the public is still largely on the sidelines,accordingto Google Trends. In fact, the number of Google searches for “bitcoin” is only around 10% of what they were in 2017. In other words, retail investor FOMO has not even started yet, which may suggest that BTC price could go much higher than last time. On the other hand, institutional demand for bitcoin hassoared. As of June 17, open interest at CME Group saw 5,311 contracts totalling 26,555 BTC, or approximately $246 million — dwarfing the volumes during the 2017 price peak. “CME Bitcoin futures (BTC) shows growing signs of institutional interest,” CME GrouptweetedJune 18. “BTC open interest rose by a record 643 contracts in a single day, establishing a new all-time high of 5,311 contracts on June 17 (26,555 equivalent bitcoin; ~$250M notional).” Other indicators, such as theGBTCprice premium as well asrecord volumefor bitcoin derivatives exchange BitMEX (on a Saturday!), also suggests that “smart money” is pouring in. As Cointelegraphreportedon Friday, hash rate hit a new all-time high at over 65,000,000 TH/s. In other words, Bitcoin is more secure than ever and would require an unfathomable amount of computing power to affect the network. Bitcoin network Hash Rate. Source: blockchain.com Meanwhile, other fundamentals have also grown in lockstep with hash rate. Daily on-chain transaction volume, block size and othermetricsare also confirming that more people than ever are using bitcoin. Additionally, network transaction fees have remained relatively low compared to 2017, with optimizations likeSegWitand off-chain scaling solutions like theLightning networkhelping ease congestion. The latest rally to five figures is also happening way before the Bitcoin block rewardhalvingset for May 2020. This is when mining block rewards will be cut from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC, thus reducing the bitcoins minted by miners who are naturally market sellers. Interestingly, the previous halving event occurred in the summer of 2016 — or more than a year before the price skyrocketed.This time, however, BTC/USD appears to be front-running the event, as the halving is still 333 days away. A popular bitcoin market analyst known as PlanB suggests that investors may not be waiting this time around for the expected reduction in supply. Headded: “Front running would be in line with Efficient Market Hypothesis: if you believe S2F and that BTC will be $50k May 2020, why wait?” Of course, intraday BTC price moves are not as important for low time preference investors. These “hodlers” are confident that bitcoin — with its fixed supply — will outperform fiat currencies, whose supply is growing at an accelerating pace over the long term. On June 18, European Central Bank head Mario Draghihintedthat a monetary stimulus is on the way if the economy doesn’t improve. This is an increasingly dovish tone that was applauded by the financial sector. At the same time, Draghi was criticized by United States President Donald Trump, who said this would spark unfair European competition against the U.S., whoseFederal Reserve bankis alsosuggestingit will hold off on raising interest rates. Morgan Creek co-founder Anthony Pomplianotweetedthat this will make bitcoin even more scarce as interest rates go lower and more fiat currency is created: “Cut rates. Therefore, the biggest macroeconomic picture looks bright for bitcoin investors who are dumping ever-depreciating fiat currencies for hard-capped “digital gold.” What’s more, investors are starting to not only realize that bitcoin’s supply is fixed and transparent, but it’s also the world’s first neutral, open-access money that no authority can control. In other words, what the internet did to information, bitcoin is starting to do to money. Historic BTC market cycles, rising institutional interest alongside an increasingly robust network fundamentals, as well as the confirmed depreciating value of fiat currencies, could all propel bitcoin’s price orders of magnitude higher than in 2017. Crypto markets one-week performance. Source: coin360.com • Key Bitcoin Price Indicator Suggests $21,000 ‘Fair Value’ By End Of 2019 • ETH Hits 10-Month High as Crypto Markets See Solid Green • Bitcoin Breaks $10,000 for First Time Since March 2018 • Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital to Launch Crypto Options Contracts Trading: Report
Here’s How to Become a 401(k) Millionaire Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a millionaire by saving just in your 401(k)? It's a serious question. After all, roughly half of Americans think they need $1 million to retire on -- and where better to save that money than in a tax-advantaged account like your 401(k)? The important thing is to start early and save as much as you can. Image source: Getty Images. That was pretty general, so let's put some numbers to it. We'll try to assume fairly typical circumstances. Let's have our fictional worker currently earning the U.S. median household income of $61,372 (per the U.S. Census). That person contributes 10% of their pay to a 401(k) and receives a typical 4% company match. (Per a recent Fidelity study, it's actually more like 4.7%, but that's an increase from the recent past, so let's round down to be conservative.) Let's also assume that person receives a 2% raise each year, roughly in line with inflation, and that the funds in their 401(k) return 7% annually, similar with historical market returns. After 30 years, that person will have $1,066,613. So with enough time, it's possible to build a $1 million 401(k) on a typical salary with a 10% savings rate. Of course, not everyone has 30 years until retirement -- so let's take a step back and consider the primary levers someone could pull to speed up their move to 401(k) millionaire status. • Save more.Someone just like the person I described above who contributed 15% annually instead of 10% would get to millionaire status faster: They'd cross over after just 26 years instead of 30. And at 20%, that number shrinks to 24 years. Here aresome tips for saving more moneyif this is the route you decide to travel. • Match more.If you can't withhold more from your paycheck, another route is to try to convince your company to make its 401(k) match more generous. If you take the scenario I ran above at a 10% savings rate and boost the match to 5%, the worker will cross into 401(k) millionaire status in 29 years instead of 30 -- and 28 years if the match increases to 6%. Glassdoor has agreat write-upon ways to convince your employer, if you're looking for more information. • Earn more.Easier said than done, right? But the fact of the matter is that getting a raise is perhaps the biggest leverage point for increasing the speed with which you build your retirement savings. That's for two reasons: First off, if you save the same percentage off a higher salary, that's more money. If someone just bumps up from 2% annual raises to 3% off the base case I shared above -- that is, 10% deferral to 401(k) and a 4% company match -- they'd achieve 401(k) millionaire status after 28 years. But there's another benefit: If you've gotten used to living off a certain amount and then receive a sizable raise, you could just continue living as you had been... and bankallthe extra money.That's where the math starts getting really interesting. Let's take the 3% annual raise case I just described -- again, with the median household income -- and let's pretend that instead of continuing to defer 10% of their salary after the first year, the worker instead only grows their expenses 2% per year and banks all the rest. They'll cross into 401(k) millionaire status after just 24 years. If they only grow their expenses by 1% annually and bank the rest in their 401(k), they'll get to millionaire status after just 21 years. The fact of the matter is that anyone hoping to achieve 401(k) millionaire status -- assuming they're starting today -- needs time and continual financial contributions to make it happen. Fortunately, the two trade off with each other, so if you have a great deal of one, you won't need as much of the other. Regardless of whether or not you're on track to achieve millionaire status, the most important thing is to keep chipping away at yourlong-term retirement needsby contributing whatever you can toward your nest egg. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Could The Performant Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:PFMT) Ownership Structure Tell Us Something Useful? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Every investor in Performant Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:PFMT) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership. Performant Financial is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of US$60m, which means it wouldn't have the attention of many institutional investors. In the chart below below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholder can tell us about PFMT. Check out our latest analysis for Performant Financial Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices. Performant Financial already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own 36% of the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone, since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Performant Financial, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. It would appear that 12% of Performant Financial shares are controlled by hedge funds. That's interesting, because hedge funds can be quite active and activist. Many look for medium term catalysts that will drive the share price higher. While there is some analyst coverage, the company is probably not widely covered. So it could gain more attention, down the track. The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. I can report that insiders do own shares in Performant Financial Corporation. In their own names, insiders own US$2.8m worth of stock in the US$60m company. This shows at least some alignment, but I usually like to see larger insider holdings. You canclick here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling. The general public, with a 14% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders. With an ownership of 32%, private equity firms are in a position to play a role in shaping corporate strategy with a focus on value creation. Some might like this, because private equity are sometimes activists who hold management accountable. But other times, private equity is selling out, having taking the company public. It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Performant Financial better, we need to consider many other factors. I like to dive deeperinto how a company has performed in the past. You can accessthisinteractive graphof past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free. If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss thisfreereport on analyst forecasts. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
A retail rainbow: Vendors mark LGBTQ Pride on sales racks NEW YORK (AP) — Major retailers have diversified their inventory for Pride month, selling apparel and other goods that celebrate LGBTQ culture to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising . In New York City, Macy's flagship store is adorned with rainbow-colored Pride tribute windows, set in the same space as its famous Christmas displays. Times Square's digital billboards are splashed with pitches for Pride-linked clothing and cosmetics sold at Sephora, CoverGirl and Levi's stores nearby. But this year, the truly game-changing Pride sales scene is not in cutting-edge New York. In 25 years working for organizations devoted to LGBTQ causes, "this is absolutely the first year that I have noticed the retail celebration of Pride moving from larger coastal cities to smaller towns and cities," said Stephen Macias, the Los Angeles-based head of the Diversity & Inclusion department at the MWWPR global publicity firm. He was taken aback by what he saw visiting his childhood hometown, Fresno, California, in an agricultural part of the state politically distant from liberal Los Angeles and San Francisco. "When I went home to Fresno, where I was bullied at the mall as an effeminate kid, I was looking at so many stores with rainbow flags, Pride displays and same-sex families set up in the windows," Macias said. "I was shocked that in Middle America, we were being celebrated. It was no problem, with each store trying to outdo the others." In Oklahoma City, the locally owned Red Coyote Running and Fitness displayed shoes with rainbow Pride flags planted in them. On Saturday, it sponsored an inaugural "Love Run" race, complete with rainbow medals. The retail push in large part is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, days of protests touched off by a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Story continues It took decades, but American businesses in recent years have introduced more LGBTQ-themed items, no longer considering them anathema to mass marketing. The LGBTQ presence in retail has never been as visibly mainstream as in 2019. "A dozen years ago, the conventional wisdom among retailers was that reaching out to the LGBTQ community means losing to the rest of consumers," Macias said. "But the retail landscape turned out to be different; the fear of backlash by supporting LGBTQ consumers never materialized in any meaningful way." Not everyone praises the Pride merchandising, which some see as thinly disguised corporate promotion. "Major corporations have turned LGBT struggles into marketing moments to make themselves look good," said Bill Dobbs, a longtime New York gay activist. "The modern movement for gay rights was jump-started by Stonewall, and it's still a battle for the lives of LGBT people — not about selling trinkets and clothes with rainbow colors. They're a distraction." Some companies participating in Pride campaigns have also been criticized for having their apparel made in countries where being gay is illegal, or where persecution is commonplace. "Some people in these corporations may have good intentions, but it's just a marketing tactic," said Terry Roethlein, a volunteer with the Reclaim Pride Coalition, which opposes major corporate sponsorship of New York's LGBTQ events. "So many things that we sell in this country are produced in all kinds of deplorable conditions abroad," Roethlein said. "And that's just another problem with retailing pride products — part of the unscrupulous nature of these marketing efforts. We want queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism." Many companies with Pride-branded apparel lines are also making donations to LGBTQ organizations or are giving a percentage of their sales. H&M is putting 10% of the sales from its "Love for All" collection to the United Nations campaign against the criminalization of LGBTQ people. UGG footware is donating 25% of its proceeds from sales of "Yeah Pride" slippers this month to benefit Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation. Target, which is selling family-themed Pride merchandise, including toddler T-shirts that read "Love my Dads" and "Love my Moms," is donating $100,000 to GLSEN, an organization focused on ensuring safe schools for LGBTQ students. Profits from American Apparel's Stonewall-themed T-shirts are going to an initiative that provides cosmetics to low-income transgender women of color. Macy's sponsored dozens of Pride parades across the country this year, with employees marching in them. It is encouraging shoppers to make donations at the register to The Trevor Project, a youth suicide prevention and crisis service. It is also donating $4 to The Trevor Project for every Pride-branded INC brand shirt it sells, or $2 for every set of INC socks. "The giving campaign, with proceeds from the pride collection, is fundamental for an organization supporting diversity and inclusion," said Abigail James, a Macy's senior vice president. "That's a core value for us, it's something that is a part of who we are in a world that has changed and evolved." ___ Associated Press photojournalist Sue Ogrocki in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
What Kind Of Investor Owns Most Of Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! The big shareholder groups in Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) have power over the company. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. I quite like to see at least a little bit of insider ownership. As Charlie Munger said 'Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.' With a market capitalization of US$855m, Kura Oncology is a decent size, so it is probably on the radar of institutional investors. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about KURA. Check out our latest analysis for Kura Oncology Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing. As you can see, institutional investors own 51% of Kura Oncology. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Kura Oncology's earnings history, below. Of course, the future is what really matters. Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. It looks like hedge funds own 18% of Kura Oncology shares. That worth noting, since hedge funds are often quite active investors, who may try to influence management. Many want to see value creation (and a higher share price) in the short term or medium term. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too. The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. The company management answer to the board; and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board, themselves. Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances. Shareholders would probably be interested to learn that insiders own shares in Kura Oncology, Inc.. As individuals, the insiders collectively own US$47m worth of the US$855m company. This shows at least some alignment. You canclick here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling. With a 19% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over KURA. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. Private equity firms hold a 6.0% stake in KURA. This suggests they can be influential in key policy decisions. Some might like this, because private equity are sometimes activists who hold management accountable. But other times, private equity is selling out, having taking the company public. While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. Many find it usefulto take an in depth look at how a company has performed in the past. You can accessthisdetailed graphof past earnings, revenue and cash flow. But ultimatelyit is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look atthis free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Do Insiders Own Shares In Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! A look at the shareholders of Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) can tell us which group is most powerful. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Warren Buffett said that he likes 'a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people'. So it's nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented. With a market capitalization of US$855m, Kura Oncology is a decent size, so it is probably on the radar of institutional investors. In the chart below below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about KURA. View our latest analysis for Kura Oncology Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices. Kura Oncology already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own 51% of the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone, since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Kura Oncology's historic earnings and revenue, below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story. Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Our data indicates that hedge funds own 18% of Kura Oncology. That's interesting, because hedge funds can be quite active and activist. Many look for medium term catalysts that will drive the share price higher. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future. The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. The company management answer to the board; and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board, themselves. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. Our most recent data indicates that insiders own some shares in Kura Oncology, Inc.. It has a market capitalization of just US$855m, and insiders have US$47m worth of shares, in their own names. This shows at least some alignment. You canclick here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling. With a 19% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over KURA. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. Private equity firms hold a 6.0% stake in KURA. This suggests they can be influential in key policy decisions. Some might like this, because private equity are sometimes activists who hold management accountable. But other times, private equity is selling out, having taking the company public. While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. I like to dive deeperinto how a company has performed in the past. You can findhistoric revenue and earnings in thisdetailed graph. But ultimatelyit is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look atthis free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Have Insiders Been Buying Razor Energy Corp. (CVE:RZE) Shares? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! We've lost count of how many times insiders have accumulated shares in a company that goes on to improve markedly. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So we'll take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares inRazor Energy Corp.(CVE:RZE). It's quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, rules govern insider transactions, and certain disclosures are required. Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. For example, a Columbia Universitystudyfound that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own company’s stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'. See our latest analysis for Razor Energy While no particular insider transaction stood out, we can still look at the overall trading. Over the last year, we can see that insiders have bought 155k shares worth CA$425k. While Razor Energy insiders bought shares last year, they didn't sell. They paid about CA$2.75 on average. These transactions suggest that insiders have considered the current price of CA$1.84 attractive. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction! There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably donotwant to miss thisfreelist of growing companies that insiders are buying. Over the last three months, we've seen a bit of insider buying at Razor Energy. Insiders bought CA$61k worth of shares in that time. It's good to see the insider buying, as well as the lack of recent sellers. But the amount invested in the last three months isn't enough for us too put much weight on it, as a single factor. Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It appears that Razor Energy insiders own 35% of the company, worth about CA$10m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment. It's certainly positive to see the recent insider purchases. And the longer term insider transactions also give us confidence. But on the other hand, the company made a loss last year, which makes us a little cautious. When combined with notable insider ownership, these factors suggest Razor Energy insiders are well aligned, and that they may think the share price is too low.I like to dive deeperinto how a company has performed in the past. You can findhistoric revenue and earnings in thisdetailed graph. But note:Razor Energy may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at thisfreelist of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
The Gilat Satellite Networks (NASDAQ:GILT) Share Price Has Gained 87% And Shareholders Are Hoping For More Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! By buying an index fund, you can roughly match the market return with ease. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. Just take a look atGilat Satellite Networks Ltd.(NASDAQ:GILT), which is up 87%, over three years, soundly beating the market return of 43% (not including dividends). On the other hand, the returns haven't been quite so good recently, with shareholders up just 1.4%, including dividends. See our latest analysis for Gilat Satellite Networks While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Gilat Satellite Networks became profitable within the last three years. That would generally be considered a positive, so we'd expect the share price to be up. The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers). It's probably worth noting that the CEO is paid less than the median at similar sized companies. But while CEO remuneration is always worth checking, the really important question is whether the company can grow earnings going forward. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at ourfreereport on Gilat Satellite Networks's earnings, revenue and cash flow. As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, Gilat Satellite Networks's TSR for the last 3 years was 97%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments! Gilat Satellite Networks shareholders gained a total return of 1.4% during the year. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. If we look back over five years, the returns are even better, coming in at 13% per year for five years. It may well be that this is a business worth popping on the watching, given the continuing positive reception, over time, from the market. Keeping this in mind, a solid next step might be to take a look at Gilat Satellite Networks's dividend track record. Thisfreeinteractive graphis a great place to start. If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss thisfreelist of companies that have proven they can grow earnings. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
4 Cheap Stocks Ready for Gains Why should investing be a rich man’s game? If you’re looking to invest, but haven’t got the budget to go all-in on Amazon (AMZN) or Alphabet (GOOGL), there are plenty of stocks available featuring low prices and high expectations. Now that markets are surging back to their record levels, with the S&P 500 at 2,950, let’s useTipRanks’ datato take a close look at four bargain investments, stocks priced at $10 and under yet sporting ‘Buy’ ratings. This small software company, focusing on HCM (human capital management) and workspace management systems, is coming off an excellent first quarter. The company reported revenues for Q1 2019 at $26.8 million, for a 39% year-over-year gain, and a 44% year-over-year gain in customer bookings. Company CEO Pat Goepel described the quarter as having “solid momentum,” said that Asure is “focused on accelerating the velocity of our cross-selling opportunities and scaling our business.” Major new clients include Kids Care Home Health of Idaho, and the City of Paterson, New Jersey. Full-year revenue guidance remains in the range of $104 to $107 million. Wall Street’s analysts are impressed, by both the company’s prospects and its recent history. ASUR shares are up more than 50% year-to-date, and the company’s revenue guidance represents an 18% increase over FY18. Writing from Northland Securities,Robert Brezasaid last month: “We are assuming coverage of Asure Software Inc. with an unchanged $12 PT and Outperform rating following solid Q1 results which topped estimates on the top and bottom line.” Breza’s $12 price target indicates a 52% upside to the stock. Just last week, Barrington’sVincent Colicchioset a ‘Buy’ on ASUR based on future outlook for the stock. Colicchio noted, “We expect Asure to achieve rapid organic and acquisition‐related growth over the next several years in the HCM and WM software markets. Asure has many opportunities to increase revenue at existing clients due to its growing product portfolio…” His price target, $15, suggests an upside of 90% for ASUR. Overall, ASUR gets a ‘Moderate Buy’ from the analyst consensus, based on 2 buy ratings in the past three months. There are no holds or sells on this stock. The average price target is $13.50, indicative of a 71% upside from the current share price of $7.86. Based in Denver, Colorado, Concrete Pumping Holdings operates in both the US and the UK, offering – you guessed it! – concrete pumping services in the construction industry. In addition to pumping, the company also offers concrete waste management services, an important subsidiary service for customers in the concrete industry. Concrete Pumping offers its customers an equipment rental option, allowing the customer to save money on overhead while Concrete Pumping benefits from faster payment schedules on its products. BBCP went public two years ago, and this past May put an additional 15 million common stock shares on the market. The new shares were offered to raise funds to finance the acquisition of Capital Pumping, with any extra funds being used to augment corporate working capital. The stock offering and acquisition were both completed last month. AnalystAndrew Wittman, of Baird, gave BBCP a ‘Buy’ rating during last month’s stock offering, specifically noting the company’s “…track record of gaining share versus alternatives, the company's unique scale advantages and its rental model, which offers low risk and fast cash conversion.” He added that, at current price level, he would buy this stock. His $7 price target suggests a strong upside of 58%. Also weighing in was Stifel’sStanley Elliott. He set a $9 price target with his ‘Buy’ rating, saying that, “The company has meaningful opportunity to expand through mild secular growth in concrete pumping, footprint expansion and cross-selling of waste services, and numerous acquisition roll-up opportunities.” His price target gives BBCP an impressive 103% upside. With 4 buy ratings assigned it in the last three months, BBCP holds a ‘Strong Buy’ from the analyst consensus. The stock sells for $4.42, so the average price target of $8.33 gives it an 88% upside potential. Fitbit stands at the junction of two great trends – our desire to be healthy, and our desire to have the latest gadgets. Fitbit’s gadget is the application of wearable tech to activity tracking, allowing you to count your steps, monitor your heartrate, or even check the quality of your sleep – and to follow your data over time. In short, it’s intended to make easier to track the quality and efficacy of your exercise and diet. With increased hedge fund activity – the major funds increased their holdings in FIT by 3.73 million shares last quarter – it would seem that Fitbit’s low share price is attracting investment. The company’s reputation helps, too – industry bloggers have a bullish outlook on FIT, while news sentiment is overwhelmingly positive. This is all reflected in the analyst reviews, which have been consistently positive on FIT for several months. Writing at the beginning of May,Andrew Uerkwitzof Oppenheimer, said, “We believe FIT has taken its first steps in generating regular recurring revenue from the healthcare and wellness industry. We like what we heard regarding Fitbit Health Solutions and see it as a first step towards a more meaningful business transformation. We expect it to take time, but as Health Solutions and other services start to ramp, we expect to see more predictability in results.” Uerkwitz’s $8 price target suggests an upside of 78% to FIT. Also writing in May, DA Davidson analystTom Fortenoted benefits coming from the company's “…latest partnering announcement with the UnitedHealthcare's (UNH) Motion effort through its Charge 3 tracker device participation.” Forte set a $7 price target, pointing to a 56% upside. FIT’s analyst consensus rating is a ‘Moderate Buy,’ based on 2 buys, 1 hold, and 1 sell given during the last three months. FIT shares sell for just $4.48, but the average price target of $6.25 suggests an upside potential of 39%. Our last stock hails from Detroit, the Motor City, where more than a century ago Henry Ford created the modern assembly line, revolutionized the automotive industry, and made his car company one of the industry’s storied names. The auto industry is entering a transitional period. Changes in customer taste and the political regulatory climate are pushing the development and improvement of electric vehicle technology, while advances in AI are slowly turning self-driving cars – once the domain of science fiction – into a reality. Ford Motor is implementing a $4 billion initiative to develop an autonomous car division, with $1 billion going toward developing the requisite software and automation tech in partnership with Argo AI, and a further $900 million slated to expand manufacturing facilities in Michigan. At the same time, Ford is developing and marketing a line of electric hybrid and plug-in vehicles based on existing frames. All of this is supported by a successful line of SUVs and light trucks. Ford’s F-series pickups are perennial leaders in their niche, and provide the company with a solid foundation of sales and revenue. With such a strong background, it’s no wonder that Merrill Lynch’sJohn Murphyupgraded his stance on Ford stock last month, bumping it from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy.’ His price target, $14, suggests a 40% upside to the stock. More recently, on June 13, Goldman Sachs analystDavid Tamberrinosees the company’s overall plan helping it to regain revenue and market share in Europe. He says, “…working through the potential margin enhancement opportunity, we think the company can generate over 4% operating margins through-the-cycle in Europe post restructuring actions…” Tamberrino’s price target of $13 would indicate a 30% upside to Ford shares. Ford holds a ‘Moderate Buy’ rating from the analyst consensus, based on an even split of 5 buys and 5 holds, with 1 sell. Shares are currently priced at $9.99, so the average target of $11.35 indicates room for a 13% upside. Start your own stock researchwithStock Screener, the all-in-one tool that puts the entire TipRanks database at your fingertips.
Does This Valuation Of Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) Imply Investors Are Overpaying? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Does the June share price for Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. This is done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. Check out our latest analysis for Service International We're using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company's growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today's value: [{"": "Levered FCF ($, Millions)", "2019": "$389.50", "2020": "$421.50", "2021": "$431.00", "2022": "$441.26", "2023": "$452.22", "2024": "$463.79", "2025": "$475.90", "2026": "$488.49", "2027": "$501.54", "2028": "$515.03"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x2", "2020": "Analyst x2", "2021": "Analyst x1", "2022": "Est @ 2.38%", "2023": "Est @ 2.49%", "2024": "Est @ 2.56%", "2025": "Est @ 2.61%", "2026": "Est @ 2.65%", "2027": "Est @ 2.67%", "2028": "Est @ 2.69%"}, {"": "Present Value ($, Millions) Discounted @ 8.76%", "2019": "$358.13", "2020": "$356.34", "2021": "$335.02", "2022": "$315.37", "2023": "$297.18", "2024": "$280.23", "2025": "$264.39", "2026": "$249.52", "2027": "$235.56", "2028": "$222.41"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= $2.91b "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 10-year government bond rate of 2.7%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 8.8%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$515m × (1 + 2.7%) ÷ (8.8% – 2.7%) = US$8.8b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= $US$8.8b ÷ ( 1 + 8.8%)10= $3.79b The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is $6.70b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of $36.78. Compared to the current share price of $45.89, the company appears slightly overvalued at the time of writing. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out. Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. You don't have to agree with these inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Service International as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 8.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.012. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For Service International, There are three further aspects you should look at: 1. Financial Health: Does SCI have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does SCI's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of SCI? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every US stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
These 3 Biotech Stocks Skyrocketed Last Week -- Are They Buys Now? It's been a good year for the stock market so far in 2019. TheS&P 500 indexis up nearly 18% less than halfway through the year. But three biotech stocks more than doubled that gain in only a few days. Array BioPharma(NASDAQ: ARRY),G1 Therapeutics(NASDAQ: GTHX), andCEL-SCI(NYSEMKT: CVM)skyrocketed last week by at last 37%. Here's what lit a fire beneath these three biotech stocks and whether or not they're smart picks for investors to buy now. Image source: Getty Images. Array BioPharma was the biggest biotech winner last week, with its share price vaulting 57% higher. Investors were ecstatic afterPfizer(NYSE: PFE)announced that itplanned to acquire Arrayfor a cool $11.4 billion in cash. Pfizer sees significant potential for Array's cancer drugs Braftovi and Mektovi. A combination of the two drugs won FDA approval last year in treating metastatic melanoma. Sales are picking up momentum in the indication. But there's an even bigger opportunity that could be right around the corner. Arrayreported great results several weeks agofrom a late-stage study evaluating its two drugs in combination withLilly's Erbitux in treating colorectal cancer. Some predict that this triplet could even become the standard of care in treating BRAF-resistant colorectal cancer, assuming the combo therapy wins regulatory approval. G1 Therapeutics wasn't very far behind Array, with its stock soaring 50% last week. The key catalyst for G1 was its announcement of updated preliminary results from aphase 2 clinical trialevaluating trilaciclib in treating triple-negative breast cancer. Some data from the phase 2 study was presented last year at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. At the time, G1 Therapeutics reported encouraging objective response rate (ORR), progression-free survival (PFS), and safety data for trilaciclib. But the thing that oncologists and patients really look for with a new cancer drug is overall survival. G1 announced last week that a combo of trilaciclib and chemotherapy significantly improved overall survival rates for breast cancer patients compared to chemotherapy alone. G1 Therapeutics didn't provide details from its updated results. However, the data will be presented at a medical meeting later this year. CEL-SCI ranked as the third best-performing biotech stock last week, with an impressive gain of 37%. But the biotech didn't have any new developments last week. So why did CEL-SCI stock jump? The answer can probably be found by going back to the previous week. On June 10, CEL-SCI announced that its stock would be added to the Russell 3000 Index, which tracks the 3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks. The company's addition to the Russell 3000 won't be effective until July 1. In the meantime, funds that are based on the Russell 3000 appear to be scooping up shares of CEL-SCI, creating upward pressure on its stock price. CEL-SCI is currently evaluating its experimental immunotherapy Multikine in aphase 3 clinical study for treating head and neck cancer. The company says this is the largest late-stage study in the world in this indication. CEL-SCI is waiting on a specified number of events to occur to report final data from the study. There's a lot of risk associated with buying two of these biotech stocks. G1 Therapeutics' trilaciclib has quite a way to go before it could potentially reach the market. CEL-SCI is closer to possibly winning regulatory approval, but there's no guarantee that its phase 3 study will be successful. Because of these risks, most investors would probably be better off looking elsewhere. Array BioPharma is a different story. Although Pfizer still must jump through a few hoops to close its acquisition of Array, it's pretty much a done deal. But while there isn't much risk involved with buying Array stock, there also isn't much to gain. Pfizer plans to buy Array at $48 per share. That's only around 3% higher than Array's current share price. You could make a small profit in a relatively short amount of time. However, many investors would prefer to buy stocks that hold the potential to deliver bigger gains over a longer period. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Keith Speightsowns shares of Pfizer. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Queen Elizabeth's Distant Cousin is the Hottest Royal That You Haven't Heard Of...Yet Photo credit: Instagram / @florarteviste From Town & Country Prince Harry may be off market, but the royal family isn't out of attractive bachelors just yet. Princess Margaret's grandson made headlines earlier this year, for posting shirtless photos on Instagram , and now, Princess Alexandra's grandson, a blonde Brown University student is turning heads. Here's what you need to know about Alexander Ogilvy: He's in line to the throne, but he's way down the list. Alexander is the son of James and Julia Ogilvy, and the grandson of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Princess Alexandra of Kent, making Alex and the Queen first cousins twice-removed. While he is not a working royal, and is not often seen at royal events, he does appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony most every year at Trooping the Colour , a military parade which serves the British monarch's official birthday celebration. In a photo from this year's Trooping, he can be seen on the far right side, near the Earl of Andrews and the Duke of Gloucester. ( For a photo outlining everyone who was on the balcony, click here .) Photo credit: Chris Jackson His Instagram handle is " @brogilvy ." Yes, really. Sadly, the account is private. But you can still see his description, which currently features a British flag emoji, and a delightful link to photos of corgis wearing rain jackets . It's worth a click. His sister Flora's account, on the other hand, is currently public, and on occasion she shares photos of her brother, like this one taken earlier this month: {% verbatim %} View this post on Instagram Wearing @oliviarubin to lead a conversation @tristanhoare gallery with curators @floragoodwin and @omar_mazhar on the subject of ‘Botanica’ and the confluence between art and nature across the exhibition. A joy to speak on Fitzroy Square in this beautiful Grade-1 listed building designed by architect Robert Adam. Thank you to the talented photographer @cyrusartist for his inspiring contribution. Special mention for my lovely brother for arriving back from the States in time. #london #tristanhoare #arteviste #botanica #cyrusmahboubian #exhibition #oliviarubin #architecture #nature A post shared by Flora Alexandra Ogilvy (@florarteviste) on Jun 5, 2019 at 9:25am PDT {% endverbatim %} Story continues He currently attends Brown University. According to his LinkedIn page , Ogilvy is currently a Computer Science and Economics major. In addition to his studies, he's also the captain of the rugby team. Royal connections aside, he seems like a real catch. ('You Might Also Like',) 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion What Your Favorite Champagne Brand Says About You Beauty Gurus Share Their Makeup Secrets for Older Women
The CEO’s Toughest Leadership Challenge—Leading Themselves Being a CEO is a daunting task. The challenge of leading a large, complex organization takes a range of talents that aspiring executives spend decades developing. Yet ironically, some of the most startling corporate missteps are caused by a much more basic failure—the failure of CEOs to lead themselves. CEOs, especially in public companies, are in an unusual position. They don’t have a day-to-day boss providing input, feedback, and direction. They do have their board of directors, but the board members don’t participate in staff meetings, one-on-ones, or day-long operating review sessions—nor should they. And so they are unable to give feedback on the CEO’s behavior or on the results of those meetings. Having a separate chairman, as opposed to allowing the CEO to serve as board chair, doesn’t solve the problem. The CEO must still spend all their time focused on the issues vital to the company’s long-term success, leaving precious little time for self-examination. As a result, learning to lead yourself through self-examination is a skill that the CEO must constantly hone. CEOs who have forgotten how to lead themselves are generally easy to find. Some end up in the news for unfortunate personal behavior. In other cases, their organization goes astray, or an unusual number of executive departures begin to crop up. These are symptoms of a CEO who has failed to realize the need to engage in deliberate, continual self-examination, developing and responding to the kind of objective evaluation of one’s own effectiveness and judgment that a CEO otherwise may never experience. Over time, I developed some ways to maintain my personal focus on leading myself. Here are two examples. First, I made a point of soliciting input in one-on-one sessions as well as requesting external input from trusted colleagues and professionals from outside the company on what I could do better and what I should stop doing. I also practiced what I call the two-down approach, meeting with people two levels down in the organization to get a better sense for what’s going on. (Before becoming CEO, I had also practiced the two-up approach, meeting with people one level above my boss, so I could better understand the vision and strategic direction of the company.) The two-up, two-down approach is a good way for any business leader to broaden their awareness of how they fit into the organization, revealing opportunities to improve the ways they are using their time, talents, and other resources. Second, I worked to consistently focus on my personal and business goal of becoming 15% better every year. I found this to be a powerful development tool for me. The key is making yourself a promise to stretch yourself, and to grow and learn each year. You pick the number; then the challenge is to make sure you achieve it. If you’re fortunate enough to be asked to fill the role of the CEO, you may experience a momentary sense of relief from the thought that you will never again have a boss looking over your shoulder, demanding the best of you. Shake it off! The reality is that if you hope to succeed as CEO, you’ll need to begin reporting to a leader who will set even higher standards for personal achievement—yourself. Ron Williams is the chairman and CEO of RW2 Enterprises, former chairman and CEO ofAetna, and author ofLearning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading an Organization. —Private insurers are afraid of Medicare for All.They should be excited —The Uber IPO was not a failure, butIPOs in general are a mess —Upwork CEO: Why wescratched college degree requirements —Does the SEC’s ICO lawsuit against Kikgo too far? —How to stop automation fromleaving women behind Listen to our new audio briefing,Fortune500 Daily
Too Rosy? Experts Question Warren's Wealth Tax Figures The ambitious scope of Elizabeth Warren’s push to rethink how America tackles issues such as health care, technology and education has energized her presidential campaign — and spurred questions about how she would deliver on her promises. At the heart of Warren’s raft of policy proposals is a 2% fee on fortunes greater than $50 million, a wealth tax designed to target the nation’s top 0.1% of households. Warren projects the levy would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, enough theoretical money to pay for a universal child care plan, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and student loan debt forgiveness for an estimated 42 million Americans — with revenue left over. But interviews with a dozen economists and tax experts from across the political spectrum point to divisions about how much money a wealth tax would raise. Some of those who laud the principles behind Warren’s wealth tax questioned whether the IRS could collect the tax as effectively as the campaign projects. That skepticism illustrates the challenge Warren would face in trying to execute on an idea she has called a top early priority if she’s elected. Eric Toder, co-director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said a wealth tax “could raise a substantial amount of money.” But he said “there’s reason to question” the Warren campaign’s estimates, “or to think they might be on the high side.” Owen Zidar, an assistant economics professor at Princeton University who has worked on wealth estimation issues, called the revenue estimates “optimistic.” While campaigning, Warren points to “the diamonds, the yachts and the Rembrandts” as targets of her tax. But Zidar, who praised Warren’s effort to tackle income inequality, said it’s tough to value complicated financial holdings. Using the estate tax, which is imposed on the assets of top earners after death, as a reference, he said, “you can find reasonable economists who think there will be a lot of avoidance and evasion that will make it hard to collect as much as you expect.” The wealth tax’s most high-profile critic is Larry Summers, the onetime economic adviser to former President Barack Obama whose bid to become Federal Reserve chairman collapsed in 2013 thanks to Senate pushback that reportedly included Warren. Summers and Natasha Sarin, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, used estate tax revenue as a model for a recent Washington Post op-ed that warned “it is likely extremely premature to bank on anything like the $200 billion plus” Warren’s campaign says the wealth tax would raise. “It’s a failed international model that we’ve decided we’re going to bring to the U.S. without explaining why our version of it is going to be so much better, both from an efficiency perspective but also a revenue-raising standpoint,” said Sarin. She said top earners will find ways around the levy. “Whatever resources you have, the ultrawealthy will have more,” she said. Beyond revenue questions, the tax could face a legal challenge citing the Constitution’s restriction on so-called direct taxes, unless proceeds are distributed to states based on population size. Warren, a former Harvard law professor, has sought to address those concerns by releasing letters from more than a dozen other law professors attesting to the wealth tax’s constitutionality. Warren’s campaign stands by its “conservative” estimate, conducted by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman at the University of California, Berkeley, two economists known for their work on income inequality. “The tax will be straightforward to administer because it builds off of existing IRS rules and applies to only 75,000 ultra-wealthy families who typically already keep careful track of their wealth,” campaign spokeswoman Saloni Sharma said in a statement. Using comparable wealth taxes imposed in other countries, Saez and Zucman assumed a 15% rate of avoidance and evasion of the wealth tax, which Warren would pair with a major boost to the IRS’ enforcement budget and a 40% “exit tax” designed to stop the wealthy from moving their citizenship and assets overseas. Such moves could be crucial if Warren hopes to reach her $2.75 trillion target. Gene Sperling, a veteran economic adviser to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, said he might have offered a slightly lower revenue projection. But stepped-up enforcement could get her close, he said. No one “should start our policy analysis from the assumption that the miserable state of enforcement for the estate tax is an immovable part of nature that can’t be improved with smart public policy,” said Sperling, whom the Warren campaign consulted on its wealth tax. Warren has offered more specificity about how she’d pay for her goals than any other Democrat in the race. Several liberal economists noted that, at a time when President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed more than $1 trillion in tax cuts without paying for them, Warren shouldn’t be held to a different standard. And a new tax akin to Warren’s performs well among voters. A Quinnipiac poll from April found 6 in 10 registered voters saying they support an annual wealth tax that would tax individuals 2% on any wealth over $50 million. Similarly, a CNN poll from February found 54% in support of a new tax for those with a net worth of $50 million, but the question did not specify what the tax rate would be. Both polls find Democrats largely in support, while a majority of Republicans stand opposed. The wealth tax isn’t the only idea Warren has proposed to help fund her priorities. She’s also pitched a 7% tax on corporate profits greater than $100 million, designed to raise about $1 trillion over 10 years from giant companies that she argues tallied zero or negative tax bills thanks to advantages in the existing code. Most companies push back on that assessment. And if Warren doesn’t hit her revenue goals, she could simply add to the deficit — as Trump has. Jonathan Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped shape the Affordable Care Act, quipped that “if President Obama had been much less fiscally responsible, it would have been a much more popular law.” —Trump’sMAGA rallies cost big bucks—and cities foot the bills —Black women voterswill be central to the 2020 election, experts predict —Can Trump fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell?What history tells us —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s message for democrats after“boy bye” tweet —What you need to know about theupcoming 2020 primary debates Get up to speed on your morning commute withFortune’sCEO Dailynewsletter.
Binance Labs-backed Elrond announced as next Launchpad project Binance Launchpad, Binances token launch platform for transformative blockchain projects, has announced its next project: Elrond , a sharding-based public blockchain network. Elrond has recently raised investments from the likes of Binance Labs, Electric Capital, NGC, Maven11 and Authorito Capital. Its token sale follows a lottery format and began on 22nd June. At Binance Launchpad, we continue to support infrastructure projects aimed at solving problems associated with blockchain technology scaling and its readiness for mass adoption, says Binance CEO and Founder, CZ (Changpeng Zhao). The Elrond team addresses this issue in an extraordinary way by proposing the concept of Adaptive State Sharding, which allows decentralised networks to compete in speed and security with centralised ones. We look forward to seeing this project contribute to our ecosystem in the long run. We are setting new standards for performance in the blockchain space, says Beniamin Mincu, CEO of Elrond. Everything changes for decentralised applications when you can parallelise transaction processing and bring a 1000x improvement in throughput and execution speed. Binance Launchpad presents an unparalleled distribution channel, helping us connect with the global community and invite developers from around the world to build their dApps on Elrond today. Announced this week, Binance Labs contributed to a $1.9 million private round. Elronds outstanding contributions rest on two foundational building blocks: a novel scaling approach of Adaptive State Sharding and Secure Proof of Stake consensus, enabling fast and secure decentralised networks, says Ella Zhang, Head of Binance Labs. Having been self-funded for a long period to push out their testnet launch, the Elrond team impressed us with their strict product-first approach and clear go-to-market strategy, a great example of the type of capital-conscious, fast-executing team that Binance Labs looks for in startups to back. Were excited to be working together to push blockchain technology and crypto toward mass adoption. Five projects have launched on the Binance Launchpad platform so far this year, with Elrond becoming the sixth one. The post Binance Labs-backed Elrond announced as next Launchpad project appeared first on Coin Rivet .
3 Top Value Stocks to Buy Right Now As heated as the stock market has been over the past decade, value investors might not feel like there's a good deal to be had out there. Moreover, the concept ofwhat true value investing meanshas evolved over the years. So while you may not be able to find dollar bills selling for pennies, there are still high-quality business to be found, trading for a nice discount to fair value. To help you get started finding the next value stock for your portfolio, we asked three of our most-seasoned contributors to put forth their ideas for value today, and they came back withAxos Financial(NYSE: AX),Vipshop(NYSE: VIPS), and -- you may want to sit down for this one --Tesla(NASDAQ: TSLA). Axos and Vipshop? Yep, those look quite cheap based on some pretty easy-to-identify metrics. But Tesla? We're pretty sure Steve Symington is rational, at least based on his track record. Don't worry -- we had someone check in on him, and he's fine, despite the, ahem, interesting suggestion that Tesla's a value stock. Moreover, he makes a compelling case, and with skin in the game after recently buying shares, he does, at least as far as we know, believe his own thesis. Image source: Getty Images. Without further ado, keep reading to learn about two value stocks based on clear -- and compelling -- metrics, and Steve's surprisingly solid case that Tesla could be the biggest value out there if you squint your eyes just right. Jason Hall(Axos Financial):When it comes to valuing banks, the two most common -- and I think the two most useful -- metrics areprice-to-earnings(P/E) and price-to-book-value(P/B) ratios. In short, these two metrics identify both how the market values a bank's earnings and the assets it makes those earnings from. My argument is that Axos Financial is cheap by both of those measures. As this table shows, Axos has rarely been this inexpensive, by either measure, in recent years: AX PE Ratio (TTM)data byYCharts. Don't get me wrong: I'mnotsaying it was necessarily fairly valued at some of the peak valuations it has traded for in the past, but trading for 1.5 times book value and 11 times earnings per share is simply cheap for such a high-quality business that's as profitable as it is. For context, it now trades for a similar book value toJPMorgan Chase(NYSE: JPM)and a discount to the mega-bank's earnings multiple: AX PE Ratio (TTM)data byYCharts. Here's the rub: Axos has a history of delivering far better profitability and returns than even JPMorgan, which is rightfully considered one of the best-run banks in the world: AX Return on Equity (TTM)data byYCharts. Here's the closing point: Axos is also much smaller and, under CEO Greg Garrabrants, has an incredible track record of both growth and de-risking, and I expect Axos to continue becoming more diverse and profitable for years to come. Axos is already one of the biggest online-only banks,and its prospects to growfrom a small internet bank to a national financial services powerhouse make it worth owning. The fact that it's cheaper than some of the best banks in America right now makes it worth buying today. Leo Sun(Vipshop):Vipshop is often overshadowed byAlibabaandJD.comin China's crowded e-commerce market, but the smaller company is thrivingin the shadowof its bigger peers. Vipshop retained its first mover's advantage in the flash sale market, and it attracted big investments from JD andTencent. Those investments and partnerships tethered Vipshop's flash sale platform to JD Mall and Tencent's WeChat, the top mobile messaging app in China. As a result, Vipshop's growth in active customers accelerated over the past year, rising 14% annually to 29.7 million last quarter and marking its third straight quarter of double-digit growth. Its total orders rose 29% to 116.5 million, allaying concerns about slower consumer spending. Vipshop's gross and operating margins both expanded annually during the quarter, indicating that its loss-leading model (which uses flash sales to spur purchases of full-priced products) is sustainable. Its total revenue rose 7% annually as its adjusted net income grew 12% (in RMB terms), and analysts anticipate 3% sales growth and 17% earnings growth (in USD terms) for the full year. That's a high growth rate for a stock that trades at just nine times forward earnings. Vipshop controlled only 1.8% of China's e-commerce market last year, according to eMarketer. However, its steady growth, strong support from JD and Tencent, and low valuation make it a lucrative value play on China's booming e-commerce market. Steve Symington(Tesla):I chuckled earlier this week whenMorgan Stanleyanalyst Adam Jonas insisted his firm continues "to believe Tesla is fundamentally overvalued, but potentially strategically undervalued." That dichotomy perfectly explains how the market feels about the electric vehicle (EV) and solar solutions leader. With Tesla shares trading at roughly $220 per share as of this writing -- or more than 40% below their 52-week high -- various analysts have assigned price "targets" ranging from $4,000 all the way down to $0. On one hand, there's the omnipresent threat of potentially underwhelming demand for Tesla's vehicles, and for this currently unprofitable business to run low on cash -- something bearish traders seized on last month after CEO Elon Musk reportedly told employees the company would be implementing a "hardcore" cost-cutting program -- as it implements ambitious plans forramping EV productionand fundinggeographic expansion. On the other hand, Musk went on record at Tesla's annual investor meeting last week toinsist there's no demand problem, with sales exceeding production. He also teased the end-of-summer unveiling of the company's affordable (starting at under $50,000) new electric pickup truck, and (earlier last month) outlined compelling plans to build a massive robotaxi fleet that -- to hear Musk tell it -- could be the catalyst to multiply the company's value to $500 billion (from closer to $40 billion today). I'll take that last prediction with a grain of salt given Musk's history of overly ambitious goals. But I think there is enough potential positive catalysts for patient, long-term investors to lean on the "potentially strategically undervalued" side of the fence, which is why I added a small position in Tesla to my personal portfolio last week. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Jason Hallowns shares of Axos Financial, Inc.and a single share of Tesla for complicated reasons.Leo Sunowns shares of JD.com and Tencent Holdings.Steve Symingtonowns shares of Tesla. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Axos Financial, Inc., JD.com, Tencent Holdings, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Kelly Clarkson Shared the Sweetest Photos From Her Latest Family Vacation From Country Living Kelly Clarkson recently vacationed in Colorado with her husband and two of their children . The singer shared adorable family pictures from the trip on Twitter. After The Voice finale aired, we were left with giant Kelly Clarkson -shaped holes in our hearts-so it's a good thing the singer is so active on social media. Whether she's opening up about her diet plan , responding to the latest Voice drama ( see ya, Adam Levine ), or discussing an upcoming project , Kelly is always posting updates about her life on Twitter and Instagram. So when the mom of four took a much-needed family vacation, she did not hesitate to share photos from the trip-and they're SO. CUTE. Kelly, her husband Brandon Blackstock , and her two youngest kids, River Rose and Remy , recently traveled to Colorado to spend some time in the mountains with friends and family. From the way it sounds, Kelly isn't interested in going back to Los Angeles! "This is literally the view from my bedroom where we are staying on vacation. So.... basically this is where I have decided I want to live forever," she wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of a beautiful backyard and a distant mountain range. (She also added the hashtag "#IAintNoCityGirl," but we already knew that. 😉) This is literally the view from my bedroom where we are staying on vacation. So.... basically this is where I have decided I want to live forever 🤣😂🙋🏼♀️ #Vacation #FriendsAndFamily #IAintNoCityGirl pic.twitter.com/aYSdzHwA3A - Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) June 2, 2019 After giving her followers a glimpse of the accommodations, Kelly shared the sweetest family photos. First up was a selfie with Brandon, and the combination of the picture and the caption gives us real-life heart eyes. Story continues "Up in the mountains with the family," she wrote. "Grabbin’ a kiss from my baby." Up in the mountains with the family 😊 grabbin’ a kiss from my baby 😘 #Colorado pic.twitter.com/LUNiGtVneG - Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) June 14, 2019 Just when you think things can't get any cuter, Kelly graced us with a full family shot featuring River and Remy with her and Brandon on top of a mountain. All of their smiles are so big, we almost didn't notice that Kelly is holding a snowball. Yes, that is snow in my hand. Snowball fights in June. I love Colorado! pic.twitter.com/NhGVXFheHS - Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) June 14, 2019 "Yes, that is snow in my hand," she captioned the photo. "Snowball fights in June. I love Colorado!" So, what does someone have to do to get invited on a Clarkson-Blackstock family vacation? And, more importantly, will Grandma Reba be there next time? Asking for a friend. ('You Might Also Like',) 60+ Grilling Recipes for an Epic Summer Cookout The Best Reese Witherspoon Movies, Ranked 70 Impressive Tiny Houses That Maximize Function and Style
Is Now The Time To Look At Buying Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL), which is in the specialty retail business, and is based in United States, received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the NYSE over the last few months, increasing to $64.45 at one point, and dropping to the lows of $39.35. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Foot Locker's current trading price of $42.27 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Let’s take a look at Foot Locker’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change. Check out our latest analysis for Foot Locker Good news, investors! Foot Locker is still a bargain right now. According to my valuation, the intrinsic value for the stock is $67.16, which is above what the market is valuing the company at the moment. This indicates a potential opportunity to buy low. Foot Locker’s share price also seems relatively stable compared to the rest of the market, as indicated by its low beta. If you believe the share price should eventually reach its true value, a low beta could suggest it is unlikely to rapidly do so anytime soon, and once it’s there, it may be hard to fall back down into an attractive buying range. Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so let’s also take a look at the company's future expectations. However, with a relatively muted profit growth of 8.7% expected over the next couple of years, growth doesn’t seem like a key driver for a buy decision for Foot Locker, at least in the short term. Are you a shareholder?Even though growth is relatively muted, since FL is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to accumulate more of your holdings in the stock. However, there are also other factors such as capital structure to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation. Are you a potential investor?If you’ve been keeping an eye on FL for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its future outlook isn’t fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means it’s not too late to buy FL. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the track record of its management team, in order to make a well-informed investment decision. Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on Foot Locker. You can find everything you need to know about Foot Locker inthe latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Foot Locker, you can use our free platform to see my list of over50 other stocks with a high growth potential. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
3 Top Alternative Energy Stocks to Buy Right Now Fast-growing industries like alternative and renewable energy can be exciting to follow, and some stocks can turn into multibaggers for your portfolio. But a fast-growing industry can also be filled with companies that have little hope of making it, so investors always need to tread carefully and not just buy anything with the words "renewable energy" associated with it. We asked three of our Motley Fool contributors to look across the alternative-energy landscape and pick three stocks worth buying today. They choseTerraForm Power(NASDAQ: TERP),SolarEdge Technologies(NASDAQ: SEDG), andBrookfield Renewable Partners(NYSE: BEP). Image source: Getty Images. John Bromels(TerraForm Power):Solar- and wind-farm owner TerraForm wasn't in great shape when Brookfield Renewable Partners, a subsidiary ofBrookfield Asset Management, took a majority stake in the company. But since then, TerraForm has done a remarkable job getting itself back on track, to the point that it's now looking like a top pick in the solar industry. Thanks to Brookfield's expertise, TerraForm has madeseveral operational and financial changesthat have set it up for outperformance. Operationally, TerraForm completed its purchase of Spanish wind and solar company Saeta Yield, and has begun handing over operations and maintenance duties for many of its wind farms -- including some of Saeta's -- to the farms' wind turbine manufacturers, which should save it some $24 million in operational costs. Financially, TerraForm looks on track to reduce its leverage ratio to management's target of between 4 and 5 times cash flow by the end of 2019. That should help the company make good on its projected annual dividend increases of 5% to 8% through 2022 while maintaining a payout ratio of just 80% to 85% of cash available for distribution. Put together, TerraForm's moves should give its management team the financial flexibility to pursue additional growth projects. The market has caught on to TerraForm's excellent prospects, bidding its stock up more than 25% so far this year. But it is still yielding about 5.6%, a higher rate than most utility stocks. It's not too late to buy into this great turnaround story. Jason Hall(SolarEdge Technologies):When it comes to solar, the panel makers tend to get a lot of the headlines. And rightly so, since they are on the front lines of meeting the demand for this high-growth sector of global energy. But at the same time, they haven't really proven to be the best investments as a category, with many of the biggest panel makers taking huge losses in recent years as supply and demand pressure has taken its toll on panel prices. I think to some extent, that has caused many investors to overlook the potential for SolarEdge, which makes a living mainly supplying solar panel power-management components, like inverters and power optimizers. These key parts are the go-between pieces that convert power from panels so that your home and the power grid can use it, and also maximize and balance the power that panels generate. And over the past few years, business has been really good: SEDG Gross Profit (TTM)data byYCharts. SolarEdge is recognized by panel makers and independent installers as a go-to partner for these components, and its market share continues to grow. And while that's probably enough reason to buy SolarEdge, there's even more to like. More recently,management took a bold stepto build a more diversified business in segments that overlap its strength in solar -- specifically, energy storage systems, and electric vehicle powertrain and recharging systems. It's early in the company's plans to fully develop these new segments, but it has made enormous progress already on moves that should start adding to the bottom line very soon. Based on this management team's past success, I expect those moves will pay off for investors for years to come. TERPdata byYCharts. Tyler Crowe(Brookfield Renewable Partners):There is no denying the immense growth opportunities in renewable and alternative energy right now. What the industry lacks, though, are new projects and developments that can generate high rates of return over the long haul. According to the Bloomberg new energy finance report, the internal rates of return for a renewable energy project in North America or Europe ranges from 7% to 10%. That's not great when you consider that many of these projects require large amounts of debt. This is what makes Brookfield Renewable Partners unique. While it is a major player in solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, it eschews chasing high-valuation, low-return projects for growth's sake and instead focuses on special value situations when they arise. The deal to acquire a portion of TerraForm Power was a great example of this as it was able to buy the controlling stake in TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global when their parent organization went bankrupt. Since 2014, the company has executed three special-situation deals like TerraForm Power that have all produced returns in excess of 18%. Deals like this don't come up every day, but Brookfield makes up for it by using its scale and operating expertise to squeeze more out of these assets once purchased. Management estimates it can get 6% to 11% annual growth in cash from operations from these improvements alone, soany deals on top of thatcan lead to significant boosts to returns. One of the hardest things in a fast-growing industry is to stay disciplined. Companies tend to get calls for growth lest they "fall behind" their peers. But Brookfield has been able to prove over the years that it doesn't have to chase growth to produce respectable returns for its investors, and that bodes well for the long-term future of this renewable energy stock. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Jason Hallowns shares of Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P., SolarEdge Technologies, and TerraForm Power.John Bromelshas no position in any of the stocks mentioned.Tyler Croweowns shares of Brookfield Asset Management, SolarEdge Technologies, and TerraForm Power. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Brookfield Asset Management. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
From McDonald's to C-suite: Immigrant says American dream 'is still available' Despitepolarizing political battles over immigrationand the trepidation among immigrants looking to find the American dream, one immigrant entrepreneur thinks the U.S. is still “the place to be.” “There’s a reason why there’s long lines outside a lot of American consulates around the world,” Ali Master, the author of ‘Beyond the Golden Door,’ toldYahoo Finance’s YFi AMin a recent interview. “Even though the lamp that Lady Liberty holds is a little dimmer... I feel like the dream is still available.” Master made his journey to the United States from Pakistan nearly 33 years ago. Master started his career at a McDonald’s (MCD) chain restaurant, where he eventually became a manager. From there he went on to earn an accounting degree, start his own firm — and eventually landed a position as a Managing Partner for EY (formerly Ernst & Young). He is not the only one to think the American Dream is still alive and well. According to the right-leaning think-tankAmerican Enterprise Institute, 41% of American families think they’re already living the dream; 41% think they are on their way to achieving it; and 18% think the American Dream is out of reach. A2017 Pew Research pollfound that most Americans still believed a better life was within reach. Master cautioned that his path to success wasn’t easy, telling Yahoo Finance: “I had a lot of challenges coming here. It wasn’t like you came in and boom success happened.” At a time when college graduates aredrowning in student loans and student debt,Master said working hard to pay off your education is what makes it worth your while. “It took me seven years to graduate,” Master said. “I had no scholarships, you had to pay it all off.” He added that despite the financial burden, “there’s value in working so hard and eventually paying all of those things off... the fruit that you get is sweeter when you work so hard to pay those things off.” Brooke DiPalma is a producer for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter@brookedipalma. READ MORE: • Cisco, Global Citizen announce multimillion-dollar partnership to help end poverty • Waitr wants to take a bite out of Uber Eats • U.S.-China trade dispute could last 'not just over months or years, but even decades' Follow Yahoo Finance onTwitter,Facebook,Instagram,Flipboard,LinkedIn,YouTube, andreddit.
Should You Be Holding Sandstorm Gold Ltd. (TSE:SSL)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! As an investor, I look for investments which does not compromise one fundamental factor for another. By this I mean, I look at stocks holistically, from their financial health to their future outlook. In the case of Sandstorm Gold Ltd. (TSE:SSL), it is a financially-robust company with a strong track record and a buoyant growth outlook. In the following section, I expand a bit more on these key aspects. If you're interested in understanding beyond my broad commentary, take a look at thereport on Sandstorm Gold here. SSL delivered a triple-digit bottom-line expansion over the past couple of years, with its most recent earnings level surpassing its average level over the last five years. Not only did SSL outperformed its past performance, its growth also surpassed the Metals and Mining industry expansion, which generated a -25% earnings growth. This is what investors like to see! SSL is financially robust, with ample cash on hand and short-term investments to meet upcoming liabilities. This indicates that SSL has sufficient cash flows and proper cash management in place, which is a key determinant of the company’s health. SSL appears to have made good use of debt, producing operating cash levels of 1.11x total debt in the prior year. This is a strong indication that debt is reasonably met with cash generated. For Sandstorm Gold, there are three fundamental aspects you should further research: 1. Valuation: What is SSL worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether SSL is currently mispriced by the market. 2. Dividend Income vs Capital Gains: Does SSL return gains to shareholders through reinvesting in itself and growing earnings, or redistribute a decent portion of earnings as dividends? Ourhistorical dividend yield visualizationquickly tells you what your can expect from SSL as an investment. 3. Other Attractive Alternatives: Are there other well-rounded stocks you could be holding instead of SSL? Exploreour interactive list of stocks with large potentialto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
What Is ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:CNOB) Share Price Doing? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNOB), operating in the financial services industry based in United States, saw a double-digit share price rise of over 10% in the past couple of months on the NASDAQGS. As a stock with high coverage by analysts, you could assume any recent changes in the company’s outlook is already priced into the stock. However, could the stock still be trading at a relatively cheap price? Let’s take a look at ConnectOne Bancorp’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if the opportunity still exists. View our latest analysis for ConnectOne Bancorp Good news, investors! ConnectOne Bancorp is still a bargain right now. My valuation model shows that the intrinsic value for the stock is $33.59, which is above what the market is valuing the company at the moment. This indicates a potential opportunity to buy low. What’s more interesting is that, ConnectOne Bancorp’s share price is theoretically quite stable, which could mean two things: firstly, it may take the share price a while to move to its intrinsic value, and secondly, there may be less chances to buy low in the future once it reaches that value. This is because the stock is less volatile than the wider market given its low beta. Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Although value investors would argue that it’s the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. With profit expected to grow by a double-digit 14% in the upcoming year, the short-term outlook is positive for ConnectOne Bancorp. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation. Are you a shareholder?Since CNOB is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to increase your holdings in the stock. With an optimistic outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as capital structure to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation. Are you a potential investor?If you’ve been keeping an eye on CNOB for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its prosperous future outlook isn’t fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means it’s not too late to buy CNOB. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the track record of its management team, in order to make a well-informed investment decision. Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on ConnectOne Bancorp. You can find everything you need to know about ConnectOne Bancorp inthe latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in ConnectOne Bancorp, you can use our free platform to see my list of over50 other stocks with a high growth potential. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Micron Earnings: Get Ready for More Bad News Memory-chip manufacturer Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) is set to report its fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, June 25, after the market closes. It won't be pretty: The company is expecting gargantuan declines in both revenue and earnings as weak demand and brutal price drops wreak havoc on the industry. It wasn't too long ago that Micron was producing record profits as management talked up the idea that future cycles would be more muted thanks to structural changes in the industry. It was a take on the classic "this time is different" mantra that tends to pop up whenever everything is going right. Sometimes things are different, but this does not appear to be one of those times. A Micron facility. Image source: Micron. Vanishing profits Micron expects to produce revenue of $4.8 billion, plus or minus $200 million, in the third quarter. That's down a whopping 38.5% year over year. Multiple factors are conspiring to drive down Micron's revenue, including slumping chip prices, elevated customer inventory levels, weakening demand from server and enterprise customers, CPU shortages, and uncertainty driven by macroeconomic developments. In the second quarter, Micron saw average selling prices for both DRAM and NAND chips crash more than 20% from the first quarter. Those low prices helped spur a small increase in NAND sales volume, but DRAM sales volume still tumbled by more than 10%. The bottom line will look even worse. Micron expects to report adjusted earnings per share of just $0.85, plus or minus $0.10, for the third quarter. That's down a staggering 73% year over year. When Micron reported its second-quarter results, the company said it expected to see improvements in DRAM sales volume in the next quarter. At the same time, it admitted that prices had fallen more than expected, and that it's outlook for the rest of 2019 had been moderated. Given the developments of the past few months, expect to hear the phrase "worse than expected" during Micron's third-quarter earnings call. Story continues Worse before it gets better The trade war between the U.S. and China has escalated in the past few months, creating uncertainty and spurring caution. On top of additional tariffs, the U.S. blacklisting of Chinese tech company Huawei is having an immediate effect on Micron. Huawei accounted for 13% of Micron's total revenue in the first six months of 2019, and that revenue is now gone for the foreseeable future. In addition to immediately reducing sales, this ban could exacerbate the high inventory levels and pricing declines that are plaguing the industry. DRAMeXchange, a provider of market research in the industry, now expects DRAM prices to slump by 10% to 15% in the calendar third quarter, with a 10% decline in the calendar fourth quarter. If this more pessimistic forecast bears out, Micron's margins will be under pressure for the rest of the year. Analysts are also becoming more pessimistic about a Micron recovery. Analysts at Baird believe that DRAM and NAND inventories are roughly double the normal levels, meaning that a recovery in sales volume looks unlikely anytime soon. Analysts at Evercore aren't expecting a memory recovery until the second half of 2020. Micron may very well fall short of its third-quarter guidance because of these developments, and it's almost a guarantee that its fourth-quarter guidance will look even worse. Is it time to buy? Given everything that's going wrong for Micron, it's hard to want to buy the stock. But the best time to invest in Micron in the past has been when the future looked bleak. This is a highly cyclical industry, and Micron routinely swings from profits to losses. It's now looking more likely that Micron will turn unprofitable before this cycle bottoms out. Just as periods of euphoria and fat profits have never lasted forever, neither have downturns. Micron will eventually recover from this, although the unusually high profitability it enjoyed in the past few years probably won't return anytime soon. Micron currently trades right around its book value. The stock has dipped below book value in previous downturns, but it's much closer to the bottom than the top right now. A weak third-quarter report may provide the necessary pessimism to drive the stock even lower. Buying Micron stock today, or after a potential earnings-fueled decline, isn't an unreasonable thing to do, given the valuation. You'll need an iron stomach, because the situation is almost certainly going to get worse for the company. And the stock could drop much further, especially if the trade war intensifies. We'll get a better idea of how much worse things will get for Micron when it reports its third-quarter results on Tuesday. If it starts to feel like the sky is falling, it may be time to hold your nose and buy. More From The Motley Fool 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) What Is an ETF? 5 Recession-Proof Stocks How to Beat the Market Timothy Green has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
Estimating The Fair Value Of StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! How far off is StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, we'll take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. I will be using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward. Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. See our latest analysis for StoneCo We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate: [{"": "Levered FCF (R$, Millions)", "2019": "R$765.00", "2020": "R$1.29k", "2021": "R$1.57k", "2022": "R$1.80k", "2023": "R$1.99k", "2024": "R$2.16k", "2025": "R$2.31k", "2026": "R$2.43k", "2027": "R$2.55k", "2028": "R$2.65k"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x1", "2020": "Analyst x1", "2021": "Analyst x1", "2022": "Est @ 14.44%", "2023": "Est @ 10.92%", "2024": "Est @ 8.47%", "2025": "Est @ 6.75%", "2026": "Est @ 5.54%", "2027": "Est @ 4.7%", "2028": "Est @ 4.11%"}, {"": "Present Value (R$, Millions) Discounted @ 8.99%", "2019": "R$701.87", "2020": "R$1.09k", "2021": "R$1.21k", "2022": "R$1.27k", "2023": "R$1.29k", "2024": "R$1.29k", "2025": "R$1.26k", "2026": "R$1.22k", "2027": "R$1.17k", "2028": "R$1.12k"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= R$11.63b "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.7%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 9%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = R$2.7b × (1 + 2.7%) ÷ (9% – 2.7%) = R$44b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= R$R$44b ÷ ( 1 + 9%)10= R$18.38b The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is R$30.02b. To get the intrinsic value per share, we divide this by the total number of shares outstanding. This results in an intrinsic value estimate in the company’s reported currency of R$108.22. However, STNE’s primary listing is in Brazil, and 1 share of STNE in BRL represents 0.262 ( BRL/ USD) share of NasdaqGS:STNE,so the intrinsic value per share in USD is $28.33.Compared to the current share price of $29.14, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. You don't have to agree with these inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at StoneCo as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 9%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.051. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For StoneCo, I've put together three relevant factors you should further research: 1. Financial Health: Does STNE have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does STNE's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of STNE? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the NASDAQ every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Should You Be Adding Booking Holdings (NASDAQ:BKNG) To Your Watchlist Today? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Some have more dollars than sense, they say, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can easily find investors. But as Warren Buffett has mused, 'If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.' When they buy such story stocks, investors are all too often the patsy. So if you're like me, you might be more interested in profitable, growing companies, likeBooking Holdings(NASDAQ:BKNG). Even if the shares are fully valued today, most capitalists would recognize its profits as the demonstration of steady value generation. Loss-making companies are always racing against time to reach financial sustainability, but time is often a friend of the profitable company, especially if it is growing. View our latest analysis for Booking Holdings If you believe that markets are even vaguely efficient, then over the long term you'd expect a company's share price to follow its earnings per share (EPS). That makes EPS growth an attractive quality for any company. As a tree reaches steadily for the sky, Booking Holdings's EPS has grown 20% each year, compound, over three years. If the company can sustain that sort of growth, we'd expect shareholders to come away winners. One way to double-check a company's growth is to look at how its revenue, and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins are changing. Booking Holdings maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 9.5% to US$14b. That's a real positive. In the chart below, you can see how the company has grown earnings, and revenue, over time. For finer detail, click on the image. The trick, as an investor, is to find companies that aregoing toperform well in the future, not just in the past. To that end, right now and today, you can checkour visualization of consensus analyst forecasts for future Booking Holdings EPS100% free. Since Booking Holdings has a market capitalization of US$81b, we wouldn't expect insiders to hold a large percentage of shares. But we do take comfort from the fact that they are investors in the company. Notably, they have an enormous stake in the company, worth US$247m. I would find that kind of skin in the game quite encouraging, if I owned shares, since it would ensure that the leaders of the company would also experience my success, or failure, with the stock. For growth investors like me, Booking Holdings's raw rate of earnings growth is a beacon in the night. Further, the high level of insider buying impresses me, and suggests that I'm not the only one who appreciates the EPS growth. Fast growth and confident insiders should be enough to warrant further research. So the answer is that I do think this is a good stock to follow along with. Of course, identifying quality businesses is only half the battle; investors need to know whether the stock is undervalued. So you might want to consider thisfreediscounted cashflow valuationof Booking Holdings. Of course, you can do well (sometimes) buying stocks thatare notgrowing earnings anddo nothave insiders buying shares. But as a growth investor I always like to check out companies thatdohave those features. You can accessa free list of them here. Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
U.S. Mideast plan to boost Palestinian resistance-Iran parliament head DUBAI, June 23 (Reuters) - Iran's parliament speaker said on Sunday a U.S. Middle East peace plan was "toying with a nation's dignity" and would lead to stronger resistance against Israel by Palestinian militant groups, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. U.S. President Donald Trump has dubbed the plan "deal of the century". As part of the plan, a U.S.-led conference will be held next week in Bahrain on proposals for major investments in the Palestinian economy. "Trump wants to make a deal on the fate of the Palestinian people. While toying with a nation's dignity is scandalous, this will strengthen resistance movements as Palestinians realise that they can only succeed through resistance," said Ali Larijani, quoted by IRNA. (Reporting by Dubai newsroom, editing by Louise Heavens)
Better Buy: Tellurian vs. Cheniere Over the past couple of decades,Cheniere Energy(NYSEMKT: LNG)has made, lost, and remade investors a lot of money -- the stock has gained an incredible 2,240%, though it's still down from the all-time high reached back in 2014. Cheniere's story is one of a management team willing to take a massive gamble that paid off, as itsliquefied natural gas(LNG) facilities now generate billions of dollars in positive -- and predictable -- cash flows each year under long-term contracts with exporters. Tellurian(NASDAQ: TELL), on the other hand, is at the very beginning of its journey, yet it's under the same management team that built Cheniere -- chiefly the founder of both companies, Charif Souki, but also a handful of other executives who led Cheniere from start-up to cash cow. Can Souki and his team do it again? Or is it possible they even do it onebetter?With some slight differences in the business model, Tellurian has a lot to offer. But as a start-up, there remain significant risks investors must consider before making a choice. Keep reading to learn the investment case -- and risks -- for both companies. Image source: Getty Images. If you go back around 20 years, just about everyone in the energy industry was convinced the U.S. was running out of natural gas. The industry knew about the substantial gas deposits found deep in shale rock all over North America, but the equipment and techniques to cost-effectively extract it simply didn't exist. Souki founded Cheniere to capitalize on that reality, with plans to develop LNGimportterminals to bring natural gas into the country as domestic production fell. Well, a funny thing happened: Producers and drilling companies kept working at ways to unlock all that gas, and developed what we now call fracking -- hydraulic fracturing -- and combined it with horizontal drilling. The combination of more-powerful drilling and pumping systems with these new techniques has paid off in spades; it's estimated that North American natural gas reserves are sufficient to last another century. Fortunately for Cheniere and its investors, Souki and his team completely reversed course, and transformed Cheniere into the biggest pure-play LNG producer and exporter in the world. But it spent much of that time generating essentially zero revenue while spending billions to build its liquefaction and export terminals: LNG Revenue (TTM)data byYCharts. The big takeaway? Investors spentmanyyears riding out Cheniere's build-out, investing almost exclusively in its potential to deliver the cash flows that management promised investors would come. And come they have, to the tune of nearly $2 billion in operating cash flow over the past 12 months. Moreover, the company expects to reach nearly $3 billion in distributable cash flows by 2023, based on a combination of signed agreements with new customers and ongoing expansion. So even after the massive 2,300% in gains that investors have enjoyed over the past decade, Cheniere likely isn't done rewarding them just yet. Despite having guided the company through an amazing turnaround, Souki was essentially forced out of Cheniere in late 2015 by activist investors. He didn't spend much time trying to figure out his next step, founding Tellurian in February 2016 along with Martin Houston, former COO of BG Group (a leader in LNG) prior to its acquisition byShell. By late 2016, Tellurian had entered into an agreement to merge with Magellan Petroleum, taking that company's assets as a starting point to build a new LNG businessfrom little more than the ground up. Of course, that means the same thing for Tellurian investors that Cheniere shareholders endured for the better part of a decade: essentially zero operating results, and making an investment based entirely on the company's potential to build a cash-cow business. And since closing the merger with Magellan and going public as Tellurian on Feb. 10, 2017, Mr. Market hasn't been patient, or kind: TELLdata byYCharts. Tellurian has been one of the most-volatile energy stocks, and has lost 42% of its value. Moreover, it hasn't even broken ground on its LNG export facility, which will be called Driftwood LNG. However, it has received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build Driftwood, and more recently, export authorization from the Department of Energy. These are significant steps forward. Tellurian will make its final investment decision (FID) in the coming months to move forward with construction of Driftwood, which is a foregone conclusion at this point, and should begin raising capital to fund construction later this year. The company doesn't expect it will produce or export any LNG until 2023, and that's if everything goes according to plan, which is not guaranteed. Moreover, it's notjustan LNG facility: A huge part of Tellurian's plan is its Permian Global Access Pipeline (PGAP), which it expects to complete at the same time as Driftwood, to give it access to 2 billion cubic feet per year of low-cost natural gas. That's alotto coordinate and get right at the same time. But if there's one thing Tellurian has going for it, it's the management team. In addition to Souki and Houston, Tellurian is stocked with Cheniere executives who guided that company through this same phase, including Meg Gentle, who is now Tellurian's CEO (Souki and Houston are chairman and vice-chairman respectively), and four other top executives. Without getting too bogged down in the details, Tellurian looks incredibly appealing because it has experienced leaders who've done this before, and management projects the facilities they plan to build will generate $8 per share in cash flows when completed. Tellurian stock trades for around $8 per share today. If it reaches that target, and trades for a similar valuation to Cheniere -- around 9 times cash from operations recently -- it's worth $72 per share. If it happens, that would turn a $10,000 investment into $90,000 in about five years. Global demand for LNG is set to remain very strong over the next decade and longer, between global population growth increasing demand for cheap energy, and the shift away from coal in many countries further increasing gas demand. And the difference between Cheniere and Tellurian at this point is, Cheniere is established, with a track record of delivering LNG to its partners -- something lenders and equity investors both value when it comes to turning over more capital to fund continued growth. It also now has positive cash flows it can use to fund expansion, so it's not reliant solely on capital markets. Tellurian, however, is completely reliant on the "generosity of others" at this stage. It plans to use a combination of stock sales, equity stakes by partner energy companies, and debt to fund Driftwood and PGAP. It certainly has leadership with a pedigree, and it plans to do it one better with a slightly different strategy to fund construction and access cheap natural gas supplies. But execution risk is far greater for Tellurian than for Cheniere. Based on that, it's up to you to decide whether you're willing and able to take on the risk that Tellurian fails and investors get wiped out -- potentially for reasons it cannot control that make access to capital impossible -- or if you're better off reducing that downside risk with Cheniere, even though it means the potential upside is much smaller. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Jason Hallowns shares of Tellurian Inc. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Want To Invest In Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Inc. (TSE:SWP)? Here's How It Performed Lately Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Examining Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Inc.'s (TSE:SWP) past track record of performance is an insightful exercise for investors. It allows us to reflect on whether or not the company has met or exceed expectations, which is a great indicator for future performance. Today I will assess SWP's latest performance announced on 31 March 2019 and compare these figures to its longer term trend and industry movements. View our latest analysis for Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee SWP's trailing twelve-month earnings (from 31 March 2019) of CA$4.0m has jumped 25% compared to the previous year. Furthermore, this one-year growth rate has exceeded its 5-year annual growth average of 15%, indicating the rate at which SWP is growing has accelerated. What's enabled this growth? Let's take a look at whether it is only due to an industry uplift, or if Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee has experienced some company-specific growth. In terms of returns from investment, Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee has fallen short of achieving a 20% return on equity (ROE), recording 8.7% instead. Furthermore, its return on assets (ROA) of 4.7% is below the CA Food industry of 5.6%, indicating Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee's are utilized less efficiently. And finally, its return on capital (ROC), which also accounts for Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee’s debt level, has declined over the past 3 years from 9.7% to 6.4%. This correlates with an increase in debt holding, with debt-to-equity ratio rising from 30% to 52% over the past 5 years. Though Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee's past data is helpful, it is only one aspect of my investment thesis. Companies that have performed well in the past, such as Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee gives investors conviction. However, the next step would be to assess whether the future looks as optimistic. I suggest you continue to research Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for SWP’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor SWP’s outlook. 2. Financial Health: Are SWP’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out ourfinancial health checks here. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 March 2019. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
3 Big Questions Nike Will Answer for Investors This Week Nike(NYSE: NKE)has seen its business surge lately thanks to the combination of healthier inventory levels and robust demand for its newest product releases across the footwear and sports apparel niches. Yet the company's last earnings report contained signs of a potential slowdown as revenue growth slipped in the key U.S. market. That stumble might just be the noise associated with typical short-term sales volatility, or it could be part of a new unfavorable trend for the business. That's a key reason investors will pay close attention to what Nike says about its latest operating trends when the company posts its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Thursday, June 27. Here are three things to watch. Image source: Getty Images. Nike announced double-digit sales growth in the previous quarter to extend its winning streak over rivals likeUnder Armour(NYSE: UA)(NYSE: UAA). However, sales gains slowed to 7% in the U.S. after having accelerated in each of the prior two quarters, causing many investors toquestion its growth outlook. For its part, management expressedno concerns about demand. Instead, it said in late March that healthy online sales and excitement around its latest product launches show that the business is as strong as ever. Investors will get a chance to judge that optimism against the retailer's actual results on Thursday. As long as sales gains land somewhere in the high single-digit range in the U.S., and higher in places like China, there will be no reason to doubt Nike's growth targets. Most investors who follow the stock expect to see earnings decline this quarter as Nike directs more cash toward improving its supply chain and investing in growth initiatives like e-commerce. That's not necessarily bad for the business. In fact, executives believe their ability to outspend rivals is a key competitive advantage. CFO Andy Campionsaid last year, "Nike's unrivaled scale and resources afford us the ability to overindex on investment in differentiating capabilities while still delivering expanding profitability." Shareholders will learn whether Nike achieved that balance on Thursday. Success would show up in a modest uptick in gross profit margin, indicating the company is able to pass along higher prices to customers and cash in on its innovation efforts. Thanks to its packed calendar of new product releases and healthy pace of retailer orders, Nike had some clarity about the start of fiscal 2020 as far back as late March. At that time, management said it believed it could stay within the ambitious annual growth targets -- calling for high single-digit revenue growth and rising gross profit margin -- outlined back in late 2017. CEO Mark Parker and his team now have the benefit of another three months of fresh market data that will inform their official outlook for the upcoming fiscal year. The growth picture will determine whether the company achieves its third straight year of robust sales gains. Investors will also be following any comments management makes about the cost environment, particularly with tariffs set to boost prices on key inputs over the next few months. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Demitrios Kalogeropoulosowns shares of Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), and Under Armour (C Shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), and Under Armour (C Shares). The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
'Canopy is playing the long game': MGO-ELLO CEO Canopy Growth (CGC) stock took a dive Friday, after a disappointingearnings reporthighlighted that its impending merger with Acreage Holdings (ACRGF) would strike a blow to its 2020 earnings. For cannabis adviser Evan Eneman, CEO of MGO-ELLO Alliance, this result is to be expected ‘at this point in time’. “I think Canopy is playing the long game and we can see that in their aggressive growth prospects,” Eneman said on Yahoo Finance’s “The Ticker.” The market size and reach is key to the strategy behind Canopy’s Acreage deal, and Eneman sees it as critical not only for their expansion, but for other Canadian cannabis businesses as well. “It’s an interesting outlook because Canada as a market itself is around the size of California in population but certainly smaller in size for consumption. So looking at the U.S. for expansion is critical,” he said. “So this strategy for Canopy in the Acreage deal, we’re going to see that for others.” Shareholders from both companies would agree with Eneman after they voted overwhelmingly to approve the $3.4 billion acquisition plan. Cannabis investments skyrockets New York state approved a bill to decriminalize marijuana but falls short on legalization. Despite uncertainty over the outlook of cannabis becoming legal on the federal level, investors’ optimism has not dampened. In fact, only in the first half of 2019, private investments in cannabis firms skyrocketed past $1.3 billion, according to MGO-ELLO and Pitchbook data. This compared to $1 billion for the whole year of 2018. Eneman expects even more to come. “We’re going to see that investment accelerate throughout the U.S. market at the very least, as well as internationally,” he said. According to MGO-ELLO’sCannabis Private Investment Review, they’re expecting banking access to be resolved and an expansion of cannabis products into various industry segments including “pharma, health & wellness, beverages, CPG and similar groupings.” A wide-range of cannabis products are already on the shelves in several U.S. states including edibles and beverages. Eneman believes diversification helps brands find new ground. “In the U.S. we already see that, we see the shift from flower to edibles quite extensively in most significant markets like California and others who have adult use programs already,” he said. “That’ll be a huge driver as brands accelerate into new segments, or Canopy and other operators.” But the inevitable question of nation-wide legalization continue to loom. “There’s cautious optimism that legalization is moving forward, and in so you see the investment dollar flow ahead of those regulatory changes,” he said. Grete Suarez is producer at Yahoo Finance for YFi PM and The Ticker. Follow her on Twitter:@GreteSuarez Read more: • Amazon drone delivery is still ‘a couple years out,’ drone CEO says • With Google and Facebook under the microscope, Apple could emerge a winner: Analyst • Crypto to Venezuela's rescue? A non-profit uses digital coin to ease crisis • Tesla is in its 'awkward teenage' years: WSJ's Tim Higgins Follow Yahoo Finance onTwitter,Facebook,Instagram,Flipboard,SmartNews,LinkedIn,YouTube, andreddit.
2019 FIFA Women's World Cup: Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz are healthy, USWNT coach says REIMS, France — United States national team stars Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz are expected to be healthy and available for Monday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup round of 16 game against Spain, U.S. coach Jill Ellis said Sunday during her pre-match press conference at Stade Auguste-Delaune. “Alex is fine,” Ellis said. “JJ is fine,” she added, referring to Ertz by her longtime nickname. (The former Julie Johnston married NFL player Zach Ertz in 2017.) Ertz didn’t play in last week’s Group F-winning victory against Sweden after suffering a minor hip injury. Morgan started that contest but was substituted midway through after being kicked by a Swedish player. With the defending champion U.S. already guaranteed a spot in the elimination round, both moves were considered precautionary. With five goals, all of them in the Americans’ tournament opener against Thailand, Morgan remains the joint-top scorer at France 2019 despite playing just 135 minutes so far. Morgan was rested for the June 16 group stage match versus Chile before returning to the lineup for the first round finale. She and Ertz, who each started the USA’s first two games, were key members of the team that won its record third Women’s World Cup four years ago in Canada. U.S. coach Jill Ellis said Sunday that Alex Morgan, right, and Julie Ertz are "fine" for Monday's Women's World Cup round of 16 match against Spain. (Associated Press) Morgan is now in pole position to become the first American to lead a World Cup in scoring since Michelle Akers did it at the inaugural event in 1991. Australian striker Sam Kerr, who also has five goals in France, won’t play again after the Matildas were knocked out of the competition by Norway on Saturday. If the U.S. gets past Spain, it will meet the winner of Sunday’s France-Brazil tilt in the quarterfinals on June 28 in Paris. More from Yahoo Sports: Is this the best USWNT of all time? One player says yes Curry: Stakes of next presidential election are ‘extremely high’ LaVar Ball talks again, makes ’First Take’ drama worse Sources: UConn move to the Big East inevitable View comments
Is Avnet, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AVT) Balance Sheet A Threat To Its Future? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Investors are always looking for growth in small-cap stocks like Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVT), with a market cap of US$4.6b. However, an important fact which most ignore is: how financially healthy is the business? Assessing first and foremost the financial health is essential, since poor capital management may bring about bankruptcies, which occur at a higher rate for small-caps. The following basic checks can help you get a picture of the company's balance sheet strength. However, potential investors would need to take a closer look, and I’d encourage you todig deeper yourself into AVT here. Over the past year, AVT has ramped up its debt from US$1.6b to US$2.1b – this includes long-term debt. With this rise in debt, AVT currently has US$725m remaining in cash and short-term investments to keep the business going. Moreover, AVT has generated US$436m in operating cash flow over the same time period, resulting in an operating cash to total debt ratio of 21%, signalling that AVT’s current level of operating cash is high enough to cover debt. With current liabilities at US$2.3b, it appears that the company has maintained a safe level of current assets to meet its obligations, with the current ratio last standing at 3.11x. The current ratio is calculated by dividing current assets by current liabilities. Having said that, a ratio greater than 3x may be considered by some to be quite high, however this is not necessarily a negative for the company. With debt reaching 48% of equity, AVT may be thought of as relatively highly levered. This is somewhat unusual for small-caps companies, since lenders are often hesitant to provide attractive interest rates to less-established businesses. We can check to see whether AVT is able to meet its debt obligations by looking at the net interest coverage ratio. A company generating earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) at least three times its net interest payments is considered financially sound. In AVT's, case, the ratio of 4.8x suggests that interest is appropriately covered, which means that lenders may be inclined to lend more money to the company, as it is seen as safe in terms of payback. AVT’s high cash coverage means that, although its debt levels are high, the company is able to utilise its borrowings efficiently in order to generate cash flow. Since there is also no concerns around AVT's liquidity needs, this may be its optimal capital structure for the time being. Keep in mind I haven't considered other factors such as how AVT has been performing in the past. I suggest you continue to research Avnet to get a better picture of the small-cap by looking at: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for AVT’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor AVT’s outlook. 2. Valuation: What is AVT worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether AVT is currently mispriced by the market. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Calculating The Fair Value Of AltaGas Canada Inc. (TSE:ACI) Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of AltaGas Canada Inc. (TSE:ACI) by estimating the company's future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. I will use the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. Check out our latest analysis for AltaGas Canada We're using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company's growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars: [{"": "Levered FCF (CA$, Millions)", "2019": "CA$35.50", "2020": "CA$32.08", "2021": "CA$30.50", "2022": "CA$37.00", "2023": "CA$40.00", "2024": "CA$42.42", "2025": "CA$44.46", "2026": "CA$46.22", "2027": "CA$47.77", "2028": "CA$49.17"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x2", "2020": "Analyst x4", "2021": "Analyst x2", "2022": "Analyst x1", "2023": "Analyst x1", "2024": "Est @ 6.04%", "2025": "Est @ 4.81%", "2026": "Est @ 3.95%", "2027": "Est @ 3.35%", "2028": "Est @ 2.93%"}, {"": "Present Value (CA$, Millions) Discounted @ 6.72%", "2019": "CA$33.27", "2020": "CA$28.17", "2021": "CA$25.10", "2022": "CA$28.53", "2023": "CA$28.90", "2024": "CA$28.72", "2025": "CA$28.21", "2026": "CA$27.48", "2027": "CA$26.61", "2028": "CA$25.67"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= CA$280.65m "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the intial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 10-year government bond rate of 1.9%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 6.7%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = CA$49m × (1 + 1.9%) ÷ (6.7% – 1.9%) = CA$1.1b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= CA$CA$1.1b ÷ ( 1 + 6.7%)10= CA$548.83m The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is CA$829.48m. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of CA$27.65. Relative to the current share price of CA$23.46, the company appears about fair value at a 15% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out. The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. You don't have to agree with these inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at AltaGas Canada as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 6.7%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For AltaGas Canada, I've compiled three pertinent aspects you should further examine: 1. Financial Health: Does ACI have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does ACI's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of ACI? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the TSE every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Estimating The Intrinsic Value Of AltaGas Canada Inc. (TSE:ACI) Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Today we'll do a simple run through of a valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of AltaGas Canada Inc. (TSE:ACI) as an investment opportunity by taking the foreast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today's value. I will be using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! We generally believe that a company's value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. Check out our latest analysis for AltaGas Canada We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars: [{"": "Levered FCF (CA$, Millions)", "2019": "CA$35.50", "2020": "CA$32.08", "2021": "CA$30.50", "2022": "CA$37.00", "2023": "CA$40.00", "2024": "CA$42.42", "2025": "CA$44.46", "2026": "CA$46.22", "2027": "CA$47.77", "2028": "CA$49.17"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x2", "2020": "Analyst x4", "2021": "Analyst x2", "2022": "Analyst x1", "2023": "Analyst x1", "2024": "Est @ 6.04%", "2025": "Est @ 4.81%", "2026": "Est @ 3.95%", "2027": "Est @ 3.35%", "2028": "Est @ 2.93%"}, {"": "Present Value (CA$, Millions) Discounted @ 6.72%", "2019": "CA$33.27", "2020": "CA$28.17", "2021": "CA$25.10", "2022": "CA$28.53", "2023": "CA$28.90", "2024": "CA$28.72", "2025": "CA$28.21", "2026": "CA$27.48", "2027": "CA$26.61", "2028": "CA$25.67"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= CA$280.65m "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 10-year government bond rate of 1.9%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 6.7%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = CA$49m × (1 + 1.9%) ÷ (6.7% – 1.9%) = CA$1.1b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= CA$CA$1.1b ÷ ( 1 + 6.7%)10= CA$548.83m The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is CA$829.48m. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of CA$27.65. Compared to the current share price of CA$23.46, the company appears about fair value at a 15% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. You don't have to agree with these inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at AltaGas Canada as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 6.7%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For AltaGas Canada, There are three essential factors you should further examine: 1. Financial Health: Does ACI have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does ACI's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of ACI? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every CA stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
The Adverum Biotechnologies (NASDAQ:ADVM) Share Price Has Gained 252%, So Why Not Pay It Some Attention? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! The most you can lose on any stock (assuming you don't use leverage) is 100% of your money. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you canmakemore than 100%. For example, theAdverum Biotechnologies, Inc.(NASDAQ:ADVM) share price has soared 252% in the last three years. How nice for those who held the stock! Also pleasing for shareholders was the 110% gain in the last three months. See our latest analysis for Adverum Biotechnologies With just US$1,396,000 worth of revenue in twelve months, we don't think the market considers Adverum Biotechnologies to have proven its business plan. As a result, we think it's unlikely shareholders are paying much attention to current revenue, but rather speculating on growth in the years to come. For example, they may be hoping that Adverum Biotechnologies comes up with a great new product, before it runs out of money. We think companies that have neither significant revenues nor profits are pretty high risk. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some such companies go on to make revenue, profits, and generate value, others get hyped up by hopeful naifs before eventually going bankrupt. Adverum Biotechnologies has already given some investors a taste of the sweet gains that high risk investing can generate, if your timing is right. Adverum Biotechnologies had cash in excess of all liabilities of US$157m when it last reported (March 2019). That's not too bad but management may have to think about raising capital or taking on debt, unless the company is close to breaking even. With the share price up 52% per year, over 3 years, the market is seems hopeful about the potential, despite the cash burn. You can click on the image below to see (in greater detail) how Adverum Biotechnologies's cash levels have changed over time. It can be extremely risky to invest in a company that doesn't even have revenue. There's no way to know its value easily. Given that situation, many of the best investors like to check if insiders have been buying shares. It's usually a positive if they have, as it may indicate they see value in the stock. Luckily we are in a position to provide you with thisfreechart of insider buying (and selling). We're pleased to report that Adverum Biotechnologies rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 88% over the last year. That gain actually surpasses the 52% TSR it generated (per year) over three years. These improved returns may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. It is all well and good that insiders have been buying shares, but we suggest youcheck here to see what price insiders were buying at. Adverum Biotechnologies is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to findwinning investmentsthisfreelist of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Bitcoin Falls Under $10,700 as Top Cryptos See Mixed Movements Monday, June 17 — Most of the top 20cryptocurrenciesare reporting mixed movements on the day by press time, as bitcoin (BTC) trades under the $10,700 mark. Market visualization courtesy ofCoin360 Bitcoin is currently down over 4.65% on the day, trading around$10,644 at press time, according toCoin360. Looking at its weekly chart, the coin is up over 16%. Bitcoin 7-day price chart. Source:Coin360 As Cointelegraphreportedyesterday, bitcoin crossed $11,000 in under 24 hours after crossing $10,000. Ether (ETH) is holding onto its position as the largest altcoin by market cap, which currently stands at over $32.8 billion. The second-largest altcoin, Ripple’sXRP, has a market cap of $19.9 billion at press time. Coin360 data shows that ether’s price has decreased by 1.69% over the last 24 hours. On the week, the coin has also gained over 13% in value. Just yesterday, etherhita 10-month high. Ether 7-day price chart. Source:Coin360 XRP is up just over 1% over the last 24 hours and is currently trading at around $0.473. On the week, the coin is up about 12%. XRP 7-day price chart. Source:Coin360 Among the top 20 cryptocurrencies, both bitcoin cash (BCH) and tron (TRX) are seeing reasonable gains, both trading up over 4% at press time to trade at $478.68 and $0.036, respectively. At press time, thetotal market capitalizationof all cryptocurrencies is $324 billion, over 14.8% higher than the value it reported a week ago. • ETH Hits 10-Month High as Crypto Markets See Solid Green • Bitcoin Breaks $9,300 as US Stock Market Sees Minor Uptrend • Bitcoin Holds $9,100 Support While Top 20 Coins Trade Sideways • Big Four Auditing Firm PwC Releases Cryptocurrency Auditing Software
Fans Think Lisa Marie Presley’s Son Benjamin Keough Looks Just Like Elvis Photo credit: Instagram/Lisa Marie Presley From Oprah Magazine Lisa Marie Presley posted a photo with her family-and fans are pointing out just how much her son, Benjamin Keough, looks like Elvis Presley. See the rare image below . This will make you want to hit play on “Jailhouse Rock” or “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Over the weekend, Lisa Marie Presley, 51, took to social media to share a rare family photo with all four of her children: Riley Keough, 30, Benjamin Keough, 26, Finley Aaron Love Lockwood, 10, and Harper Vivienne Ann Lockwood, 10. “Mama Lion with cubs,” she wrote in the tweet and on Instagram, which People points out appears to be from Riley’s 30th birthday celebration. The sweet black-and-white photo finds the family holding onto each other closely and smiling for the camera. And while a glimpse of life at home is fun to see, fans couldn’t help but chime in about the fact that her son Benjamin looks a lot like Presley’s late father, Elvis Presley. “Your son is the image of your dad,” one user wrote, while others chimed in with similar sentiments such as, “Beautiful Mama Lion and beautiful cubs! Your son is a twin of your Dad! Nice family!” Riley celebrated her birthday on May 30 with family, and Presley and the squad surprised her with a recorded version of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” that the women in the family sang together. View this post on Instagram Mama Lion with cubs ❤️🖤💚💙🦁🥰 A post shared by Lisa Marie Presley (@lisampresley) on Jun 20, 2019 at 3:34pm PDT Your son is the image of your dad, lovely family photo, sending love and great blessings to u all xxx - Sandy B (@sandyisland) June 20, 2019 Beautiful Mama Lion and beautiful cubs! Your son is a twin of your Dad! Nice family! - Lisa Reimund (@ya_reimund) June 20, 2019 It’s so surreal how much your son looks like your dad! 🤔 Beautiful! 😊💛 - Tawanda Perkins (@TawandaPMac) June 22, 2019 Benjamin looks so like elvis :) - Vicki Begbie (@VickiBegbie) June 21, 2019 “@rileykeough surprise Bday present from me and the girls was to record Riley and mines song together (tiny dancer by @Elton john of course) which was emotional enough. But the bigger surprise was when the chorus kicks in of her sisters singing w me. See Video of her totally Raw reaction. Hope you enjoy watching 😀👍,” Presley wrote in her caption of Riley’s reaction. Story continues View this post on Instagram @rileykeough surprise Bday present from me and the girls was to record Riley and mines song together (tiny dancer by @Elton john of course) which was emotional enough. But the bigger surprise was when the chorus kicks in of her sisters singing w me. See Video of her totally Raw reaction. Hope you enjoy watching 😀👍 A post shared by Lisa Marie Presley (@lisampresley) on May 30, 2019 at 4:17pm PDT Last summer, Presley shared another shot of herself with Benjamin together during a Good Morning America segment. View this post on Instagram Flashback!!!! With Ben at Sun Studios filming @goodmorningamerica at Sun Studios on 5/12/2012 during the release of ”Storm & Grace”. A post shared by Lisa Marie Presley (@lisampresley) on Jun 20, 2018 at 6:38pm PDT Is he Elvis’s doppelgänger? Let us know in the comments below. Photo credit: RB - Getty Images For more ways to live your best life plus all things Oprah, sign up for our newsletter!
Why Is Hibbett (HIBB) Down 2.8% Since Last Earnings Report? A month has gone by since the last earnings report for Hibbett Sports (HIBB). Shares have lost about 2.8% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500. Will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Hibbett due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at the most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important drivers. Hibbett Earnings and Sales Surpass Estimates in Q1 Hibbett reported solid first-quarter fiscal 2020 results, wherein earnings and sales surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Both the top and bottom line also improved on a year-over-year basis. While this marked the company’s second consecutive bottom-line beat, the top line outpaced estimates for the third straight quarter. Q1 Highlights Hibbett reported adjusted earnings of $1.61 per share, up 43.8% from $1.12 registered in the year-ago quarter. The bottom line also outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.29. Net sales grew 25% year over year to $343.3 million and also came above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $327 million. Markedly, the reported sales figure includes contributions of $59.4 million from the City Gear business. Additionally, consolidated e-commerce sales surged 49.7% and accounted for nearly 8.3% of the total sales in the fiscal first quarter. The company expects continued growth in the e-commerce business owing to enhancements in mobile app as well as “Buy Online, Pick Up in Store” and “Reserve in Store” capabilities. Comparable store sales (comps), excluding City Gear sales, rose 5.1% in the fiscal first quarter. Comps rose low-single digits in February, mid-single digits in March and low-double digits in April. Category-wise, the company registered growth in footwear and sneaker-connected apparel & accessories, which also drove comps growth. However, it witnessed persistent softness in the licensed products and team sports. Adjusted gross profit rose 23.6% to $119.6 million, while adjusted gross margin contracted 40 basis points (bps) to 34.8% primarily due to lower merchandise margin. Adjusted operating income surged 39.5% to $39.9 million. Further, adjusted operating margin expanded 90 bps to 11.6% primarily owing to lower adjusted store operating, selling and administrative (SG&A) expenses, somewhat mitigated by gross margin contraction. Adjusted store operating, SG&A expenses decreased 140 bps as a percentage of sales. Other Financial Aspects Hibbett ended the quarter with $117 million in cash and cash equivalents, $26 million in debt outstanding (long-term debt), and $74 million available under its credit facilities. Total stockholders’ investment as of May 4, 2019, totaled roughly $361.4 million. Further, Hibbett repurchased 259,432 shares for $5.4 million in the fiscal first quarter. As of May 4, it had roughly $183.2 million remaining under its authorization for share repurchases through Jan 29, 2022. For fiscal 2020, management anticipates share buyback of roughly $10-$15 million. Store Update In first-quarter fiscal 2020, Hibbett introduced three new stores, rebranded two of its flagship stores to City Gear outlets and expanded one high-performing store. However, the company shut down 24 underperforming outlets. Consequently, it ended the quarter with 1,144 stores across 35 states. Furthermore, management accelerated store closure plan by focusing on increasing the store productivity besides reinforcing the omni-channel business. Currently, management remains on track to shut down roughly 95 Hibbett stores in fiscal 2020. In addition, the company expects 80-85 net store closings for the fiscal year. Outlook Following the robust first-quarter results, management revised its guidance for fiscal 2020. Comps are now anticipated to be up 0.5-2% compared with the earlier projection of negative 1% to positive 1%. Further, gross margin is estimated to decline in the 25-35 bps range and adjusted gross margin is expected to decline 35-45 bps. Earlier, gross margin was estimated to decrease in the 25-45 bps range and adjusted gross margin was likely to contract 35-55 bps. SG&A expenses, as a percentage of sales, are likely to increase 10-15 bps, while the metric is expected to remain flat to down 10 bps on an adjusted basis. Earlier, SG&A expenses, as a percentage of sales, was estimated to increase 15-25 bps, while it was likely to remain flat on an adjusted basis. Further, the tax rate is projected at roughly 25%. Excluding non-recurring costs, management now envisions adjusted earnings of $2.00-$2.15 per share, up from the prior expectation of $1.80-$2.00 and $1.77 earned in fiscal 2019. Including the non-recurring costs related to the integration of City Gear as well as store closures expenses of 25-35 cents per share, earnings per share are expected to be $1.70-$1.85 compared with $1.50-$1.70, guided previously. Meanwhile, capital expenditures are still expected to be nearly $18-$22 million for fiscal 2020. Story continues How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then? In the past month, investors have witnessed a downward trend in fresh estimates. The consensus estimate has shifted -21.48% due to these changes. VGM Scores At this time, Hibbett has a strong Growth Score of A, a grade with the same score on the momentum front. Following the exact same course, the stock was allocated a grade of A on the value side, putting it in the top quintile for this investment strategy. Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of A. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in. Outlook Estimates have been broadly trending downward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions indicates a downward shift. Notably, Hibbett has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). We expect an above average return from the stock in the next few months. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Hibbett Sports, Inc. (HIBB) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research
Why Is Foot Locker (FL) Down 20% Since Last Earnings Report? A month has gone by since the last earnings report for Foot Locker (FL). Shares have lost about 20% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500. Will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Foot Locker due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at the most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important drivers. Foot Locker Misses Q1 Earnings Estimates, Trims ViewFoot Locker, Inc. posted lower-than-expected first-quarter results and trimmed fiscal 2019 earnings view. Management now anticipates high-single digit increase in earnings per share for the fiscal year, down from the earlier projection of double-digit growth due to slower pace of share repurchase activity.This operator of athletic shoes and apparel retailer reported adjusted earnings of $1.53 per share that missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.61. However, the bottom line climbed 5.5% from the year-ago quarter, courtesy of higher net sales and share repurchase activity.The company generated total sales of $2,078 million that grew 2.6% year over year but fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2,107 million, after four successive quarter of beat. Excluding the effect of foreign currency fluctuations, total sales rose 4.7%.Meanwhile, comparable-store sales increased 4.6% during the quarter under review. Management had earlier forecast mid-single digit comparable sales growth for fiscal 2019. The company registered comparable sales increase of 2.9% at its stores, while direct to customer channel sales surged 14.8%. DTC business increased to 15.4% of total sales during the quarter, up from 13.9% in the year-ago period.Foot Locker's gross margin rate expanded 30 basis points to 33.2% during the quarter under review. We note that SG&A expense rate deleveraged 100 basis points to 20% due to strategic investments in digital capabilities and infrastructure. Management had earlier projected gross margin to expand in the band of 20-40 basis points and SG&A expenses rate to increase by 40-60 basis points during fiscal 2019.For the second quarter, Foot Locker expects a low to mid single-digit gain in comparable sales. Gross margin is projected to be flat to down 20 basis points, while SG&A expenses rate is likely to increase 80-100 basis points in the second quarter.Store UpdateDuring the quarter, Foot Locker opened 14 new outlets (including two power stores), remodeled or relocated 13 stores, and shuttered 34. As of May 4, 2019, the company operated 3,201 outlets across 27 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Apart from these, there are 119 franchised Foot Locker stores in the Middle East. Germany has 10 franchised Runners Point stores.Other Financial DetailsFoot Locker ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $1,126 million, long-term debt of $123 million, and shareholders’ equity of $2,607 million. During the quarter, the company repurchased 32,100 shares of worth $1.8 million. Management incurred capital expenditure of $45 million during the quarter. How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then? In the past month, investors have witnessed a downward trend in fresh estimates. The consensus estimate has shifted -17.96% due to these changes. VGM Scores At this time, Foot Locker has a strong Growth Score of A, though it is lagging a lot on the Momentum Score front with a D. However, the stock was allocated a grade of A on the value side, putting it in the top quintile for this investment strategy. Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of A. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in. Outlook Estimates have been broadly trending downward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions indicates a downward shift. It's no surprise Foot Locker has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). We expect a below average return from the stock in the next few months. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportFoot Locker, Inc. (FL) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research
Need To Know: American Equity Investment Life Holding Company (NYSE:AEL) Insiders Have Been Selling Shares Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! We've lost count of how many times insiders have accumulated shares in a company that goes on to improve markedly. On the other hand, we'd be remiss not to mention that insider sales have been known to precede tough periods for a business. So before you buy or sellAmerican Equity Investment Life Holding Company(NYSE:AEL), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling. It is perfectly legal for company insiders, including board members, to buy and sell stock in a company. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market. Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. For example, a Columbia Universitystudyfound that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own company’s stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'. See our latest analysis for American Equity Investment Life Holding Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by the Director, Debra Richardson, for US$2.2m worth of shares, at about US$27.40 per share. So we know that an insider sold shares at around the present share price of US$26.82. We generally don't like to see insider selling, but the lower the sale price, the more it concerns us. Given that the sale took place at around current prices, it makes us a little cautious but is hardly a major concern. Debra Richardson was the only individual insider to sell shares in the last twelve months. The chart below shows insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below! If you are like me, then you willnotwant to miss thisfreelist of growing companies that insiders are buying. Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. A high insider ownership often makes company leadership more mindful of shareholder interests. Insiders own 1.7% of American Equity Investment Life Holding shares, worth about US$41m. While this is a strong but not outstanding level of insider ownership, it's enough to indicate some alignment between management and smaller shareholders. An insider hasn't bought American Equity Investment Life Holding stock in the last three months, but there was some selling. And there weren't any purchases to give us comfort, over the last year. But since American Equity Investment Life Holding is profitable and growing, we're not too worried by this. Insider ownership isn't particularly high, so this analysis makes us cautious about the company. So we'd only buy after careful consideration. Of course,the future is what matters most. So if you are interested in American Equity Investment Life Holding, you should check out thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. Of courseAmerican Equity Investment Life Holding may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see thisfreecollection of high quality companies. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Tax Season May Be Over, but You Can Make These 4 Moves to Lower Your 2019 Taxes Now that summer is kicking into gear, many of us are more focused on barbecues and beach days than potentially tedious matters liketaxes. And with your next return not due until April 2020, you may not have the patience or desire to deal with tax matters anytime soon. But here's the thing: The moves you make during the year will dictate how well you fare the next time youdosit down to file a return. And if you want your 2019 tax bill to be as low as possible, here are a few moves you need to make in the coming months. The more money you contribute to a traditional IRA or401(k), the less income the IRS can tax you on. For the current year, you can put up to $6,000 into an IRA if you're under 50 and up to $19,000 into a 401(k). If you're 50 or older, you get a catch-up option that raises these limits to $7,000 and $25,000, respectively. IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES. How much can you save on taxes by maxing out a retirement plan? Let's imagine you fall into the 24% tax bracket and max out a 401(k) at $19,000. In doing so, you'd effectively shave $4,560 off of this year's tax obligation -- not too shabby. Chances are, you have a few investments taking up space in your portfolio that have been underperforming. Selling those investments at a loss might seem like a bummer, but actually, it can help lower your tax bill. Investment losses can be used to offset investment gains so that if you take a $4,000 loss but also take in $5,000 in gains this year, you'll only have to pay taxes on $1,000. Furthermore, if your loss for the year exceeds your gains, you can use the remainder to offset up to $3,000 of ordinary income. This means that if you take a $4,000 loss but only have a $1,000 gain, the remaining $3,000 will negate $3,000 in regular earnings. If you have a high-deductible health insurance plan (defined as a deductible of $1,350 or more for single coverage and $2,700 or more for family coverage), you may be eligible to contribute to ahealth savings account, or HSA. An HSA is a hybrid saving and investment account that lets you allocate funds for healthcare expenses. Once you put money into an HSA, you can invest it for added growth so that by the time you retire, you'll have a pile of money allocated to healthcare expenses. But you'll also have the option to withdraw funds at any time to pay for medical bills. For the current year, you can contribute up to $3,500 to an HSA for individual coverage or up to $7,000 for family coverage. If you're 55 or older, you can contribute another $1,000 as a catch-up. As is the case with a traditional IRA or 401(k), the money you put into your HSA is income the IRS can't tax you on. If your employer offers aflexible spending account,or FSA, signing up is another great way to shave money off your tax bill. For 2019, you can contribute up to $2,700 to an FSA and use that money to pay for qualified medical expenses during your plan year. Unlike HSAs, FSA money isn't meant to be carried over from year to year. Generally, you have to use up your balance or risk losing it. But as long as you do a good job of estimating your healthcare costs, funding an FSA could shield more of your earnings from the IRS. The last thing you want to do this year is pay more taxes than necessary. Take some time to make these key money-saving moves. You'll be thankful you did when you sit down to file your 2019 return. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
American Equity Investment Life Holding Company (NYSE:AEL) Insiders Have Been Selling Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So we'll take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares inAmerican Equity Investment Life Holding Company(NYSE:AEL). Most investors know that it is quite permissible for company leaders, such as directors of the board, to buy and sell stock on the market. However, rules govern insider transactions, and certain disclosures are required. We don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing. For example, a Columbia Universitystudyfound that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own company’s stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'. Check out our latest analysis for American Equity Investment Life Holding Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by the Director, Debra Richardson, for US$2.2m worth of shares, at about US$27.40 per share. So what is clear is that an insider saw fit to sell at around the current price of US$26.82. While we don't usually like to see insider selling, it's more concerning if the sales take price at a lower price. We note that this sale took place at around the current price, so it isn't a major concern, though it's hardly a good sign. Debra Richardson was the only individual insider to sell shares in the last twelve months. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below! If you like to buy stocks that insiders are buying, rather than selling, then you might just love thisfreelist of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them). I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. Usually, the higher the insider ownership, the more likely it is that insiders will be incentivised to build the company for the long term. Insiders own 1.7% of American Equity Investment Life Holding shares, worth about US$41m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders. An insider sold American Equity Investment Life Holding shares recently, but they didn't buy any. And even if we look to the last year, we didn't see any purchases. But since American Equity Investment Life Holding is profitable and growing, we're not too worried by this. While insiders do own shares, they don't own a heap, and they have been selling. So we'd only buy after careful consideration. Therefore, you should should definitely take a look at thisFREEreport showing analyst forecasts for American Equity Investment Life Holding. Of courseAmerican Equity Investment Life Holding may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see thisfreecollection of high quality companies. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Do Insiders Own Lots Of Shares In A.H. Belo Corporation (NYSE:AHC)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! If you want to know who really controls A.H. Belo Corporation (NYSE:AHC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. Warren Buffett said that he likes 'a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people'. So it's nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented. With a market capitalization of US$81m, A.H. Belo is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it's seems that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about AHC. See our latest analysis for A.H. Belo Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices. As you can see, institutional investors own 63% of A.H. Belo. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of A.H. Belo, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Hedge funds don't have many shares in A.H. Belo. Our information suggests that there isn't any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known. The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances. Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of A.H. Belo Corporation. It has a market capitalization of just US$81m, and insiders have US$8.3m worth of shares in their own names. It is great to see insiders so invested in the business. It might be worth checkingif those insiders have been buying recently. The general public holds a 25% stake in AHC. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. I always like to check for ahistory of revenue growth. You can too, by accessing this free chart ofhistoric revenue and earnings in thisdetailed graph. Of coursethis may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at thisfreefreelist of interesting companies. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
"Toy Story 4" Director Josh Cooley Reveals All the Disney/Pixar Easter Eggs After much anticipation, Toy Story 4 has finally hit theaters, and fans of the franchise have not been disappointed. The film has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, and has been acclaimed by viewers across social media since its release. One of the best parts of the film, however, comes from the hidden gems and easter eggs that the creators of Toy Story 4 placed throughout the movie. Whether you're a hardcore Disney/Pixar fan or a newer one, it's impossible not to catch at least one of the references in the film, and that's precisely what the creators wanted. The easter eggs are most noticeably found in the film's antique shop setting. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly , director Josh Cooley explained the hidden easter eggs, saying, "I wanted [the antique store] to feel almost like a jungle to these toys so that they can get lost just within this one world, and we did a bunch of tests early on to see, can we even render the amount of stuff that’s just in this store? And now it’s one of those things that I think people will take for granted watching it — and they should, because they shouldn’t be thinking about the technology — but behind the scenes, it’s mind-blowing.” So which easter eggs did Cooley place in the film for fans to find? There are a lot , so don't worry if you missed some of them! Among the references to other Pixar films, you'll find the gas station from Cars , the Pizza Planet truck from the older Toy Story films, a photo of Up 's Charles Muntz playing poker, and many additional gems taken from popular Pixar and Disney hits like Ratatouille , The Incredibles , Coco , A Bug's Life , and more. Cooley added , "We were able to hide so many Pixar-specific easter eggs inside there that it’s just gotta be a record." Considering the reviews, we'd say the special easter eggs helped make the film even more of a success. Could this mean that a Toy Story 5 is in the works? According to star Tim Allen, it's not completely off the table. Story continues In an interview with US Weekly , Allen addressed the burning question on viewers' minds. When asked if more Toy Story films could be in the works, he hinted: "There’s very little to suggest that this isn’t, at the very least, [part of] a much bigger world. It reminds me of the Avengers movies — there are not only offshoots of characters that have simultaneous stories, but the world itself got much bigger. … My sense is it’s done. My creative side says, at the same time things end, there’s a new beginning. I would find it difficult not to just continue." Yes! We can picture it now: Little Bo Peep taking on Capitol Hill. Or even better, Buzz Lightyear saving the world from climate change. (Disney, call me. I have ideas.) Whatever ends up happening, though, we definitely can't wait for more Toy Story adventures to come. Want more from Teen Vogue ? Check this out: Someone Just Explained EVERY Plot Hole in Toy Story and It's So Sad See the video. Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
What Type Of Shareholder Owns TechTarget, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:TTGT)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Every investor in TechTarget, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTGT) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. I quite like to see at least a little bit of insider ownership. As Charlie Munger said 'Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.' TechTarget is a smaller company with a market capitalization of US$561m, so it may still be flying under the radar of many institutional investors. In the chart below below, we can see that institutional investors have bought into the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about TTGT. View our latest analysis for TechTarget Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing. As you can see, institutional investors own 71% of TechTarget. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone, since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at TechTarget's earnings history, below. Of course, the future is what really matters. Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in TechTarget. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future. While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in TechTarget, Inc.. It has a market capitalization of just US$561m, and insiders have US$85m worth of shares in their own names. This may suggest that the founders still own a lot of shares. You canclick here to see if they have been buying or selling. The general public, with a 12% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies. I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. I always like to check for ahistory of revenue growth. You can too, by accessing this free chart ofhistoric revenue and earnings in thisdetailed graph. Ultimatelythe future is most important. You can access thisfreereport on analyst forecasts for the company. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Mark Zuckerberg Stole Facebook, Now He’s Stealing Bitcoin ByCCN Markets: One day Bitcoin will occupy the same corner of internet nostalgia occupied by Nikola Tesla. So it goes: were it not for Thomas Edison’s superior resources, influence and propaganda, we could all be running our laptops on Mr. Tesla’s free energy right now. Surveying the thunderous hype surrounding Facebook’s foray into the cryptocurrency game, one can’t quite shake the feeling that Mark Zuckerberg is in the process of pulling an Edison. The analogies between the story of Facebook’s foundation and that of the upcomingLibra/Facebucks are striking. Call it inspiration, theft, or skilled reselling, but when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004, he was working with live clay. The groundwork of Facebook already existed in the Winklevii’s HarvardConnection/ConnectU. Zuckerberg reshaped it and sent it out to become the global juggernaut it is today – withlawsuits and settlementsin between. Here, Zuckerberg resembles McDonalds tycoon Ray Kroc – a man with better salesmanship than his colleagues, and no moral scruples about taking their ideas and running with them. Like Kroc, Zuckerberg did not yet have any of that wealth, power and influence which would soon come his way. Read the full story on CCN.com.
How Does UGI Corporation (NYSE:UGI) Stand Up To These Simple Dividend Safety Checks? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Is UGI Corporation (NYSE:UGI) a good dividend stock? How would you know? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. If you are hoping to live on the income from dividends, it's important to be a lot more stringent with your investments than the average punter. While UGI's 2.2% dividend yield is not the highest, we think its lengthy payment history is quite interesting. Some simple analysis can reduce the risk of holding UGI for its dividend, and we'll focus on the most important aspects below. Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on UGI! Dividends are typically paid from company earnings. If a company pays more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. UGI paid out 47% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. This is a middling range that strikes a nice balance between paying dividends to shareholders, and retaining enough earnings to invest in future growth. One of the risks is that management reinvests the retained capital poorly instead of paying a higher dividend. We also measure dividends paid against a company's levered free cash flow, to see if enough cash was generated to cover the dividend. Of the free cash flow it generated last year, UGI paid out 38% as dividends, suggesting the dividend is affordable. It's positive to see that UGI's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut. As UGI has a meaningful amount of debt, we need to check its balance sheet to see if the company might have debt risks. A rough way to check this is with these two simple ratios: a) net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and b) net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA is a measure of a company's total debt. Net interest cover measures the ability to meet interest payments on debt. Essentially we check that a) a company does not have too much debt, and b) that it can afford to pay the interest. UGI has net debt of more than 3x its EBITDA, which is getting towards the limit of most investors' comfort zones. Judicious use of debt can enhance shareholder returns, but also adds to the risk if something goes awry. We calculated its interest cover by measuring its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), and dividing this by the company's net interest expense. Interest cover of less than 5x its interest expense is starting to become a concern for UGI, and be aware that lenders may place additional restrictions on the company as well. We update our data on UGI every 24 hours, so you can always getour latest analysis of its financial health, here. Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. For the purpose of this article, we only scrutinise the last decade of UGI's dividend payments. During this period the dividend has been stable, which could imply the business could have relatively consistent earnings power. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$0.53 in 2009, compared to US$1.20 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 8.4% per year over this time. Businesses that can grow their dividends at a decent rate and maintain a stable payout can generate substantial wealth for shareholders over the long term. Dividend payments have been consistent over the past few years, but we should always check if earnings per share (EPS) are growing, as this will help maintain the purchasing power of the dividend. UGI has grown its earnings per share at 6.4% per annum over the past five years. Earnings per share have been growing at a credible rate. What's more, the payout ratio is reasonable and provides some protection to the dividend, or even the potential to increase it. When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. It's great to see that UGI is paying out a low percentage of its earnings and cash flow. Earnings per share growth has been slow, but we respect a company that maintains a relatively stable dividend. UGI performs highly under this analysis, although it falls slightly short of our exacting standards. At the right valuation, it could be a solid dividend prospect. Companies that are growing earnings tend to be the best dividend stocks over the long term. See what the 3 analysts we track are forecasting for UGIfor freewith publicanalyst estimates for the company. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at ourcurated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Janet Jackson: "Michael's legacy will continue" Micheal Jackson kisses his sister Janet Jackson after she presented him with the Grammy Legend Award at the 35th Annual Grammy Awards February 24,1993. (Photo credit: SCOTT FLYNN/AFP/Getty Images) Janet Jackson has said her brother Michael’s legacy ‘will continue’, despite repeated allegations of sexual abuse - and says she ‘loves it’ when she sees children trying to be like the Thriller singer. Jackson has remained tight-lipped about the allegations which have dogged her brother - which intensified with the release of Leaving Neverland earlier this year. In the documentary film James Safechuck and Wade Robson, allege in graphic detail how they were sexually abused as children by the King of Pop while staying at his Neverland home. Singer Janet Jackson attends the after party for the debut of her residency "Metamorphosis" at On The Record Speakeasy and Club at Park MGM on May 17, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images) The documentary drew a mixed reaction from friends and fans of the pop music star, who died 10 years ago this month, and his younger sister Janet has not mentioned the allegations in public. Read more: Michael Jackson: Viewers shocked and disgusted by 'Leaving Neverland' But now, in the build up to her Pyramid Stage performance at next weekend’s Glastonbury Festival, Jackson has broken her silence. Speaking to the Sunday Times magazine, she was asked about her brother’s legacy, she said: "It will continue. I love it when I see kids emulating him, when adults still listen to his music. It just lets you know the impact that my family has had on the world. "I hope I'm not sounding arrogant in any way - I'm just stating what is. It's really all God's doing, and I'm just thankful for that." Despite being reluctant to comment about the current allegations, Jackson had previously defended her brother when he faced similar accusations in 1993. Michael agreed an out-of-court settlement with the parents of Jordy Chandler, a 13-year-old who’s father Evan Chandler accused Jackson of sexual abusing his son. Read more: Celebrities divided over Michael Jackson documentary Regarding these allegations Janet claimed the family just wanted money from her brother, saying: "Now if this really went on, do you think a father would accept money? "Do you think that would make everything OK? It doesn't make any sense. Story continues American singer, songwriter and dancer Michael Jackson on stage at the Hippodrome de Vincennes, during his "Dangerous World Tour". (Photo by David Lefranc/Kipa/Sygma via Getty Images) “If that was my son, I don't care if he gave me a billion dollars, I want to see you either behind bars or dead for doing that to my son. It's crazy–the guy was after money – that is all he wanted." Janet Jackson will perform at Glastonbury Festival next Saturday evening (29 June).
What To Know Before Buying UGI Corporation (NYSE:UGI) For Its Dividend Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Dividend paying stocks like UGI Corporation (NYSE:UGI) tend to be popular with investors, and for good reason - some research suggests a significant amount of all stock market returns come from reinvested dividends. On the other hand, investors have been known to buy a stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations. While UGI's 2.2% dividend yield is not the highest, we think its lengthy payment history is quite interesting. When buying stocks for their dividends, you should always run through the checks below, to see if the dividend looks sustainable. Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on UGI! Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. So we need to form a view on if a company's dividend is sustainable, relative to its net profit after tax. Looking at the data, we can see that 47% of UGI's profits were paid out as dividends in the last 12 months. This is medium payout level that leaves enough capital in the business to fund opportunities that might arise, while also rewarding shareholders. Plus, there is room to increase the payout ratio over time. We also measure dividends paid against a company's levered free cash flow, to see if enough cash was generated to cover the dividend. UGI's cash payout ratio in the last year was 38%, which suggests dividends were well covered by cash generated by the business. It's positive to see that UGI's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut. As UGI has a meaningful amount of debt, we need to check its balance sheet to see if the company might have debt risks. A quick way to check a company's financial situation uses these two ratios: net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA measures a company's total debt load relative to its earnings (lower = less debt), while net interest cover measures the company's ability to pay the interest on its debt (higher = greater ability to pay interest costs). UGI has net debt of more than 3x its EBITDA, which is getting towards the limit of most investors' comfort zones. Judicious use of debt can enhance shareholder returns, but also adds to the risk if something goes awry. We calculated its interest cover by measuring its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), and dividing this by the company's net interest expense. With EBIT of 3.76 times its interest expense, UGI's interest cover is starting to look a bit thin. Remember, you can always get a snapshot of UGI's latest financial position,by checking our visualisation of its financial health. From the perspective of an income investor who wants to earn dividends for many years, there is not much point buying a stock if its dividend is regularly cut or is not reliable. UGI has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. The dividend has been stable over the past 10 years, which is great. We think this could suggest some resilience to the business and its dividends. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$0.53 in 2009, compared to US$1.20 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 8.4% per year over this time. Dividends have grown at a reasonable rate over this period, and without any major cuts in the payment over time, we think this is an attractive combination. While dividend payments have been relatively reliable, it would also be nice if earnings per share (EPS) were growing, as this is essential to maintaining the dividend's purchasing power over the long term. UGI has grown its earnings per share at 6.4% per annum over the past five years. It's good to see decent earnings growth and a low payout ratio. Companies with these characteristics often display the fastest dividend growth over the long term - assuming earnings can be maintained, of course. When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. It's great to see that UGI is paying out a low percentage of its earnings and cash flow. Earnings growth has been limited, but we like that the dividend payments have been fairly consistent. UGI performs highly under this analysis, although it falls slightly short of our exacting standards. At the right valuation, it could be a solid dividend prospect. Companies that are growing earnings tend to be the best dividend stocks over the long term. See what the 3 analysts we track are forecasting for UGIfor freewith publicanalyst estimates for the company. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at ourcurated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
What Should We Expect From VMware, Inc.'s (NYSE:VMW) Earnings In The Next 12 Months? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Based on VMware, Inc.'s (NYSE:VMW) earnings update on 03 May 2019, the consensus outlook from analysts appear somewhat bearish, with earnings expected to grow by 2.5% in the upcoming year against the higher past 5-year average growth rate of 17%. With trailing-twelve-month net income at current levels of US$2.4b, we should see this rise to US$2.5b in 2020. Below is a brief commentary on the longer term outlook the market has for VMware. Readers that are interested in understanding the company beyond these figures shouldresearch its fundamentals here. Check out our latest analysis for VMware The longer term expectations from the 29 analysts of VMW is tilted towards the positive sentiment. Generally, broker analysts tend to make predictions for up to three years given the lack of visibility beyond this point. To understand the overall trajectory of VMW's earnings growth over these next fews years, I've fitted a line through these analyst earnings forecast to determine an annual growth rate from the slope. By 2022, VMW's earnings should reach US$2.9b, from current levels of US$2.4b, resulting in an annual growth rate of 7.7%. However, if we exclude extraordinary items from net income, we see that earnings is projected to fall over time, resulting in an EPS of $5.64 in the final year of forecast compared to the current $5.94 EPS today. Analysts are predicting this high revenue growth to squeeze profit margins over time, from 27% to 25% by the end of 2022. Future outlook is only one aspect when you're building an investment case for a stock. For VMware, I've compiled three pertinent aspects you should further examine: 1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Valuation: What is VMware worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether VMware is currently mispriced by the market. 3. Other High-Growth Alternatives: Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of VMware? Exploreour interactive list of stocks with large growth potentialto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Is It Too Late To Consider Buying Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA)? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA), which is in the luxury business, and is based in United States, saw a decent share price growth in the teens level on the NASDAQGS over the last few months. With many analysts covering the stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stock’s share price. However, could the stock still be trading at a relatively cheap price? Today I will analyse the most recent data on Vera Bradley’s outlook and valuation to see if the opportunity still exists. View our latest analysis for Vera Bradley The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my valuation model. It’s trading around 6.7% below my intrinsic value, which means if you buy Vera Bradley today, you’d be paying a fair price for it. And if you believe the company’s true value is $12.64, then there isn’t much room for the share price grow beyond what it’s currently trading. What's more, Vera Bradley’s share price may be more stable over time (relative to the market), as indicated by its low beta. Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Although value investors would argue that it’s the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. In the upcoming year, Vera Bradley’s earnings are expected to increase by 24%, indicating a highly optimistic future ahead. This should lead to more robust cash flows, feeding into a higher share value. Are you a shareholder?VRA’s optimistic future growth appears to have been factored into the current share price, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the track record of its management team. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value? Are you a potential investor?If you’ve been keeping tabs on VRA, now may not be the most optimal time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the positive outlook is encouraging for the company, which means it’s worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop. Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on Vera Bradley. You can find everything you need to know about Vera Bradley inthe latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Vera Bradley, you can use our free platform to see my list of over50 other stocks with a high growth potential. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Does Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) Have A Place In Your Dividend Stock Portfolio? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Could Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) be an attractive dividend share to own for the long haul? Investors are often drawn to strong companies with the idea of reinvesting the dividends. On the other hand, investors have been known to buy a stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations. With Whirlpool yielding 3.4% and having paid a dividend for over 10 years, many investors likely find the company quite interesting. It would not be a surprise to discover that many investors buy it for the dividends. The company also bought back stock equivalent to around 13% of market capitalisation this year. Some simple research can reduce the risk of buying Whirlpool for its dividend - read on to learn more. Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. In the last year, Whirlpool paid out 155% of its profit as dividends. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, from the perspective of an investor who hopes to own the company for many years, a payout ratio of above 100% is definitely a concern. In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. Whirlpool paid out 69% of its cash flow as dividends last year, which is within a reasonable range for the average corporation. It's good to see that while Whirlpool's dividends were not covered by profits, at least they are affordable from a cash perspective. Still, if the company repeatedly paid a dividend greater than its profits, we'd be concerned. Extraordinarily few companies are capable of persistently paying a dividend that is greater than their profits. As Whirlpool's dividend was not well covered by earnings, we need to check its balance sheet for signs of financial distress. A rough way to check this is with these two simple ratios: a) net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and b) net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA is a measure of a company's total debt. Net interest cover measures the ability to meet interest payments on debt. Essentially we check that a) a company does not have too much debt, and b) that it can afford to pay the interest. With net debt of 2.95 times its EBITDA, Whirlpool's debt burden is within a normal range for most listed companies. We calculated its interest cover by measuring its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), and dividing this by the company's net interest expense. With EBIT of 4.54 times its interest expense, Whirlpool's interest cover is starting to look a bit thin. Remember, you can always get a snapshot of Whirlpool's latest financial position,by checking our visualisation of its financial health. One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. For the purpose of this article, we only scrutinise the last decade of Whirlpool's dividend payments. During this period the dividend has been stable, which could imply the business could have relatively consistent earnings power. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$1.72 in 2009, compared to US$4.80 last year. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 11% a year over that time. It's rare to find a company that has grown its dividends rapidly over ten years and not had any notable cuts, but Whirlpool has done it, which we really like. Dividend payments have been consistent over the past few years, but we should always check if earnings per share (EPS) are growing, as this will help maintain the purchasing power of the dividend. It's not great to see that Whirlpool's have fallen at approximately 22% over the past five years. Declining earnings per share over a number of years is not a great sign for the dividend investor. Without some improvement, this does not bode well for the long term value of a company's dividend. When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. We're not keen on the fact that Whirlpool paid out such a high percentage of its income, although its cashflow is in better shape. Moreover, earnings have been shrinking. While the dividends have been fairly steady, we'd wonder for how much longer this will be sustainable if earnings continue to decline. In summary, Whirlpool has a number of shortcomings that we'd find it hard to get past. Things could change, but we think there are a number of better ideas out there. Without at least some growth in earnings per share over time, the dividend will eventually come under pressure either from costs or inflation. See if the 9 analysts are forecasting a turnaround in ourfree collection of analyst estimates here. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at ourcurated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Is Whirlpool Corporation's (NYSE:WHR) 3.4% Dividend Sustainable? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Today we'll take a closer look at Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) from a dividend investor's perspective. Owning a strong business and reinvesting the dividends is widely seen as an attractive way of growing your wealth. Yet sometimes, investors buy a stock for its dividend and lose money because the share price falls by more than they earned in dividend payments. In this case, Whirlpool likely looks attractive to investors, given its 3.4% dividend yield and a payment history of over ten years. We'd guess that plenty of investors have purchased it for the income. The company also bought back stock equivalent to around 13% of market capitalisation this year. When buying stocks for their dividends, you should always run through the checks below, to see if the dividend looks sustainable. Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. Whirlpool paid out 155% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. A payout ratio above 100% is definitely an item of concern, unless there are some other circumstances that would justify it. We also measure dividends paid against a company's levered free cash flow, to see if enough cash was generated to cover the dividend. Whirlpool paid out 69% of its cash flow as dividends last year, which is within a reasonable range for the average corporation. It's good to see that while Whirlpool's dividends were not covered by profits, at least they are affordable from a cash perspective. Still, if the company repeatedly paid a dividend greater than its profits, we'd be concerned. Very few companies are able to sustainably pay dividends larger than their reported earnings. As Whirlpool's dividend was not well covered by earnings, we need to check its balance sheet for signs of financial distress. A rough way to check this is with these two simple ratios: a) net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and b) net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA measures a company's total debt load relative to its earnings (lower = less debt), while net interest cover measures the company's ability to pay the interest on its debt (higher = greater ability to pay interest costs). Whirlpool has net debt of 2.95 times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). Using debt can accelerate business growth, but also increases the risks. Net interest cover can be calculated by dividing earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) by the company's net interest expense. With EBIT of 4.54 times its interest expense, Whirlpool's interest cover is starting to look a bit thin. We update our data on Whirlpool every 24 hours, so you can always getour latest analysis of its financial health, here. One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. Whirlpool has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. During this period the dividend has been stable, which could imply the business could have relatively consistent earnings power. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$1.72 in 2009, compared to US$4.80 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 11% per year over this time. It's rare to find a company that has grown its dividends rapidly over ten years and not had any notable cuts, but Whirlpool has done it, which we really like. While dividend payments have been relatively reliable, it would also be nice if earnings per share (EPS) were growing, as this is essential to maintaining the dividend's purchasing power over the long term. In the last five years, Whirlpool's earnings per share have shrunk at approximately 22% per annum. If earnings continue to decline, the dividend may come under pressure. Every investor should make an assessment of whether the company is taking steps to stabilise the situation. When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. We're a bit uncomfortable with its high payout ratio, although at least the dividend was covered by free cash flow. It's not great to see earnings per share shrinking. The dividends have been relatively consistent, but we wonder for how much longer this will be true. In summary, Whirlpool has a number of shortcomings that we'd find it hard to get past. Things could change, but we think there are a number of better ideas out there. Without at least some growth in earnings per share over time, the dividend will eventually come under pressure either from costs or inflation. See if the 9 analysts are forecasting a turnaround in ourfree collection of analyst estimates here. Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try ourcurated list of dividend stocks with a yield above 3%. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Australian Dollar maintains levels above 69c Posted by OFX The Australian Dollar managed to hold on to gains made late last week which pushed the AUD/USD rate off multi-month lows and back above 69c. In the absence of any top-tier macroeconomic data locally the Aussie looked offshore for direction and thanks mainly to poor US data and a lack of follow-through in equities this was enough to keep the pair afloat. Rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran have also kept the Aussie at the levels. On the release front Australia did see the release of Flash Manufacturing PMI and Flash Services PMI data which reported local businesses have seen a pick-up in activity this month with the service sector enjoying the fastest pace of growth in seven months. The CBA-Markit purchasing management index (PMI) for services and manufacturing climbed to 53.1 in the first 19 days of June, up from 51.5 in the comparable May period. The steeper rise in overall activity was underpinned by a solid increase in new business that was also the most marked since last November. Meanwhile, business confidence regarding output over the year ahead improved to its highest since January which was partly boosted by the election. Looking ahead, the RBA Governor is due to speak today in Canberra. From a technical perspective, the AUD/USD pair is currently trading at 0.6930. We expect support to hold on moves approaching 0.6850 while now any upward push will likely meet resistance around 0.6940 and 0.7000 levels. The U.S. Dollar index was down on Friday following rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran and also weaker than expected PMI data which increased support for the Fed to cut rates next month. IHS Markit said its flash U.S. manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index for June declined to a reading 50.1, down from May’s reading of 50.5. Economists were expecting to see a reading of 50.5. At the same time, the firm’s service sector PMI reading dropped to 50.7, down from May’s reading of 50.9 but relatively in line with expectations. According to the report, sentiment within the manufacturing sector is at its lowest point in 117 months. EUR/USD moved higher gaining 0.6% and the GBP/USD recouped all losses from earlier in the session closing at 1.2740. Wall Street also opened lower as U.S. President Donald Trump said via Twitter that he had come within minutes of firing missiles at Iran in response to it shooting down a surveillance drone. AUD/USD:0.6840 – 0.7000 ▲ GBP/AUD:1.8280 – 1.8500 ▲ AUD/NZD:1.0420 – 1.0550 ▼ AUD/EUR:0.6060 – 0.6140 ▼ AUD/CAD:0.9100 – 0.9200 ▲ Posted by OFX The postAustralian Dollar maintains levels above 69cappeared first on .
Digital Health Companies Hit a New VC Funding Record in 2018 The digital healthfunding fever is far from breaking. Venture funding for digital health firms around the world hit an all-time high of $14.6 billion in 2018, according to a new report from StartUp Health, marking the eighth consecutive year of investment growth. In the U.S. alone, health startups raked in a record $8.1 billion, according to a separate report from Rock Health. That number was just $1.1 billion in 2011. The money is flowing to companies developing everything from mobile apps that seek to simplify insurance or help users keep track of key health biometrics, to devices capable of conducting FDA-approved electrocardiograms (EKGs) in the home or on the go. While most startups in the space have remained private to date, the public will soon be able to get a piece of the action. A slew of digital health IPOs are expected in the second half of 2019 from diabetes management firm Livongo, health data firm Health Catalyst, and technology intermediary Change Healthcare. Not to mention the high-end exercise platform Peloton, which recently filed confidential IPO documents. Even if some of these early tests of the public markets sputter, the general buzz in the space will almost certainly last. For technologists and their funders, solving the mysteries of the human body, and the U.S. health care system, remains an irresistible challenge. A version of this article appears in the July 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Temperature Rises on Digital Health.” —P&G and Thrive Global team upto boost wellness with everyday products —As states like Texasban under-21 tobacco sales, retailers are adapting —Commentary: WhyAlexa gaining medical skillscould be bad for health care —CVS wants to make yourdrugstore your doctor —Listen to our new audio briefing,Fortune 500 Daily Follow Fortune on Flipboardto stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.
Why Barnes & Noble May Soon Look Like the Local Bookstores It Killed Off The Barnes & Noblesaga may yet have a happy ending. The retailer, still the largest U.S. bookstore chain despite years of shriveling sales, was bought by hedge fund Elliott Management along with newly revived British bookseller Waterstones in a $683 million deal. It’s easy for any retailer to blameAmazonfor its woes, but New York–based Barnes & Noble’s decline has been largely self-inflicted. It racked up more than $1 billion in losses trying to compete against Amazon’s Kindle e-reader with its own Nook device. It neglected its website (the chain gets only about 7% of sales online, according to some estimates), and it let too many of its big-box stores languish aesthetically in the 1990s, the retailer’s heyday. Those locations stock too much “long tail” merchandise and serve as glorified warehouses. The result: Its last year of comparable sales growth was 2012, even though it has shed its weakest stores. Fixing Barnes & Noble, which will be easier to do as a private company, could involve something the chain has already been testing: smaller, more dynamic stores with cafés and even booze. (Downsizing to create more profitable footprints is also being tested by Kohl’s andNordstrom.) Elliott has hinted that it backs similar moves to make each location more like a local independent bookstore. Many of those are thriving (unlike former megachain Borders, which went under in 2011) and showing that retailers can beat Amazon by being, well, retailers. A version of this article appears in the July 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Can Barnes & Noble Turn the Page?” —Michaels offers lessons in theperils of being a tech laggard —It’s all clicking for Wayfair, aFortune500 newcomer —Sears’seven decades of self-destruction —HowDollar General brings in billionseach year —Listen to our new audio briefing,Fortune500 Daily FollowFortuneon Flipboardto stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.
RWE tallies economic loss after activists block open-pit lignite mine FRANKFURT, June 23 (Reuters) - Germany's RWE is tallying the economic loss after environmental activists entered and occupied its Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine over the weekend, the utility said on Sunday. The 1,300 protesters, demanding an immediate exit from coal use, also blocked tracks for coal supply lines, as well as set fires to a pump station, switch cabinets and vehicles, RWE said. "There is a plan on the table for phasing-out coal and there is no reason to endanger people and carry out illegal actions," Frank Weigand, chief executive officer of RWE Power, said in a statement. The company said that electricity generation was never at risk but that the company suffered an economic loss, "which is currently being determined". (Reporting by Tom Sims)
Are K12 Inc. (NYSE:LRN) Investors Paying Above The Intrinsic Value? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! In this article we are going to estimate the intrinsic value of K12 Inc. (NYSE:LRN) by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. This is done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward. Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of theSimply Wall St analysis model. See our latest analysis for K12 We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. To begin with, we have to get estimates of the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate: [{"": "Levered FCF ($, Millions)", "2019": "$82.29", "2020": "$64.22", "2021": "$56.59", "2022": "$52.04", "2023": "$49.54", "2024": "$48.28", "2025": "$47.82", "2026": "$47.89", "2027": "$48.33", "2028": "$49.03"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x2", "2020": "Analyst x2", "2021": "Analyst x1", "2022": "Est @ -8.03%", "2023": "Est @ -4.81%", "2024": "Est @ -2.54%", "2025": "Est @ -0.96%", "2026": "Est @ 0.15%", "2027": "Est @ 0.92%", "2028": "Est @ 1.46%"}, {"": "Present Value ($, Millions) Discounted @ 7.81%", "2019": "$76.33", "2020": "$55.26", "2021": "$45.16", "2022": "$38.53", "2023": "$34.02", "2024": "$30.75", "2025": "$28.25", "2026": "$26.24", "2027": "$24.57", "2028": "$23.12"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= $382.24m "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the intial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.7%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 7.8%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$49m × (1 + 2.7%) ÷ (7.8% – 2.7%) = US$992m Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= $US$992m ÷ ( 1 + 7.8%)10= $467.87m The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is $850.11m. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of $21.88. Compared to the current share price of $29.41, the company appears potentially overvalued at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at K12 as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 7.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.852. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For K12, I've compiled three essential aspects you should look at: 1. Financial Health: Does LRN have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does LRN's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of LRN? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the NYSE every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Did You Manage To Avoid Ideanomics's (NASDAQ:IDEX) 33% Share Price Drop? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Ideanomics, Inc.(NASDAQ:IDEX) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 29% in the last month. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. In fact, the share price is down 33%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund. View our latest analysis for Ideanomics Because Ideanomics is loss-making, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size. In the last half decade, Ideanomics saw its revenue increase by 74% per year. That's well above most other pre-profit companies. Shareholders are no doubt disappointed with the loss of 7.7%, each year, in that time. So you might argue the Ideanomics should get more credit for its rather impressive revenue growth over the period. If that's the case, now might be the smart time to take a close look at it. The graphic below shows how revenue and earnings have changed as management guided the business forward. If you want to see cashflow, you can click on the chart. It's probably worth noting that the CEO is paid less than the median at similar sized companies. But while CEO remuneration is always worth checking, the really important question is whether the company can grow earnings going forward. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination ofhistoric growth trends, available here.. Ideanomics shareholders are down 0.5% for the year, but the market itself is up 6.0%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, longer term shareholders are suffering worse, given the loss of 7.7% doled out over the last five years. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. You might want to assessthis data-rich visualizationof its earnings, revenue and cash flow. We will like Ideanomics better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out thisfreelist of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Climate activists end their blockade of German coal mine BERLIN (AP) — Hundreds of climate activists called an end to their protest Sunday inside one of Germany's biggest open-pit mines after police repeatedly ordered them to leave, citing life-threatening danger, and authorities pulled some protesters out. The Garzweiler lignite coal mine has been the focal point of environmental protests in Germany's Rhineland region since Friday, when 40,000 students rallied for more government action against climate change in the nearby city of Aachen. "We wrote climate history this weekend," the activist group End of Story said as it halted the protest. "Our movement has never been so diverse and never been so determined." The long-planned protests began Friday just hours after European Union leaders failed at a summit to agree on how to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050. On Saturday, some demonstrators blocked the railroad tracks used to transport coal before others broke through a police cordon to enter the mine. Protesters and police accused each other of combative behavior in the mine and of causing injuries. Police said eight officers were injured in scuffles with protesters. Police cut the locks the protesters had used to chain themselves to the railway tracks and then carried the protesters out one by one. Inside the mine, some protesters left voluntarily, while others were taken on buses and driven out of the mine. Police took the identities of all demonstrators before letting them go. German news agency dpa reported that activists claimed police had denied water and food to those who were temporarily detained. Police denied the allegation. The mine has been the focus of many protests in recent years because the operator, German utility company RWE, planned to cut down a forest to enlarge it. Later Sunday, Aachen police tweeted that RWE had filed a criminal complaint against those protesters who had locked themselves to the tracks. The utility company had stopped mining during the three days of protests. Following months of climate protests by students and a sharp rise in the polls for Germany's Greens party, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently threw her weight behind the goal of making Germany climate neutral by 2050. That would mean the country's economy no longer would add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Scientists say ending fossil fuel use by mid-century is a must if countries want to achieve the 2015 Paris climate accord's most ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.
Why Canopy Growth's Losses Continue Outpacing Sales Canopy Growth(NYSE: CGC)disappointed investors again with a dismal quarterly earnings report. Canopy is the world's largest cannabis producer and has a leading share of a Canadian market that opened up to every adult in the country last October. After reporting a CA$157 million loss during the last three months of 2018, Canopy Growth blamed kinks in the supply chain. During the first three months of 2019, operating losses increased by 54%, making it clear that there's a much larger problem. Image source: Getty Images. Some investors who don't know much about cannabis are still scratching their heads trying to understand why Canopy Growth and its peers can't make any money selling pot. You don't need a psychedelic experience to understand why Canadian marijuana producers keep reportingincreasing losses, but there are two important things investors need to know about cannabis. Try to imagine a world where you can produce gallons of 18-year-old single-malt scotch in a tent the size of a small closet a few times each year with just a few hundred dollars' worth of equipment to get started. How tough do you think it would be to sell bottles of Red Label Johnny Walker for $25 on such a bizarre planet?In the real world, making your own alcoholic beverages is generally more expensive than just buying something mass-produced. The same can be said of most packaged-food products. But not cannabis. Retired couples with a little extra room in their empty nest can quietly produce enough top-quality cannabis to supply their entire neighborhood, and that includes edibles, concentrates, and vaporizer cartridges. Image source: Getty Images. Canopy Growth and its peers convinced investors that huge expensive greenhouses could produce mountains of top-quality cannabis at a price so low it would quickly marginalize the illicit market. Canopy Growth investors are learning the hard way that this isn't the case. People with a little extra space at home can quietly produce enough top-quality cannabis to supply their entire neighborhood with hardly any overhead. If they're willing to go an extra step to process their dry flower into edibles, concentrates, and vaporizer cartridges, they can even supply a larger audience by running one of the dozens of illegal but toleratedmail-order marijuanaservices that compete with Canopy. A hobbyist who spends five minutes each day tending a few plants can produce more than 300 grams of dry flower from a single plant using high-powered lights, or average around 150 grams per plant with cheap lights. You'd probably expect expensive state-of-the-art cultivation facilities to produce far more dry flower per plant, but it's the other way around. During the year ended in March, the average Canopy Growth plant yielded just 86 grams. Cannabis plants begin flowering once they begin receiving total darkness for at least 12 hours a day. That means Canadian greenhouses must completely cover all their windows during a portion of these long summer days. Just one broken pane of glass during the six- to eight-week flowering stage can ruin an entire crop unless a producer is willing to make a trade-off and use auto-flowering seeds. Autoflower product is generally less desirable, and lower-yielding than flower grown from regular seeds, but their flowering process isn't affected by long days and short nights. Image source: Getty Images. Canopy Growth finished March sitting on CA$4.5 billion in cash and securities that won't carry the company to profitability unless international sales get up off the ground. Although Canopy has invested heavily to develop an international footprint, sales outside Canada reached just CA$1.8 million during the first three months of 2019, which was less than reported in the previous quarter. Canopy Growth isn't allowed to operate in the U.S. because the company wanted to raise more money through a New York Stock Exchange listing than it could on stock exchanges currently willing to list U.S.-based cannabis companies. Canopy Growth is ready to enter the market after spending $300 million for theright to buyAcreage Holdings(NASDAQOTH: ACRGF)for $3.4 billion if the federal government legalizes cannabis. If the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency reschedules marijuana, this could be a huge disaster for Canopy Growth. That's because legalization would push cannabis into the Food and Drug Administration's purview. There's a chance the FDA would give the psychoactive substance the same lax treatment it offers herbal supplements, but I wouldn't bet on it. A new series of regulatory hoops to jump through that raise expenses for producers and drive sales back to the illicit market seems far more likely. One way or another, Canopy Growth's losses probably won't stop before they chew all the way through the company's giant cash cushion. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today Cory Renauerhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
HyreCar Inc. (NASDAQ:HYRE) Is Expected To Breakeven Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! HyreCar Inc.'s (NASDAQ:HYRE): HyreCar Inc. operates a Web-based car-sharing marketplace in the United States. The US$57m market-cap company’s loss lessens since it announced a -US$11.2m bottom-line in the full financial year, compared to the latest trailing-twelve-month loss of -US$11.2m, as it approaches breakeven. As path to profitability is the topic on HYRE’s investors mind, I’ve decided to gauge market sentiment. I’ve put together a brief outline of industry analyst expectations for HYRE, its year of breakeven and its implied growth rate. See our latest analysis for HyreCar According to the 3 industry analysts covering HYRE, the consensus is breakeven is near. They expect the company to post a final loss in 2020, before turning a profit of US$1.2m in 2021. So, HYRE is predicted to breakeven approximately 2 years from now. In order to meet this breakeven date, I calculated the rate at which HYRE must grow year-on-year. It turns out an average annual growth rate of 69% is expected, which is extremely buoyant. Should the business grow at a slower rate, it will become profitable at a later date than expected. I’m not going to go through company-specific developments for HYRE given that this is a high-level summary, though, bear in mind that typically a high growth rate is not out of the ordinary, particularly when a company is in a period of investment. One thing I’d like to point out is that HYRE has no debt on its balance sheet, which is rare for a loss-making loss-making, growth company, which typically has high debt relative to its equity. This means that HYRE has been operating purely on its equity investment and has no debt burden. This aspect reduces the risk around investing in the loss-making company. There are too many aspects of HYRE to cover in one brief article, but the key fundamentals for the company can all be found in one place –HYRE’s company page on Simply Wall St. I’ve also put together a list of important aspects you should look at: 1. Valuation: What is HYRE worth today? Has the future growth potential already been factored into the price? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether HYRE is currently mispriced by the market. 2. Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look atwho sits on HyreCar’s board and the CEO’s back ground. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Loss-Making HyreCar Inc. (NASDAQ:HYRE) Expected To Breakeven Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! HyreCar Inc.'s (NASDAQ:HYRE): HyreCar Inc. operates a Web-based car-sharing marketplace in the United States. The US$57m market-cap company’s loss lessens since it announced a -US$11.2m bottom-line in the full financial year, compared to the latest trailing-twelve-month loss of -US$11.2m, as it approaches breakeven. As path to profitability is the topic on HYRE’s investors mind, I’ve decided to gauge market sentiment. In this article, I will touch on the expectations for HYRE’s growth and when analysts expect the company to become profitable. See our latest analysis for HyreCar HYRE is bordering on breakeven, according to the 3 Consumer Services analysts. They anticipate the company to incur a final loss in 2020, before generating positive profits of US$1.2m in 2021. Therefore, HYRE is expected to breakeven roughly 2 years from today. In order to meet this breakeven date, I calculated the rate at which HYRE must grow year-on-year. It turns out an average annual growth rate of 69% is expected, which is extremely buoyant. Should the business grow at a slower rate, it will become profitable at a later date than expected. Underlying developments driving HYRE’s growth isn’t the focus of this broad overview, though, bear in mind that generally a high growth rate is not out of the ordinary, particularly when a company is in a period of investment. Before I wrap up, there’s one aspect worth mentioning. HYRE currently has no debt on its balance sheet, which is quite unusual for a cash-burning loss-making, growth company, which usually has a high level of debt relative to its equity. HYRE currently operates purely off its shareholder funding and has no debt obligation, reducing concerns around repayments and making it a less risky investment. This article is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis on HYRE, so if you are interested in understanding the company at a deeper level, take a look atHYRE’s company page on Simply Wall St. I’ve also compiled a list of important factors you should further research: 1. Valuation: What is HYRE worth today? Has the future growth potential already been factored into the price? Theintrinsic value infographic in our free research reporthelps visualize whether HYRE is currently mispriced by the market. 2. Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look atwho sits on HyreCar’s board and the CEO’s back ground. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore ourfree list of these great stocks here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Vatican cancels women's team debut match after pro-choice protest A group of about twenty women are on the Vatican squad - AFP The Vatican abandoned the debut international match of its new womens soccer team after members of the opposing team demonstrated against the Catholic churchs opposition to abortion and gay rights. The new Vatican womens squad was announced with great fanfare in May to combat criticism that the church was not doing enough to include women in key positions amid major scandals over the sexual abuse of nuns by members of the clergy. But as the Vatican anthem was played before the assembled teams, several of the players and suppoters from Austrian team Mariahilf lifted their jerseys to expose diagrams of female reproductive organs. One Austrian player had written My body, my rule on her back and banners with Against Homophobia were unfurled by spectators in the stands. The popes new envoy to Austria, Monsignor Pedro Lopez Quintana, was watching from the sidelines as the umpire abandoned the match before the whistle was even blown. "The game was called off because we are here for the sport, and not for political or other messages", public broadcaster ORF quoted Danilo Zennaro, a representative of the Vatican sports association, as saying. A player from the Austrian capital's Mariahilf women's team said they hadn't expected the protest action to lead to the game to be scrapped. The Vaticans acting press spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, declined to comment on Sunday but referred The Telegraph to an article published by Vatican news which said: The Vatican players were expecting a simple game of sport and with their sports manager took a difficult decision, not to contest the game and continue the exploitation of an event for which they had prepared with joy. Last month Pope Francis made headlines when he said that abortion was completely unacceptable, regardless of whether a fetus was fatally ill or had disorders. He compared the act of abortion to hiring a hitman and urged doctors to help women bring to term even pregnancies likely to end in the death of a child at birth or soon after. The Vatican women's team includes no nuns but is made up of women who either work in the tiny Vatican state, or are the wives and daughters of men who are employed there.
With EPS Growth And More, Houston Wire & Cable (NASDAQ:HWCC) Is Interesting Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Like a puppy chasing its tail, some new investors often chase 'the next big thing', even if that means buying 'story stocks' without revenue, let alone profit. But the reality is that when a company loses money each year, for long enough, its investors will usually take their share of those losses. So if you're like me, you might be more interested in profitable, growing companies, likeHouston Wire & Cable(NASDAQ:HWCC). Now, I'm not saying that the stock is necessarily undervalued today; but I can't shake an appreciation for the profitability of the business itself. While a well funded company may sustain losses for years, unless its owners have an endless appetite for subsidizing the customer, it will need to generate a profit eventually, or else breathe its last breath. Check out our latest analysis for Houston Wire & Cable In a capitalist society capital chases profits, and that means share prices tend rise with earnings per share (EPS). So like a ray of sunshine through a gap in the clouds, improving EPS is considered a good sign. It is therefore awe-striking that Houston Wire & Cable's EPS went from US$0.13 to US$0.55 in just one year. Even though that growth rate is unlikely to be repeated, that looks like a breakout improvement. One way to double-check a company's growth is to look at how its revenue, and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins are changing. Houston Wire & Cable maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 10% to US$357m. That's a real positive. The chart below shows how the company's bottom and top lines have progressed over time. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers. Since Houston Wire & Cable is no giant, with a market capitalization of US$92m, so you shoulddefinitely check its cash and debtbeforegetting too excited about its prospects. Like that fresh smell in the air when the rains are coming, insider buying fills me with optimistic anticipation. Because oftentimes, the purchase of stock is a sign that the buyer views it as undervalued. Of course, we can never be sure what insiders are thinking, we can only judge their actions. It's a pleasure to note that insiders spent US$949k buying Houston Wire & Cable shares, over the last year, without reporting any share sales whatsoever. And so I find myself almost expectant, and certainly hopeful, that this large outlay signals prescient optimism for the business. Zooming in, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by Independent Director Roy Haley for US$243k worth of shares, at about US$6.04 per share. Houston Wire & Cable's earnings per share have taken off like a rocket aimed right at the moon. If you're like me, you'll find it hard to ignore that sort of explosive EPS growth. And in fact, it could well signal a fundamental shift in the business economics. If that's the case, you may regret neglecting to put Houston Wire & Cable on your watchlist. Of course, just because Houston Wire & Cable is growing does not mean it is undervalued. If you're wondering about the valuation, check outthis gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry. The good news is that Houston Wire & Cable is not the only growth stock with insider buying. Here'sa a list of them... with insider buying in the last three months! Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
3 Expensive Retirement Costs You May Not Be Preparing For When preparing for retirement, saving enough to cover just basic living expenses can be tough. Retirement will likely last at least a couple of decades, and spending only $20,000 or $30,000 per year can amount to several hundred thousand dollars in that timeframe. Then if you want to travel or enjoy other expensive luxuries in retirement, that figure can easily skyrocket. It also doesn't help that the average worker is behind on their retirement savings, with nearly half of baby boomers reporting they don't have anything saved at all, according to a survey from the Insured Retirement Institute. When you're struggling to save in the first place, saving even the bare minimum to get by during retirement can be a challenging task. But while most people think of the "bare minimum" as expenses like housing, food, and transportation, there are several major costs most retirees will face that not everyone prepares for. And by not accounting for these expenses in your retirement budget, you could be in for a nasty surprise down the road. Image source: Getty Images A whopping 72% of Americans admit they don't fully understand how Medicare works, according to a survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute, and 53% mistakenly believe coverage is free. If you're not aware of what you could be paying for healthcare, these costs can take a big bite out of your budget. With Original Medicare, Part A (which covers most hospital visits) is typically free to those who have worked and paid Medicare taxes for at least 10 years. But Part B, which covers doctor visits, requires a monthly premium of around $135 per month (though high earners could have to pay more than that). Original Medicare alsodoesn't cover most routine care(such as dental and vision care), so these costs will likely need to be paid out-of-pocket. Prescription drug coverage is another area not covered by Original Medicare, although you can enroll inPart D coverageat an additional cost. Many retirees instead choose aMedicare Advantage plan, which provides coverage similar to what you likely received through your employer. However, these plans are often more expensive than Original Medicare because they offer more expansive coverage. Regardless of which type of plan you choose, healthcare is far from free in retirement. You're still responsible for all premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance. And the average retiree spends around $4,300 per year on out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, according to a study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Approximately 70% of older adults will require long-term care at some point during retirement, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found. And of those who need long-term care, around one in five people will need it for longer than five years. This type of care can also cost a pretty penny. For nursing home care, the monthly cost of a semi-private room will run around $6,800, and a private room costs an average of $7,700 per month, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Furthermore, long-term care typically isn't covered by Medicare. While Medicare will sometimes cover short stays in a skilled nursing facility if the care is considered medically necessary, it doesn't cover custodial care -- which involves help with daily activities like dressing, bathing, and eating. Because most long-term care can be incredibly expensive and isn't covered by Medicare, it can quickly drain your retirement fund. One potential solution is to buylong-term care insurance, but it's important to enroll before you retire. Premiums are notoriously high, but they become even higher if you wait until your 60s or later to sign up. Wait too long, and you might be denied coverage altogether. The average 55-year-old couple can expect to pay around $2,500 per year for long-term care insurance, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, while the average 60-year-old couple will face premiums of around $3,400 per year. These rates are expensive, without a doubt. But considering a 5-year stay in a nursing home can cost more than $400,000 without insurance, it might be worth it to pay for insurance now rather than face hefty out-of-pocket expenses later. When you're figuring out how much you should be saving for retirement, you're probably thinking about after-tax dollars. But if you're stashing your money in a401(k)ortraditional IRA, you'll need to pay income taxes on the money you withdraw during retirement -- so you may not have quite as much cash to spend as you think. Not accounting for taxes on withdrawals can throw off your entire retirement plan. For example, if you expect to need $40,000 per year in retirement and you save enough so that you can withdraw exactly that much from your savings, you might be in for a surprise if you're left with, say, $32,000 after taxes. If that's not enough to cover all your expenses in retirement, you may be forced to withdraw more each year than you'd planned -- which puts you at risk of running out of money sooner than you expected. It's a good idea to account for taxes as you're estimating your retirement costs and creating a savings plan. If you save more than you think you need, assuming part of your savings will go toward taxes each year, you won't be in for a surprise when the IRS wants a chunk of your retirement withdrawals. You may also choose to invest some of your savings in aRoth IRA, which taxes your contributions upfront so you don't need to pay income tax on withdrawals. There is a potential downside to a Roth IRA, though, if you're a high earner now and expect to be in a lower tax bracket come retirement age. In that case, you could end up paying more in taxes upfront than you would if you'd paid income taxes on withdrawals. It's difficult to save for retirement, because nobody can predict exactly how much they'll need to cover all their expenses. But there are some costs that can come back to bite you if you're not preparing for them ahead of time. By doing your homework and thinking about how you'll pay for these major expenses, you'll put yourself in a much better position to retire comfortably and ensure your savings last as long as possible. More From The Motley Fool • Everything You Need to Know About Retirement • Don't Retire Early Until You Do This • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Can’t Afford to Miss The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
I Ran A Stock Scan For Earnings Growth And Houston Wire & Cable (NASDAQ:HWCC) Passed With Ease Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! It's only natural that many investors, especially those who are new to the game, prefer to buy shares in 'sexy' stocks with a good story, even if those businesses lose money. Unfortunately, high risk investments often have little probability of ever paying off, and many investors pay a price to learn their lesson. In contrast to all that, I prefer to spend time on companies likeHouston Wire & Cable(NASDAQ:HWCC), which has not only revenues, but also profits. While that doesn't make the shares worth buying at any price, you can't deny that successful capitalism requires profit, eventually. Conversely, a loss-making company is yet to prove itself with profit, and eventually the sweet milk of external capital may run sour. View our latest analysis for Houston Wire & Cable In a capitalist society capital chases profits, and that means share prices tend rise with earnings per share (EPS). So like a ray of sunshine through a gap in the clouds, improving EPS is considered a good sign. It is therefore awe-striking that Houston Wire & Cable's EPS went from US$0.13 to US$0.55 in just one year. Even though that growth rate is unlikely to be repeated, that looks like a breakout improvement. I like to see top-line growth as an indication that growth is sustainable, and I look for a high earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margin to point to a competitive moat (though some companies with low margins also have moats). Houston Wire & Cable maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 10% to US$357m. That's progress. You can take a look at the company's revenue and earnings growth trend, in the chart below. To see the actual numbers, click on the chart. Since Houston Wire & Cable is no giant, with a market capitalization of US$92m, so you shoulddefinitely check its cash and debtbeforegetting too excited about its prospects. Like the kids in the streets standing up for their beliefs, insider share purchases give me reason to believe in a brighter future. This view is based on the possibility that stock purchases signal bullishness on behalf of the buyer. Of course, we can never be sure what insiders are thinking, we can only judge their actions. It's a pleasure to note that insiders spent US$949k buying Houston Wire & Cable shares, over the last year, without reporting any share sales whatsoever. As if for a flower bud approaching bloom, I become an expectant observer, anticipating with hope, that something splendid is coming. We also note that it was the Independent Director, Roy Haley, who made the biggest single acquisition, paying US$243k for shares at about US$6.04 each. Houston Wire & Cable's earnings per share have taken off like a rocket aimed right at the moon. If you're like me, you'll find it hard to ignore that sort of explosive EPS growth. And indeed, it could be a sign that the business is at an inflection point. For me, this situation certainly piques my interest. Now, you could try to make up your mind on Houston Wire & Cable by focusing on just these factors,oryou couldalsoconsider how its price-to-earnings ratio compares to other companies in its industry. There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. So if you like the sound of Houston Wire & Cable, you'll probably love thisfreelist of growing companies that insiders are buying. Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Is There An Opportunity With Horizon Therapeutics Public Limited Company's (NASDAQ:HZNP) 50% Undervaluation? Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! In this article we are going to estimate the intrinsic value of Horizon Therapeutics Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:HZNP) by taking the foreast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today's value. I will use the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward. Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in theSimply Wall St analysis model. Check out our latest analysis for Horizon Therapeutics We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars: [{"": "Levered FCF ($, Millions)", "2019": "$439.97", "2020": "$481.32", "2021": "$527.30", "2022": "$603.86", "2023": "$643.03", "2024": "$676.60", "2025": "$706.87", "2026": "$734.80", "2027": "$761.13", "2028": "$786.46"}, {"": "Growth Rate Estimate Source", "2019": "Analyst x4", "2020": "Analyst x4", "2021": "Analyst x4", "2022": "Analyst x4", "2023": "Analyst x4", "2024": "Est @ 5.22%", "2025": "Est @ 4.47%", "2026": "Est @ 3.95%", "2027": "Est @ 3.58%", "2028": "Est @ 3.33%"}, {"": "Present Value ($, Millions) Discounted @ 9.41%", "2019": "$402.14", "2020": "$402.10", "2021": "$402.65", "2022": "$421.45", "2023": "$410.21", "2024": "$394.51", "2025": "$376.72", "2026": "$357.93", "2027": "$338.88", "2028": "$320.05"}] Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= $3.83b "Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the intial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.7%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 9.4%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2029× (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$786m × (1 + 2.7%) ÷ (9.4% – 2.7%) = US$12b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= $US$12b ÷ ( 1 + 9.4%)10= $4.92b The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is $8.75b. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding.This results in an intrinsic value estimate of $47.33. Relative to the current share price of $23.77, the company appears quite good value at a 50% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out. The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company's future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Horizon Therapeutics as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 9.4%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.935. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For Horizon Therapeutics, I've compiled three additional aspects you should look at: 1. Financial Health: Does HZNP have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at ourfree balance sheet analysis with six simple checkson key factors like leverage and risk. 2. Future Earnings: How does HZNP's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with ourfree analyst growth expectation chart. 3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of HZNP? Exploreour interactive list of high quality stocksto get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every US stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock justsearch here. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Are These 3 Growth Stocks Still Buys? Back in January, three under-the-radar stocks looked to begood values, and they've all had a pretty good 2019 so far. Sustainable water stockXylemis up 21%, security lock companyAllegionis up 31%, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) companyIngersoll-Randis up 34% on a year-to-date basis at the time of writing. Given such strong rises, it's a good idea to reassess whether they are still good values now. Looking at the trends in full-year EPS guidance usually tells an investor a lot about a company's prospects. As you can see below, it's a mixed bag. Xylem has already cut its full-year guidance, and it now stands below what analysts were predicting in January. Meanwhile, Allegion has maintained guidance, and Ingersoll-Rand has raised it to the high end of its previous range. [{"Full Year EPS Guidance": "Xylem(NYSE: XYL)", "At Q1 2019": "$3.12-$3.32", "At Q4 2018": "$3.20-$3.40", "Analyst Consensus in January": "$3.38"}, {"Full Year EPS Guidance": "Ingersoll-Rand(NYSE: IR)", "At Q1 2019": "$6.35", "At Q4 2018": "$6.15-$6.35", "Analyst Consensus in January": "$6.32"}, {"Full Year EPS Guidance": "Allegion(NYSE: ALLE)", "At Q1 2019": "$4.75-$4.90", "At Q4 2018": "$4.75-$4.90", "Analyst Consensus in January": "$4.96"}] Data source: Company presentations. Theinvestment thesis behind the stockfocuses on its ability to translate mid-single-digit revenue growth into mid-teens EPS growth through ongoing margin expansion. Xylem isn't an obviously cheap stock -- after all, it trades at 25 times the midpoint of its full-year EPS guidance -- but its exposure to the expanding need for water infrastructure in emerging markets and the need for maintenance spending in developed markets puts it on a solid, and defensive, growth trajectory. Image source: Getty Images In addition, the company's investments in smart technology solutions such as advanced infrastructure analytics (AIA) to enable smart metering and monitoring look set to add a growth kicker to an already attractive story. It's a compelling story, but unfortunately there's a snag in 2019: Management reported a disappointing first quarter from a margin perspective, and also pushed out its expectation for an adjusted operating margin of 17%-18% by 2020 to "extending beyond 2020." The reason -- or rather, the two reasons? First, CEO Patrick Decker said the first quarter saw "[l]ower margin performance" which was "driven by the mix of products that we sold and operational factors that we should have identified and planned for, most notably in our sales and operations planning process." As a consequence, restructuring and realignment costs will now be $60 million to $70 million, instead of the previously planned-for $30 million. Second, management took the decision to delay the implementation of a series of business initiatives partly designed to cut costs. The reason? Management claimed it was in order to optimize their implementation and minimize the disruption the might cause to revenue growth. As such the cost savings from the initiatives are now expected to hit in late 2020 and 2021 according to Decker on the earnings call. The news is obviously disappointing, but the stock is arguably still a good value. For example, Zylem still expects to convert 105% of net income to free cash flow (FCF). If that is the case, then the company should generate around $600 million in full-year FCF. Moreover, the company is investing heavily right now. Its capital expenditures exceed depreciation, which should lead to faster earnings growth relatively soon. Adjusting for this spending surge to fuel growth, it has the potential to add another $100 million to that FCF total. Based on the assumed $700 million in underlying FCF, Xylem trades on a forward price-to-FCF multiple of 21 times -- that's a reasonable valuation to pay for mid-teens earnings growth, but the company needs to stay on track in 2019. In short, Xylem is still a good value, but keep a close eye out for the next set of results. They need to be blemish free. There wasn't a lot wrong with Allegion's first-quarter earnings report, and the company remains on track for 2019 and beyond. If you believe in the convergence of mechanical and electronic security systems, and the benefits of web-enabled and internet of things (IoT)-enabled locks and doors used to monitor and control locks remotely, then you believeAllegion has a bright future. That said, you will have to pay up if you want to buy Allegion stock, particularly after its recent strong rise. The company's available cash flow outlook (basically FCF but with pension contributions included) of $430 million to $450 million puts it on a forward price-to-cash-flow multiple of more than 22. That strikes me as a bit pricey for high-single-digit EPS growth, particularly as a slowdown in the residential housing market could negatively impact its outlook. Last but not least,Ingersoll-Rand continues to look like a good value. Management raised full-year guidance to the high-end of its previous range, and underlying HVAC orders remain supportive of a combination of mid-single-digit revenue growth and double-digit PS growth -- not least because the raw material cost headwinds in 2018 and 2019 will hopefully abate in the future. Moreover, Wall Street warmly welcomed the news thatIngersoll-Rand will spin off its industrial businessand then merge it withGardner Denver(NYSE: GDI). The deal will lead to an increased focus on Ingersoll-Rand's core HVAC operations. Management continues to believe in FCF of around $1.6 billion in 2019, putting Ingersoll-Rand on a forward price-to-FCF multiple of 18.5. All told, despite the strong rise in 2019, the stock continues to look like a good value. More From The Motley Fool • 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today • The $16,728 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss • 20 of the Top Stocks to Buy (Including the Two Every Investor Should Own) • What Is an ETF? • 5 Recession-Proof Stocks • How to Beat the Market Lee Samahaowns shares of Ingersoll-Rand. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
One Thing To Remember About The Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT) Share Price Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! If you own shares in Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT) then it's worth thinking about how it contributes to the volatility of your portfolio, overall. In finance, Beta is a measure of volatility. Volatility is considered to be a measure of risk in modern finance theory. Investors may think of volatility as falling into two main categories. The first category is company specific volatility. This can be dealt with by limiting your exposure to any particular stock. The other type, which cannot be diversified away, is the volatility of the entire market. Every stock in the market is exposed to this volatility, which is linked to the fact that stocks prices are correlated in an efficient market. Some stocks mimic the volatility of the market quite closely, while others demonstrate muted, exagerrated or uncorrelated price movements. Some investors use beta as a measure of how much a certain stock is impacted by market risk (volatility). While we should keep in mind that Warren Buffett has cautioned that 'Volatility is far from synonymous with risk', beta is still a useful factor to consider. To make good use of it you must first know that the beta of the overall market is one. Any stock with a beta of greater than one is considered more volatile than the market, while those with a beta below one are either less volatile or poorly correlated with the market. View our latest analysis for Haverty Furniture Companies Haverty Furniture Companies has a five-year beta of 0.99. This is reasonably close to the market beta of 1, so the stock has in the past displayed similar levels of volatility to the overall market. If the future looks like the past, we could therefore consider it likely that the stock price will experience share price volatility that is roughly similar to the overall market. Many would argue that beta is useful in position sizing, but fundamental metrics such as revenue and earnings are more important overall. You can see Haverty Furniture Companies's revenue and earnings in the image below. With a market capitalisation of US$348m, Haverty Furniture Companies is a very small company by global standards. It is quite likely to be unknown to most investors. Companies this small are usually more volatile than the market, whether or not that volatility is correlated. Therefore, it's a bit surprising to see that this stock has a beta value so close to the overall market. It is probable that there is a link between the share price of Haverty Furniture Companies and the broader market, since it has a beta value quite close to one. However, long term investors are generally well served by looking past market volatility and focussing on the underlying development of the business. If that's your game, metrics such as revenue, earnings and cash flow will be more useful. In order to fully understand whether HVT is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Haverty Furniture Companies’s financial health and performance track record. I urge you to continue your research by taking a look at the following: 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for HVT’s future growth? Take a look at ourfree research report of analyst consensusfor HVT’s outlook. 2. Past Track Record: Has HVT been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look atthe free visual representations of HVT's historicalsfor more clarity. 3. Other Interesting Stocks: It's worth checking to see how HVT measures up against other companies on valuation. You could start with thisfree list of prospective options. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Investors Who Bought Alpine Immune Sciences (NASDAQ:ALPN) Shares A Year Ago Are Now Down 43% Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Passive investing in an index fund is a good way to ensure your own returns roughly match the overall market. Active investors aim to buy stocks that vastly outperform the market - but in the process, they risk under-performance. Investors inAlpine Immune Sciences, Inc.(NASDAQ:ALPN) have tasted that bitter downside in the last year, as the share price dropped 43%. That falls noticeably short of the market return of around 6.0%. Alpine Immune Sciences hasn't been listed for long, so although we're wary of recent listings that perform poorly, it may still prove itself with time. Shareholders have had an even rougher run lately, with the share price down 35% in the last 90 days. See our latest analysis for Alpine Immune Sciences Alpine Immune Sciences recorded just US$390,000 in revenue over the last twelve months, which isn't really enough for us to consider it to have a proven product. You have to wonder why venture capitalists aren't funding it. So it seems shareholders are too busy dreaming about the progress to come than dwelling on the current (lack of) revenue. For example, they may be hoping that Alpine Immune Sciences comes up with a great new product, before it runs out of money. We think companies that have neither significant revenues nor profits are pretty high risk. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some such companies go on to make revenue, profits, and generate value, others get hyped up by hopeful naifs before eventually going bankrupt. Alpine Immune Sciences had cash in excess of all liabilities of US$53m when it last reported (March 2019). That's not too bad but management may have to think about raising capital or taking on debt, unless the company is close to breaking even. With the share price down 43% in the last year, it seems likely that the need for cash is weighing on investors' minds. You can see in the image below, how Alpine Immune Sciences's cash levels have changed over time (click to see the values). It can be extremely risky to invest in a company that doesn't even have revenue. There's no way to know its value easily. Would it bother you if insiders were selling the stock? I'd like that just about as much as I like to drink milk and fruit juice mixed together. It only takes a moment for you tocheck whether we have identified any insider sales recently. Given that the market gained 6.0% in the last year, Alpine Immune Sciences shareholders might be miffed that they lost 43%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. With the stock down 35% over the last three months, the market doesn't seem to believe that the company has solved all its problems. Given the relatively short history of this stock, we'd remain pretty wary until we see some strong business performance. It is all well and good that insiders have been buying shares, but we suggest youcheck here to see what price insiders were buying at. Alpine Immune Sciences is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at thisfreelist of growing companies with insider buying. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
How Americans' financial behavior has changed: Less stock picking, more part-time work As the economic expansion hits the 10-year mark around midyear, you will be reading a lot of articles about how Americans are faring financially these days compared to a decade ago. An interesting side note is how people have changed their financial habits and practices. Not all of these shifts have been tied to the economic expansion. Some mainly reflect technological and other innovations. Some have endured for longer than 10 years and others, for less time. But they're all in play. You spend less time at your bank but more time dealing with it. In some ways, banking hasn't changed as much as you might think. There are still tens of thousands of branches, people still write paper checks and FDIC insurance stands ready to bail out depositors at failed institutions. Even cash remains a popular way to make purchases. In fact, it's still the most common means of buying things, saysa Federal Reserve study. That said, few industries have embraced technological innovation as much as banking. You probably don't think twice anymore about paying bills electronically, transferring money with your cellphone or applying for loans online — tasks that were mostly unthinkable a generation or so ago. Pride month:How retailers have turned LGTBQ celebration into a marketing, sales bonanza Millennials, you've got this all wrong:You need to stop 'saving' for retirement Many consumers are spending more time dealing with banking issues — checking their statements, monitoring transactions, viewing credit scores, shopping for loan rates, moving money around — than ever before. Three in four adults engage in online banking at least once a month, according to a study by Javelin Research. It just doesn't seem so laborious or tedious because people don't visit their branches or ATMs so often, though those channels are far from disappearing. Stock-picking is becoming a lost art among large swaths of the population. Investors for years have gravitated toward mutual funds and other professionally managed portfolios. More recently, they have turned to index funds, whereby the manager isn't trying to pick stocks either, but rather holds the same companies as found in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500 or other stock groupings. A good example is the trend toward target-date funds, which often hold indexed portfolios and mix them in a way that's suitable depending on an investor's age and appetite for risk. This means higher, more aggressive stock holdings for young adults, with the mix becoming more conservative, with higher bond allocations, over time. Target-date funds, which have become mainstays in workplace 401(k)-style plans, have swelled to $1.23 trillion in assets this year from virtually nothing two decades ago, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund trade group. They are a sophisticated yet simplifying investment that makes sense for a lot of people. If you have a permanent, professional job, you probably haven't noticed much change in the frequency of your paychecks. Mostly likely, they still arrive every week or two. But if you labor in lower-income positions, including part-time "gig" jobs, the trend is toward getting pay into the hands of workers faster — often within a day or two of completing a shift. Rapid advances in bank-payment processing and cell-phone applications make this possible. "As a society, we want everything — food, movies or whatever — in real time, so why can't payroll be on demand, too?" asked Ijaz Anwar, chief operating officer at PayActiv, a company that facilitates instant access to earned pay as a voluntary workplace benefit. Walmart is among the large employers offering the service through his company to some workers. Why should employers bother with this? Because they increasingly see financial stress causing problems such as lower productivity, as workers check transactions and otherwise worry about their money. Faster access to earned pay means cash-strapped individuals are less likely to resort to payday loans, auto-title loans and other high-cost borrowing options, Anwar said. PayActiv also offers saving, bill paying and other options, and it allows only a portion of earned pay to be accessed daily so that workers don't blow through everything too quickly. "We provide the service with guardrails," Anwar said. This isn't necessarily a beneficial trend, but plenty of people are picking up contingency work or "gig" jobs. Sometimes, as with retirees, this extra employment might represent a desire to stay socially and mentally active. But for others, it reflects the need to earn extra money to make ends meet. Perhaps 48 million Americans, or 31% of the nation's workforce, fill at least some gig jobs here and there, according to an estimate by Staffing Industry Analysts. This includes not just people filing temporary shifts but freelancers and independent contractors working on specific projects or assignments. The shift from full-time, permanent work to more contingent opportunities has an effect in areas such as retirement planning, where many people have been lagging. For example, while independent workers often are eligible to open Individual Retirement Accounts, regardless of income, relatively few do. That's one reason proponents of retirement preparedness see potential in the SECURE Act, which was approved this spring by the U.S. House of Representatives and appears to enjoy broad, bipartisan support. The bill would expand access to retirement programs in various ways, including to more part-time workers. Another change would allow seniors to keep contributing to IRAs past age 70 1/2 if still employed, reflecting the reality that many people are living longer and want to — or might need to — keep working and saving. Federal reform that took effect in 2018 was supposed to make things simpler for taxpayers, after years of increasingly complex rules. The new goal has been met, partially. The big simplifying change was boosting the standard deduction so that more taxpayers opted to take it rather than itemize their deductions. That means fewer expenses for people to monitor. The Internal Revenue Service estimated another 20% or so of individual taxpayers would take the standard deduction, raising the total to around 90%. (The IRS hasn't provided actual data on this yet.) More taxpayers are preparing their own returns, but the change hasn't been drastic so far. The number of self-filers rose about 2.3 million or 4% this past tax season, according to IRS numbers that focused on electronically filed returns (which represent the vast majority). Yet even with this increase, only 44% of taxpayers prepared their own returns, meaning the other 56% still hired a preparer. Even with the simpler system, many people consider tax-return preparation a daunting task and are willing to pay someone else to do it for them. It remains to be seen if the one-year uptick in self filers becomes a more pronounced trend over time. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic:How Americans' financial behavior has changed: Less stock picking, more part-time work
Introducing Alpine Immune Sciences (NASDAQ:ALPN), The Stock That Dropped 43% In The Last Year Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! The simplest way to benefit from a rising market is to buy an index fund. When you buy individual stocks, you can make higher profits, but you also face the risk of under-performance. Unfortunately theAlpine Immune Sciences, Inc.(NASDAQ:ALPN) share price slid 43% over twelve months. That falls noticeably short of the market return of around 6.0%. Alpine Immune Sciences hasn't been listed for long, so although we're wary of recent listings that perform poorly, it may still prove itself with time. Furthermore, it's down 35% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders. See our latest analysis for Alpine Immune Sciences We don't think Alpine Immune Sciences's revenue of US$390,000 is enough to establish significant demand. This state of affairs suggests that venture capitalists won't provide funds on attractive terms. So it seems that the investors focused more on what could be, than paying attention to the current revenues (or lack thereof). It seems likely some shareholders believe that Alpine Immune Sciences has the funding to invent a new product before too long. Companies that lack both meaningful revenue and profits are usually considered high risk. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some companies like this go on to deliver on their plan, making good money for shareholders, many end in painful losses and eventual de-listing. When it last reported its balance sheet in March 2019, Alpine Immune Sciences had cash in excess of all liabilities of US$53m. While that's nothing to panic about, there is some possibility the company will raise more capital, especially if profits are not imminent. With the share price down 43% in the last year, it seems likely that the need for cash is weighing on investors' minds. You can see in the image below, how Alpine Immune Sciences's cash levels have changed over time (click to see the values). In reality it's hard to have much certainty when valuing a business that has neither revenue or profit. What if insiders are ditching the stock hand over fist? I'd like that just about as much as I like to drink milk and fruit juice mixed together. It only takes a moment for you tocheck whether we have identified any insider sales recently. Given that the market gained 6.0% in the last year, Alpine Immune Sciences shareholders might be miffed that they lost 43%. While the aim is to do better than that, it's worth recalling that even great long-term investments sometimes underperform for a year or more. The share price decline has continued throughout the most recent three months, down 35%, suggesting an absence of enthusiasm from investors. Basically, most investors should be wary of buying into a poor-performing stock, unless the business itself has clearly improved. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You canclick here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid. Alpine Immune Sciences is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to findwinning investmentsthisfreelist of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Some Ideanomics (NASDAQ:IDEX) Shareholders Are Down 33% Want to participate in ashort research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card! Ideanomics, Inc.(NASDAQ:IDEX) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 29% in the last month. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last five years have been less than pleasing. You would have done a lot better buying an index fund, since the stock has dropped 33% in that half decade. Check out our latest analysis for Ideanomics Because Ideanomics is loss-making, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size. Over five years, Ideanomics grew its revenue at 74% per year. That's better than most loss-making companies. The share price drop of 7.7% per year over five years would be considered let down. You could say that the market has been harsh, given the top line growth. So now is probably an apt time to look closer at the stock, if you think it has potential. The chart below shows how revenue and earnings have changed with time, (if you click on the chart you can see the actual values). We're pleased to report that the CEO is remunerated more modestly than most CEOs at similarly capitalized companies. It's always worth keeping an eye on CEO pay, but a more important question is whether the company will grow earnings throughout the years. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Ideanomics'searnings, revenue and cash flow. Ideanomics shareholders are down 0.5% for the year, but the market itself is up 6.0%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. However, the loss over the last year isn't as bad as the 7.7% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. You might want to assessthis data-rich visualizationof its earnings, revenue and cash flow. For those who like to findwinning investmentsthisfreelist of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor ateditorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.