First Trust Utilities AlphaDEX Fund ETF (FXU) is in the Danger Zone this week due to its poor holdings. FXU might not have any obvious red flags on the surface, but a look at its holdings reveals a number of stocks with the potential to blow up, including some recent features in the Danger Zone.
USM's profits, margins, and return on invested capital are all in decline, and its revenues have been stagnant for a number of years. In addition, reported earnings per share conceal the company’s growing profit losses.
After a few weeks of rumors, on Sunday AT&T (T) confirmed its $95/share offer for DirecTV (DTV). The deal will be part stock and part cash, and is expected to close within 12 months if the deal meets regulatory approval.
Value investing is a tried and tested approach that has worked wonders for investors in the past. However, in today's world, executing this strategy can be a daunting task, given the complexity of the annual reports that companies file. Even professional investors have a tough time understanding the profitability and valuation of companies due to the lengthy and convoluted filings they receive. With stocks becoming more volatile and earnings estimates less precise, investors could be misled into thinking they're making a wise investment when, in fact, there's another side to the coin they've not seen.
The Time Warner deal is a smokescreen for the fact that Comcast faces many problems to which it does not have an answer. The market already understands that CMCSA has overpaid, which is why the stock is down 5% since the acquisition was announced. And the price will drop further as the market catches on to the larger competitive issues that Comcast faces.
We subtract net deferred tax liabilities (DTLs minus DTAs) from our calculation of shareholder value as they are real future cash obligations that limit the amount of money available for distribution to shareholders.
Companies with underfunded pensions will likely need to divert a greater amount of future cash flows away from shareholders to make up the funding gap. An accurate analysis of shareholder value should include the net funded status of pensions.
The fair value of a company’s total debt is the current amount the company would need to pay to retire the debt and settle the claims of the creditors. This fair value of debt is subtracted from shareholder value because the firm would need to settle these claims before it could return any cash to shareholders.
The Telecom sector ranks seventh out of the ten sectors as detailed in my Sector Rankings for ETFs and Mutual Funds report. It gets my Dangerous rating, which is based on aggregation of ratings of 4 ETFs and 13 mutual funds in the Telecom sector as of July 10, 2013.
Investors who ignore off-balance sheet debt are not holding companies accountable for all of the capital invested in their business. By adding back off-balance sheet debt to invested capital, one can get a true picture of the value that management is creating for shareholders. Diligence pays.
NOPAT Adjustment for Implied Interest For Operating Leases. Converting GAAP data into economic earnings should be part of every investor’s diligence process. Performing detailed analysis of footnotes and the MD&A is part of fulfilling fiduciary responsibilities.
Non-operating expenses are unusual charges that don’t appear on the income statement because they are bundled in other line items. Without careful footnotes research, investors would never know that these non-recurring expenses distort GAAP numbers by lowering operating earnings.
From the start, avoid any ETFs below a $100 million market cap. Anything smaller puts you at risk of inadequate liquidity, too large a bid/ask spread and tracking error. Even $100 million can be too low. The bigger the market cap the less trading risk. There are plenty of free services that allow you to screen out the smaller ETFs and minimize your trading risk.
The focus of this article, however, is investing risk or the relative investment potential of the ETF.
The Telecom Services sector ranks ninth out of the ten major sectors as detailed in our sector roadmap. It gets my Dangerous rating, which, like my fund ratings, is based on aggregation of stock ratings for each of 41 companies in the sector.