Report
Valens Research

Valens Equity Insights and Inflections - 2020 08 25

DOCU currently trades at a historical high relative to Uniform earnings, with a 347.5x Uniform P/E. At these levels, the market is pricing in expectations for Uniform ROA to jump from 7% in 2020 to 78% in 2025, accompanied by 24% Uniform asset growth going forward. Meanwhile, analysts have less bullish expectations, projecting Uniform ROA to only rise to 11% by 2022, accompanied by 23% Uniform asset growth. Furthermore, management may be concerned about adoption, costs, and DocuSign Gen. Current valuations appear to be pricing in overly bullish expectations for DOCU, and if the company is not able to greatly increase profitability levels, material downside may be warranted.

KR Q1 2021 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for Uniform ROA to rebound, but management may be concerned about customer growth, e-commerce, and food away from home

WBA Q3 2020 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for Uniform ROA compression, and management may have concerns about their margins, growth, and demand

SNX Q2 2020 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for Uniform ROA to fade, but management is excited about digital transformation services, and confident about their synergy plan and the increase in work-at-home business

DOCU, KR, SNX, WBA, A, AAPL, ADBE, AYI, AZO, DELL, ENS, HRL, JW.A, LAUR, MSM, MU, PUMP, SJM, SNPS, STZ
Underlyings
Acuity Brands Inc.

Acuity Brands is a provider of lighting and building management solutions and services for commercial, institutional, industrial, infrastructure, and residential applications. The company's lighting and building management solutions include devices such as luminaires, lighting controls, controllers for various building systems, power supplies, prismatic skylights, and drivers, as well as integrated systems designed for various indoor and outdoor applications. In addition, the company provides services across applications that primarily relate to monitoring and controlling lighting and building management systems through network technologies and the commissioning of control systems.

Adobe Inc.

Adobe is a software company. The company provides a line of products and services used for creating, managing, delivering, measuring, optimizing, engaging and transacting with content across personal computers, devices and media. The company's segments are: Digital Media, which provides products, services and solutions that enable individuals, teams and enterprises to create, publish and promote their content; Digital Experience, which provides a platform and set of applications and services through Adobe Experience Cloud; and Publishing, which contains products and services that address market opportunities including eLearning solutions, web conferencing, web application development and printing.

Agilent Technologies Inc.

Agilent Technologies is engaged in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets. The company's segments are: Life Sciences and Applied Markets Business, which provides instruments and software that enable customers to identify, quantify and analyze the physical and biological properties of substances and products; Diagnostics and Genomics Business, which includes the genomics, nucleic acid contract manufacturing and research and development, pathology, companion diagnostics, reagent partnership and biomolecular analysis businesses; and Agilent CrossLab Business, which spans the entire lab with its consumables and services portfolio to improve customer outcomes.

Apple Inc.

Apple designs, manufactures and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables and accessories, and sells a variety of related services. The company's products include: iPhone; Mac; iPad; and wearables, home and accessories, which includes AirPods?, Apple TV?, Apple Watch?, Beats? products, HomePod?, iPod touch? and other Apple-branded and third-party accessories. The company's services include: digital content stores and streaming services; AppleCare, which includes AppleCare + (AC+) and the AppleCare Protection Plan; iCloud, which is the company's cloud service; licensing; and other services, which include Apple Arcade?, Apple Card?, Apple News+, and Apple Pay, a cashless payment service.

AutoZone Inc.

AutoZone is a retailer and a distributor of automotive replacement parts and accessories. The company operates stores in the United States, including Puerto Rico and Saint Thomas, Mexico, and Brazil. Each store carries a product line for cars, sport utility vehicles, vans and light trucks, including new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories and non-automotive products. In addition, the company has a commercial sales program that provides commercial credit and delivery of parts and other products to local, regional and national repair garages, dealers, service stations and public sector accounts. The company also sells the ALLDATA brand automotive diagnostic and repair software.

Constellation Brands Inc. Class A

Constellation Brands is an international beverage alcohol company. The company is a producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits with operations in the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. The company has two segments: Beer, in which the company is engaged in the U.S. beer market that includes the imported, craft, domestic super premium, and alternative beverage alcohol categories and it has the right to import, market and sell these Mexican beer brands in the U.S.; and Wine and Spirits, in which its wine portfolio is supported by grapes purchased from independent growers, primarily in the U.S., New Zealand and Chile, and vineyard holdings in the U.S., New Zealand and Italy.

Dell Technologies Inc Class C

Dell Technologies is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, and supports a range of products and services. The company's reportable segments are: Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes servers, networking, and storage, as well as services and third-party software and peripherals; Client Solutions Group, which includes desktops, thin client products, and notebooks, as well as services and third-party software and peripherals; and VMware, which provides compute, cloud management, networking and security, storage and availability, and other end-user computing offerings.

DocuSign Inc.

DocuSign provides e-signature solution as the main part of its cloud software suite for automating the agreement process. The company calls its suite the DocuSign Agreement Cloud. The DocuSign Agreement Cloud is designed to allow companies of various sizes and across various industries to make agreement, approval process, or transaction digital, from practically any device, from almost anywhere in the world.

EnerSys

EnerSys is a manufacturer, marketer and distributor of industrial batteries. The company also manufactures, markets and distributes products such as battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories, and outdoor cabinet enclosures. The company's product lines are: reserve power products, which are used for backup power for the continuous operation of critical applications in telecommunications systems, uninterruptible power systems applications for computer and computer-controlled systems, and other specialty power applications; and motive power products, which are used to provide power for electric industrial forklifts used in manufacturing, warehousing and other material handling applications.

Hormel Foods Corporation

Hormel Foods is primarily engaged in the production of meat and food products and the marketing of those products throughout the United States and internationally. The company's segments are: Grocery Products, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of shelf-stable food products; Refrigerated Foods, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of branded and unbranded pork, beef, chicken, and turkey products; Jennie-O Turkey Store, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of branded and unbranded turkey products; and International and Other, which includes Hormel Foods International Corporation that manufactures, markets, and sells the company's products internationally.

J.M. Smucker Company

Smucker (J.M.) manufactures and markets food and beverage products. The company's principal products are coffee, dog food, pet snacks, cat food, peanut butter, fruit spreads, frozen handheld products, shortening and oils, portion control products, juices and beverages, and flour and baking ingredients. The company has four reportable segments: U.S. Retail Coffee, U.S. Retail Consumer Foods, and U.S. Retail Pet Foods, and International and Away From Home. The U.S. retail market segments represent the sales of food and beverage products to consumers through retail outlets in North America. The International and Away From Home segment represents sales outside of the U.S. retail market segments.

John Wiley & Sons Inc. Class A

John Wiley & Sons is a global research and learning company. Co. has three segments: Research segment, which provides scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, as well as related content and services to libraries and individual researchers, among others; Publishing, which provides scientific, professional, and education books and related content in print and digital formats, test preparation services and course workflow tools, to libraries, corporations, students, professionals, and researchers; and Solutions, which provides online program management services for higher education institutions and learning, development, and assessment services for businesses and professionals.

Kroger Co.

Kroger operates as a retailer. The company also manufacture and process some of the food for sale in its supermarkets. Supermarkets are operated under one of the following formats: combination food and drug stores (combo stores); multi-department stores; marketplace stores; or price impact warehouses. The combo stores provide food and organic sections, pharmacies, general merchandise, pet centers and perishables such as seafood and organic produce. Marketplace provide grocery, pharmacy and health and beauty care departments as well as perishable offering and general merchandise area that includes apparel, home goods and toys.

Laureate Education Inc. Class A

Laureate Education is engaged in providing higher education programs and services to students through an international network of licensed universities and higher education institutions (institutions). The company's programs are provided through institutions that are campus-based and internet-based, or through electronically distributed educational programs. The company has five reportable segments: Brazil; Mexico; Andean; Rest of World; and Online and Partnerships. The company's Online and Partnerships segment principally consists of Walden University.

Micron Technology Inc.

Micron Technology provides memory and storage solutions. The company's portfolio of memory and storage technologies include Dynamic Random Access Memory, Not And, 3D XPoint? memory, and Not Or. The company's segments are: Compute and Networking Business, which includes memory products sold into client, cloud server, enterprise, graphics, and networking markets; Mobile Business, which includes memory products sold into smartphone and other mobile-device markets; Storage Business, which includes Solid-State Drives and component-level solutions sold into enterprise and cloud, client, and consumer storage markets; and Embedded Business, which includes memory and storage products.

MSC Industrial Direct Co. Inc. Class A

MSC Industrial Direct Co. is a distributor of metalworking and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products and services. The company provides stock-keeping units through its eCommerce channels, including its website, mscdirect.com; its inventory management solutions; catalogs and brochures; and call-centers and branches. The company's range of MRO products includes cutting tools, measuring instruments, tooling components, metalworking products, fasteners, flat stock, raw materials, abrasives, machinery hand and power tools, safety and janitorial supplies, plumbing supplies, materials handling products, power transmission components, and electrical supplies.

ProPetro Holding Corp.

ProPetro Holding is a holding company. Through its subsidiary, the company is engaged as an oilfield services company providing hydraulic fracturing and other services to upstream oil and gas companies engaged in the exploration and production of North American unconventional oil and natural gas resources. The company's operations are primarily focused in the Permian Basin. In addition to its core hydraulic fracturing operations, the company provides complementary well completion and production services, including cementing, coiled tubing, flowback services and drilling. The company conducts its business through five segments: hydraulic fracturing (inclusive of acidizing), cementing, coil tubing, flowback and drilling.

Synopsys Inc.

Synopsys is a supplier of electronic design automation (EDA) software that engineers use to design and test integrated circuits. The company also provides semiconductor intellectual property products, which are pre-designed circuits that engineers use as components of larger chip designs rather than designing those circuits themselves. The company provides software and hardware used to validate the electronic systems that incorporate chips and the software that runs on them. The company is also a provider of software tools and services that improve the security and quality of software code in a variety of industries, including electronics, financial services, media, automotive, medicine, energy and industrials.

TD SYNNEX CORP

Synnex is a business process services company, providing a range of distribution, logistics and integration services for the technology industry and providing outsourced services focused on customer engagement to a range of enterprises. The company's segments are: Technology Solutions, which distributes peripherals, information technologysystems including data center server and storage solutions, system components, software, networking, communications and security equipment; and Concentrix, which provides a portfolio of solutions and business services focused on customer engagement, process optimization, technology innovation, front and back-office automation and business transformation to clients.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc

Walgreens Boots Alliance is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is engaged in retail and wholesale pharmacy. The company's operations are organized into three divisions, which are also its reportable segments: Retail Pharmacy USA; Retail Pharmacy International; and Pharmaceutical Wholesale. The Retail Pharmacy USA division has pharmacy-led health and beauty retail offerings. The Retail Pharmacy International division has pharmacy-led health and beauty retail businesses. The Pharmaceutical Wholesale division, which mainly operates under the Alliance Healthcare brand, supplies medicines, other healthcare products and related services to pharmacies, doctors, health centers and hospitals.

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