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Valens Research

Valens Equity Insights and Inflections - 2019 03 13

AAPL currently trades below corporate averages relative to UAFRS-based (Uniform) Earnings, with a 13.5x Uniform P/E. At these levels, the market is pricing in expectations for Uniform ROA to continue to decline from 59% in 2018 to 18% in 2023, accompanied by 17% Uniform Asset growth going forward. However, analysts have less bearish expectations, projecting Uniform ROA to only decline to 46% by 2020, accompanied by 8% Uniform Asset growth. Moreover, management is confident about their Services segment, subscription growth, and shareholder returns. Should AAPL just sustain profitability near current levels, as positive management sentiment would suggest, upside would be warranted.

AMGN Q4 2018 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for fading Uniform ROA, and management has concerns about competition, sales declines, and FDA approval

HON Q4 2018 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for record-high Uniform ROA, but management has concerns about growth, acquisitions, and demand

MSFT Q2 2019 Embedded Expectations Analysis – Market expectations are for fading Uniform ROA, and management has concerns about cloud services, user engagement, and intelligence systems

ALXN, AMZN, APD, CAT, CHTR, GRMN, LMT, NLS, OMC, QGEN, TMO, ZAYO
Underlyings
Air Products and Chemicals Inc.

Air Products and Chemicals serves customers globally with a portfolio of products, services, and solutions that include atmospheric gases, process and other gases, equipment, and services. The company is a supplier of hydrogen and is engaged in helium and liquefied natural gas (LNG) process technology and equipment. The company also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates industrial gas projects, including gasification projects that convert abundant natural resources into syngas for the production of power, fuels and chemicals. The company designs and manufactures equipment for air separation, hydrocarbon recovery and purification, LNG, and liquid helium and liquid hydrogen transport and storage.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company serving patients and families affected by rare diseases through the discovery, development and commercialization of therapies. The company has developed and commercialized two complement inhibitors to treat patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome, as well as the complement inhibitor to treat anti-acetylcholine receptor antibody-positive generalized myasthenia gravis and neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder in patients who are anti-aquaporin-4 antibody positive. In addition, the company has two enzyme replacement therapies for metabolic disorders, hypophosphatasia and lysosomal acid lipase deficiency.

Amazon.com Inc.

Amazon.com serves consumers through its online and physical stores. The company also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle, Fire tablet, Fire TV, Echo, and Ring, and the company develops and produces media content. The company operates customer service centers and provides programs that enable sellers to grow their businesses, sell their products in its stores, and fulfill orders through the company The company serves developers and enterprises of various sizes, including start-ups, government agencies, and academic institutions, through its Amazon Web Services segment, which provides a set of global compute, storage, database, and other service offerings. The company also provides services, such as advertising.

AMGEN INC.

Amgen is a biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers human therapeutics. The company's products include: Enbrel? (etanercept), which is used in indications for the treatment of adult patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis, patients with chronic moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy and patients with active psoriatic arthritis; and Prolia? (denosumab), which is used for the treatment of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis at high risk of fracture or multiple risk factors for fracture, or patients who have failed or are intolerant to other available osteoporosis therapy.

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.

Caterpillar Inc.

Caterpillar is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. The company segments include: Construction Industries, which supports customers using machinery in infrastructure, forestry and building construction; Resource Industries, which supports customers using machinery in mining, heavy construction, quarry and aggregates, waste and material handling applications; Energy and Transportation, which supports customers in oil and gas, power generation, marine, rail and industrial applications, including Cat? machines; and Financial Products, which provides financing and related services.

Charter Communications Inc. Class A

Charter Communications is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is a cable operator and a broadband communications company providing video, Internet and voice services. The company also provides its mobile service to residential customers. In addition, the company sells video and online advertising inventory to local, regional and national advertising customers and communications and managed solutions to enterprise customers. The company also owns and operates regional sports networks and local sports, news and community channels. The company owns and operates a two-way telecommunications network which passes various households and small and medium businesses across United States.

Garmin Ltd.

Honeywell International Inc.

Honeywell International is a technology and manufacturing company. The company has four segments: Aerospace, which supplies products, software and services for aircrafts; Honeywell Building Technologies, which provides products, software, solutions and technologies including building control and optimization, energy management, access control, video surveillance, fire products, and remote patient monitoring systems; Performance Materials and Technologies, which develops and manufactures chemicals and materials, process technologies and automation solutions; and Safety and Productivity Solutions, which provides products and software that improve productivity, workplace safety and asset performance.

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Lockheed Martin is a security and aerospace company. The company has four segments: Aeronautics, which is engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, sustainment, support and upgrade of military aircraft; Missiles and Fire Control, which provides air and missile defense systems, logistics, fire control systems, and mission operations support; Rotary and Mission Systems, which provides design, manufacture, service and support for military and commercial helicopters, radar systems, and simulation and training services; Space, which researches, designs, develops, engineers and produces satellites, space transportation systems, and strategic, strike, and defensive systems.

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is a technology company. The company develops and supports software, services, devices, and solutions. The company provides an array of services, including cloud-based solutions as well as solution support and consulting services. The company also delivers relevant online advertising. The company's products include operating systems; cross-device productivity applications; server applications; business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software development tools; and video games. The company also designs, manufactures, and sells devices, including personal computers, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, other devices, and related accessories.

Nautilus Inc

Nautilus is a consumer fitness products company. The company's business activities include designing, developing, sourcing and marketing cardio and strength fitness products and related accessories for consumer and commercial use. The company markets its products through two distribution channels, Direct and Retail. The company's direct business provides products directly to consumers through television advertising, the Internet and catalogs. The company's retail business provides its products through a network of independent companies to reach consumers in both the home use, as well as commercial use, markets in the U.S. and internationally. The company is also engaged in the licensing of its brands and intellectual property.

Omnicom Group Inc

Omnicom Group is a holding company, engaged in providing advertising, marketing and corporate communications services. The company's networks and agencies provide a range of services in the following fundamental disciplines: advertising, customer relationship management, public relations and healthcare. The company's Service offerings include, among others, advertising, branding, content marketing, corporate social responsibility consulting, crisis communications, custom publishing, data analytics, database management, digital/direct marketing, digital transformation, entertainment marketing, experiential marketing, field marketing, financial/corporate business-to-business advertising, and imaging.

QIAGEN NV

Qiagen is provider of Sample to Insight solutions to transform biological materials into valuable molecular insights. Co.'s sample technologies process DNA, RNA and proteins from blood, tissue and other materials. Assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Bioinformatics software interprets data. Automation solutions unite these together in molecular testing workflows. Co. provides these workflows to four classes: Molecular Diagnostics (human healthcare), Applied Testing (forensics, veterinary testing and food safety), Pharma (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies) and Academia (life sciences research). Co. markets its products in more than 130 countries.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is engaged in serving science. The company's segments include: Life Sciences Solutions, which provides reagents, instruments and consumables used in biological and medical research, discovery and production of new drugs and vaccines as well as diagnosis of disease; Analytical Instruments, which provides instruments, consumables, software and services that are used for a range of applications in the laboratory, on the production line and in the field; and Specialty Diagnostics, which provides diagnostic test kits, reagents, culture media, instruments and associated products for customers in healthcare, clinical, pharmaceutical, industrial, and food safety laboratories.

Zayo Group Holdings Inc.

Zayo Group Holdings is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is a provider of communications and bandwidth infrastructure in the United States, Canada and Europe. The company has four segments: Zayo Networks, which provides access to bandwidth infrastructure; Zayo Colocation, which provides data center and cloud infrastructure solutions to a range of enterprise, carrier, cloud and content customers; Allstream, which provides Cloud VoIP and Data Solutions; and Other, which is comprised of Zayo Professional Services that provides network and technical resources to customers. Key products include leased dark fiber, fiber to cellular towers and small cell sites and other bandwidth offering.

Provider
Valens Research
Valens Research

In 2009, just as the dust was settling from the last major equity and credit market crises, we launched a boutique research firm with the intention of breaking Wall Street’s biases and broken incentives:

  • GAAP and IFRS have failed to provide rules for reliable financial statement reporting
  • Stock analyst recommendations are not grounded in disciplined financial analysis
  • Credit agencies have been set up to grossly fail in their responsibilities to investors and the public markets
  • Utter lack of willingness of major research firms to employ the the most advanced forensic analysis available

We sought to provide investors and company analysts with a source of information that changed all that.
Many years later, our business model remains because little has changed on Wall Street.

  • Corporate credit ratings remain years behind the fundamental underpinnings of company performance
  • Stock analysts continue to make recommendations with deeply inherent biases
  • Research firms have failed to break down the walls between credit, equity, and macroeconomic research
  • The governing accounting bodies have created more leeway for mis-estimates and mis-classifications as financials have become unwieldy and overwhelming

The integrity of Valens Research is founded in our disciplined processes and analytics. No “star” analysts. No corporate advisory relationships. No-nonsense opinions and recommendations.

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