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Shaw’s Merger With Rogers Rests on Regulatory Approval

Shaw has made significant efforts to improve its wireless network and is now bundling wireless with wireline service to customers in its cable footprint, enabling it offer even better value and enhancing service when offloaded onto its Wi-Fi network. Between the ends of fiscal years 2016 and 2020, Shaw more than doubled its postpaid wireless subscriber base, increased average billings per user (ABPU) by 20%, and expanded its wireless EBITDA margin by 900 basis points. The firm continues to invest heavily to improve its wireless network, and we think the firm is a legitimate competitor for new wireless customers and will continue seeing wireless results trend upwards.

The stronger competition has caused Shaw to lose customers and market share over the last several years. The losses are attributable to television and voice customers, which face secular challenges for all competitors, but even Internet customer growth has been anemic (up 2% since 2017, including customer losses in 2021).

Financial Strength

Shaw is currently in a good financial positionAt the end of fiscal 2020, Shaw had over CAD 700 million in cash and CAD 4.5 billion in long-term debt, which represented 1.6 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. Shaw’s coverage ratio (adjusted EBITDA to interest expense) ended 2020 at 8.7, and the company has CAD 1.5 billion available on a revolving credit facility. Shaw has no long-term debt maturing until the end of 2023. Its debt covenants require its leverage ratio to stay below 5.0 and its coverage ratio to stay above 2.0, both comfortably distant from where the firm is currently. Shaw has maintained a dividend of CAD 1.19 per share since 2016, and will remain flat over the next few years, as the firm allocates capital to additional spectrum auctions in 2021 and 2022. Shaw suspended its share buyback in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still expects its free cash flow will be able to cover the dividend.

Bulls Says 

  • Shaw is doing all the right things to build up its wireless business, acquiring and building out sufficient assets and luring customers by offering great deals. 
  • The Canadian government is keen on bringing wireless competition to the big three incumbents. Unlike previous national upstarts, Shaw’s strong financial position and family control afford it the time and money to stick with a long-term strategy to succeed. 
  • Shaw’s move to bundle wireless and wireline service with Shaw Mobile could expedite its wireless share gains and stem wireline losses it has seen recently

Company Profile

Shaw Communications is a Canadian cable company that is one of the biggest providers of Internet, television, and landline telephone services in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northern Ontario. In fiscal 2021, more than 75% of Shaw’s total revenue resulted from this wireline business. Shaw is also now a national wireless service provider after acquiring Wind Mobile in 2016. Shaw has upgraded its wireless network, undertaken an aggressive pricing strategy, and significantly enhanced its spectrum holdings. As a smaller carrier, Shaw has favored bidding status in spectrum auctions, giving it a further boost in enhancing its wireless network. At the 2019 auction, Shaw added significant amounts of 600 MHz spectrum to the 700 MHz spectrum it is currently deploying.

 (Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Shares Technology Stocks

Tradeweb benefits from long-term tailwinds as bond markets become increasingly electronic

which tend to focus on a particular bond type or market segment, Tradeweb operates with a broad scope, offering trading in just about anything related to fixed income, including derivatives, as well as some equity exchange-traded funds. That said, Tradeweb’s interest-rate and credit segments are the heart of the company, making up 77% of its revenue in 2020, and are responsible for much of its growth.

Fixed-income markets globally are increasingly moving away from voice-negotiated trading toward electronic platforms because the liquidity and workflow enhancement of these electronic networks promise to lower implicit and explicit trading costs for increasingly expense-conscious firms. Tradeweb has been a major beneficiary of this trend, as its largest competitor is the implicit competition represented by traditional voice-based trading. As bond and derivative markets have shifted, Tradeweb has enjoyed significant tailwinds to its business and has steadily taken overall market share, with its interest-rate swap and U.S. investment-grade bond trading volumes in particular rising rapidly. With most fixed-income trading still primarily voice-based, this transition is still in its early days and Tradeweb has a long runway of growth ahead of it. While revenue growth is likely to decelerate somewhat from an impressive CAGR of 21% over the last three years, Tradeweb is expected to enjoy double-digit revenue growth in the mid- to low teens for years to come.

Financial Strength:

Tradeweb is in an excellent financial position, with more than $821 million in cash and investment securities at the end of September 2021 and no outstanding long-term debt. Tradeweb enjoys wide margins and strong cash flow, and there are no any real prospect of the company being placed under financial pressure in the foreseeable future, particularly given the countercyclical behavior its revenue generation exhibits. Tradeweb’s business has high upfront costs but requires little incremental capital to support growth once a trading platform has been developed, limiting the firm’s capital needs. With no debt to pay down, analysts expect that Tradeweb will continue to use its incoming cash flow to pay dividends, buy back shares, or invest back into its business, either in the form of internal development or external acquisitions.

Bulls Say:

  • Tradeweb benefits from the secular transition away from voice negotiations toward its electronic trading platforms in fixed-income markets, providing the firm with an easy path for continued market share and revenue growth. 
  • Tradeweb’s business features upfront costs and low variable expenses, creating an easy path for operating margin expansion as its revenue base grows. 
  • Tradeweb interest-rate swap and U.S. investment grade corporate bond trading platforms have enjoyed sharp market share gains in recent years, with the pandemic an additional catalyst to ongoing industry trends.

Company Profile:

Founded in 1998 and headquartered in New York City, Tradeweb Markets is a leading fixed-income trading platform. While it does offer electronic processing for some voice-negotiated trades, the company focuses primarily on providing electronic trading networks that connect broker/dealers, institutional clients, and retail customers. While the company offers trading in a wide variety of products, the bulk of its business is in U.S. and European government debt, mortgage-backed securities, interest-rate swaps, and U.S. and international corporate bonds. The firm also sells fixed-income trading and price data, primarily through a deal with Refinitiv’s Eikon service.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Dividend Stocks Shares

Supply Chain Issues Constrain Output, Hindering Retail Sales at Wide-Moat Polaris

that it stands to capitalize on its research and development, solid quality, operational excellence, and acquisition strategy. However, Polaris’ brands do not benefit from switching costs, and with peers innovating more quickly than in the past, it could jeopardize the firm’s ability to take price and share consistently, particularly in periods of inflated recalls or aggressive industry discounting.

Polaris had sacrificed some financial flexibility after its transformational acquisitions of TAP (2016) and Boat Holdings (2018), but debt-service metrics have been rapidly worked down via EBITDA expansion and cost-saving scale benefits (with debt/adjusted EBITDA set to average around 1.1 times over our forecast). As evidenced by solid ROICs (at 17%, including goodwill, in 2020), Polaris still has top-notch brand goodwill in its segments, supporting consumer interest and indicating the firm’s brand intangible asset is intact.

Financial Strength:

For Polaris exiting the recession, rising profits led to increases in company equity, which helped reduce debt/capital from 49% in December 2009 to 31% in December 2015. With the addition of leverage from the acquisition of TAP (which the company paid $655 million net of $115 million in tax benefits for in 2016), and the financing of Boat Holdings in 2018, Polaris ended 2019 with debt/adjusted EBITDA just above 2 times and debt/capital of 60%. However, robust demand and successful execution through COVID-19 has restored the metric to 1.5 times at the end of 2020, a very manageable level which the company should be able to maintain. Additionally, Polaris is poised to produce strong cumulative free cash flow to equity over the next five years’ worth around $3.2 billion.

Bulls Say:

  • Polaris has historically had a strong reputation for innovation, and new product lines and acquisitions have supported solid performance in both strong and difficult environments. 
  • Profit margins could tick up faster than we expect with faster than enterprise average volume growth from the sizable off-road and low-operating expense Boat Holdings business segments. 
  • Management remains focused on operating as a bestin-class manufacturer. With continutious improvement at existing facilities, the pursuit of excellence should support stable operating margin performance.

Company Profile:

Polaris designs and manufactures off-road vehicles, including all-terrain vehicles and side-by-side vehicles for recreational and utility purposes, snowmobiles, small vehicles, and on-road vehicles, including motorcycles, along with the related replacement parts, garments, and accessories. The firm entered the aftermarket parts segment in 2016, tying up with Transamerican Auto Parts and then tapped into boats through the acquisition on Boat Holdings in 2018, offering exposure to new segments of the outdoor lifestyle market. Polaris products retailed through 2,300 dealers in North America and through 1,400 international dealers as well as more than 30 subsidiaries and 90 distributors in more than 120 countries outside North America at the end of 2020.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Global stocks Shares

UPS’ Ground Volumes Face Tough Comps, but Yields Excellent and U.S. Margin Outlook Positive

FedEx and UPS are the major U.S. incumbents.UPS has also boosted its exposure to the asset-light third-party freight brokerage market, especially with its 2016 acquisition of truckload broker Coyote Logistics. 

Despite its unionized workforce and asset intensity, UPS produces operating margins well above competitors’, thanks in large part to its leading package density. In the United States, FedEx’s express and ground units together handled 14.4 million average parcels daily in its four fiscal quarters ended in November 2020, while UPS moved 21.1 million in calendar 2020. The disparity is greater in the U.S. ground market, where UPS moved on average 17.4 million parcels per day and FedEx ground averaged 11.4 million.  

Favorable e-commerce trends should remain a longer-term top-line tailwind for UPS’ U.S. ground and express package business. That said, growth won’t be costless; UPS is amid an operational transformation initiative aimed at mitigating the challenges of a rising mix of lower-margin business-to-consumer deliveries.

Amazon has been insourcing more of its own last-mile delivery needs at a rapid pace to supplement capacity access amid robust growth. This removes some incremental growth opportunities for UPS while creating risk that Amazon decides to take in house the shipments it currently sends though UPS–the retailer now makes up approximately 13% of UPS’ total revenue.

Financial Strength 

UPS’ balance sheet is reasonable and mostly healthy. It held $6.9 billion in cash and marketable securities compared with roughly $24.7 billion of total debt at year-end 2020. Debt/EBITDA leverage came in around 2.4 times in 2020, ignoring underfunded pensions, though the firm plans to pay off more than $2 billion in 2021, with help from cash generation and the $800 million UPS Freight sale. Leverage will likely finish 2021 at comfortably less than 2 times EBITDA. EBITDA/interest coverage for 2020 was a healthy 15 times.Share repurchases slowed modestly in 2018 and 2019 on account of heavy capital investment and were suspended in 2020 (into 2021) due to pandemic risk-mitigation efforts (including debt reduction).

Bulls Say 

  • UPS’ U.S. ground and express package delivery operations should enjoy healthy medium-term growth tailwinds rooted in highly favorable e-commerce trends. 
  • UPS’ massive package sortation footprint, immense air and delivery fleet, and global operations knit together a presence that’s extraordinarily difficult to replicate. 
  • On top of superior parcel density, UPS uses many of the same assets to handle both express and ground shipments, driving industry-leading operating margins.

Company Profile

As the world’s largest parcel delivery company, UPS manages a massive fleet of more than 500 planes and 100,000 vehicles, along with many hundreds of sorting facilities, to deliver an average of about 22 million packages per day to residences and businesses across the globe. UPS’ domestic U.S. package operations generate 61% of total revenue while international package makes up 20%. Less-than-truckload shipping, air and ocean freight forwarding, truckload brokerage, and contract logistics make up the remaining 19%.

 (Source: Morningstar)

General Advice Warning

Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Global stocks Shares

Wyndham’s Brands Continue to See Industry Leading Travel Recovery in the U.S.

a brand intangible asset and switching cost advantage. This view is supported by the company’s roughly 40% share of all U.S. economy and midscale branded hotels and the industry’s fourth-largest loyalty program by which encourages third-party hotel owners to join the platform. 

With essentially all of its nearly 9,000-plus hotels managed or franchised, Wyndham has an attractive recurring-fee business model with healthy returns on invested capital, as these asset-light relationships have low fixed costs and capital requirements. This asset-light model creates switching costs, given 10- to 20-year contracts that have meaningful cancellation costs for owners.

The 2018 acquisition of La Quinta as a strategically strong fit that supports Wyndham’s intangible-asset-driven narrow moat while enhancing long-term growth Cyclicality, illnesses like COVID-19, and overbuilding are the main risks for shareholders.

Wyndham Continues to Lead the Global Travel Rebound; More Demand Recovery Expected in 2022

Wyndham’s leisure, continued to lead the global travel recovery in the third quarter, with total revenue per available room reaching 98% of 2019 levels. U.S. and international revPAR increased to 107% and 75% of 2019 levels, respectively, up from 95% and 56% in the three months prior. Wyndham expects demand to sustain in the fourth quarter and now sees its 2021 revPAR growth at 43% versus 40% prior and compared with our forecast of 41%. 

Looking to 2022, we expect strong U.S. leisure demand to continue, aided by remote work flexibility, while international markets should experience a strong revPAR recovery because vaccination rates now allow for reduced travel restrictions. This view is supported by Wyndham’s Canadian revPAR improving to 90% of 2019 levels in the quarter, up from around 60%, as the country reduced its pandemic-related restrictions.

Financial Strength

Wyndham’s financial health remains in good shape, despite COVID-19 challenges. Wyndham exited 2020 with debt/adjusted EBITDA of 7.9 times, up from 3.5 times in 2019, as its asset-light business model allows the company to operate with low fixed costs and stable unit growth . But Wyndham did not sit still during the depths of the pandemic; rather, it took action to increase its liquidity profile, tapping its $750 million credit facility (which was repaid in full by Nov. 2020), cutting discretionary expenses, suspending buybacks, and reducing its quarterly dividend from $0.32 to $0.08 (which was increased back to $0.32 per share in Oct. 2021).Further, Wyndham saw positive cash flow generation in 2020, despite COVID-19 significantly reducing global travel demand in that year. While Wyndham’s adjusted EBIT/interest expense was negative 0.4 times in 2020.The company has only $64 million in debt maturing over the next three years. 

Bull Says

  • The La Quinta brand offers long-term growth opportunity to 2,000 units from 937 at the end of 2020, as it is not in 30% of the regions monitored by Smith Travel Research, despite strong third-party hotel operator renewal rates and strong revPAR share in existing market.
  • Wyndham’s economy/midscale select service presence operates at low operating costs, allowing its U.S. hotels to break even at 30% occupancy levels. 
  • The vast majority of Wyndham Hotels’ EBITDA is generated by service-for-fee operations, which are less capital-intensive than owned assets, leading to healthy ROICs.

Company Profile

As of Sept. 30, 2021, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts operates 803,000 rooms across 22 brands in the economy (around 51% of total U.S. rooms) and midscale (45%) segments. Super 8 is the largest brand, representing around 30% of all hotels, with Days Inn (18%) and La Quinta (10%) the next two largest brands. During the past several years, the company has expanded its extended stay/lifestyle brands (2% of total properties), which appeal to travelers seeking to experience the local culture of a given location. The United States represents 61% of total rooms. The company closed its La Quinta acquisition in the second quarter of 2018, adding around 90,000 rooms at the time the deal closed.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Shares Small Cap

Healius EBIT margin to expand to 13% by fiscal 2026 from 8% in pre-pandemic fiscal 2019

Healius is looking to new sources of strategic growth as well as dealing with prior under investment in infrastructure. There is much to fix in the business and we anticipate it to take a few years before significant margin improvements are made in the base pathology and imaging businesses. Healius selling its medical centers and Adora Fertility to focus on redirecting capital toward infrastructure upgrades and higher-margin Montserrat day hospitals is viewed as a positive strategic step.

Improvement in systems is key to improving efficiency. Pathology is an increasingly technologically driven service and the company intends to invest in a new laboratory information system, automation, and digitization through to fiscal 2024. In addition, the number of tests available is expanding. Increasing complexity of tests, such as veterinary and gene-based testing, is also resulting in average fee price increases. Pathology has a high fixed cost of operation and thus benefits from volume growth to drive lower cost-per-test outcomes.

Financial Strength

After divesting the medical centers and Adora Fertility businesses, Healius boasts significant balance sheet flexibility. While the sale proceeds were used predominantly to retire debt, Healius is also on track to return AUD 200 million to shareholders in the form of share buybacks in calendar 2021. At the end of fiscal 2021, Healius reported AUD 188 million in net debt, representing net debt/EBITDA of 0.7 times pre-AASB 16. Following Healius’ improvement program in the near term, it is expected to free cash flow prior to dividends to settle around 96% of net income at midcycle. The high cash conversion affords Healius to maintain dividend payout ratio of 60%, within Healius’ 50%-70% target range.

Bulls Say’s 

  • On top of the base level of COVID-19 testing that is likely to continue, Healius is well-positioned for underlying trends in preventive diagnostic treatments and outpatient care in its day hospitals. 
  • Simplifying the business via the sale of its medical centers and Adora Fertility is a positive indicator for the ultimate success of the company’s turnaround. 
  • Advances in technology and personalized medicine are increasing the number of complex and gene-based tests available to patients, which are typically higher margin.

Company Profile 

Healius is Australia’s second-largest pathology provider and third-largest diagnostic imaging provider. Pathology and imaging revenue is almost entirely earned via the public health Medicare system. Healius typically earns approximately 70% of revenue from pathology, 25% from diagnostic imaging and a small remainder from day hospitals.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Dividend Stocks Philosophy Technical Picks

CyrusOne Doing Well in Europe and With Hyperscalers, but It Doesn’t Have the Connectivity We Prefer

While the firm has seen major growth in interconnection revenue recently, as more enterprises are co-locating and connecting with their cloud providers, it does not operate any major Internet exchanges, and its properties are less network-dense than top competitors, so we think little differentiates its offering.

CyrusOne believes cloud companies favor outsourcing data centers because they can earn higher returns on capital in their core businesses and data center companies have building efficiency expertise and a cost advantage. CyrusOne is quickly expanding its portfolio to exploit the opportunity. It has nearly 3 times as much undeveloped land as developed and is now expanding outside the U.S. In 2017, it announced an operating partnership with GDS (to gain exposure to the Chinese market) and the acquisition of Zenium (two data centers each in Frankfurt and London). It intends to continue adding in Europe in the near term before focusing more on Asia.

Given the switching costs inherent in the industry and what is effectively CyrusOne’s first-mover advantage in procuring its existing tenants, it is expected that the firm will continue to grow and retain its customers. However, CyrusOne’s strategy to accumulate land and continue building could ultimately prove too aggressive, and it may not be able to fill all its future space on comparable terms, especially given cloud providers’ bargaining power (they have the size and financial ability to keep data centers in-house, and they provide the attraction for CyrusOne’s other tenants). CyrusOne is currently heavily investing, and it will ultimately realize a worthy payoff.

Financial Strength

CyrusOne’s financial position does not seem to be strong, but lack of near-term debt maturities and the ability to issue equity to fund expansion keep this from being a significant near-term concern. CyrusOne is one of the more highly leveraged data center companies we cover–nearly 6 times net debt/EBITDA at the end of 2020–but as a wholesale provider, it has long-term contracts in place with very financially strong tenants, so it should be able to easily meet its obligations, especially with no significant debt maturing before 2024. The firm has taken advantage of low interest rates and its investment-grade credit rating to reduce floating-rate debt to about one third of its total (down from about half at the end of 2019) and bring its weighted average cost of debt down to only about 2% at the end of 2020. CyrusOne has posted negative free cash flow (operating cash flow minus capital expenditures) each year since it went public in 2012, and to remain negative until 2024, as the company continues its aggressive expansion. 

Bulls Say

  • CyrusOne’s rapid expansion and increasing global presence makes it best positioned to capitalize on the huge demand for data centers brought on by cloud usage and a more data-dependent world. 
  • The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other innovations that increase the demand for data and connectivity leave us in the early innings of a data center renaissance. 
  • CyrusOne’s global presence makes it a more attractive landlord for customers that prefer consistent providers worldwide. Only a handful of companies can offer a similar proposition.

Company Profile

CyrusOne owns or operates 53 data centers, primarily in the U.S., that encompass more than 8 million net rentable square feet. It has a few properties in Europe and Asia. CyrusOne has both multi tenant and single-tenant data centers, and it is primarily a wholesale provider, offering large spaces on longer-term leases. The firm has about 1,000 total customers, and cloud service providers and other information technology firms make up about half its total revenue. Its largest customer, Microsoft, accounted for over 20% of 2020 revenue, and its top 10 customers generated about 50%. After cloud providers, companies in the financial services and energy industries contributed the biggest proportions of CyrusOne’s sales.

 (Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Shares Technology Stocks

Vivo Is Turning the Corner on Growth as Network Investments Bear Fruit

But the market faces several challenges, including stiff competition, a fragmented fixed-line industry, and general economic weakness that has also hurt the value of the Brazilian real. The plan to carve up Oi’s (Brazilian mobile network operator) wireless assets promises to significantly improve the industry’s structure, cutting the number of wireless players to three. Vivo also holds the largest, and fastest growing, fiber network footprint in Brazil, which should allow the firm to stabilize and ultimately grow broadband market share. While results will likely remain volatile, it is expected that Vivo will prosper as Brazilians continue to adopt wireless and fixed-line data services.

Vivo is the largest wireless carrier in Brazil by far, holding 34% of the wireless market, including 38% of the more lucrative postpaid business. The firm generated about 60% more wireless service revenue in 2020 than America Movil or TIM, its closest rivals. The three carriers have agreed to split up the wireless assets of Oi, the distant fourth-place operator that has been in bankruptcy protection. If successful, the transaction could remove a sub-scale player from the industry.

Financial Strength:

The fair value estimated is USD 11.00, which is mainly because revenue growth will average about 5% annually over the next five years.

Vivo’s financial health is excellent, as the firm has rarely taken on material debt. The net debt load increased to BRL 4.4 billion following the acquisition of GVT in 2015, but even this amounted to less than 0.5 times EBITDA. Cash flow has been used to allow leverage to drift lower since then. At the end of 2020, the firm held BRL 3.0 billion more in cash than it has debt outstanding, excluding capitalized operating leases. Even with the capitalized value of operating lease commitments, net debt stands at BRL 7.4, equal to 0.4 times EBITDA. Parent Telefonica has control of Vivo’s capital structure. While Telefonica’s balance sheet has improved markedly in recent years, the firm still carries a sizable debt load and faces growth challenges in its core European operations. The dividend is set to decline another 2% in 2021 based on 2020 earnings. These cuts have come despite ample free cash flow generation.

Bulls Say:

  • Vivo is the largest telecom carrier in Brazil and benefits from scale-based cost advantages in both the wireless and fixed-line markets. 
  • The firm is well-positioned to benefit as consumers demand increased wireless data capacity. Its network in Brazil is first-rate and its reputation for quality is second-to-none. 
  • Owning a high-quality fiber network enables Vivo to offer converged services throughout much of the country, while buttressing its wireless backhaul, improving network speeds and capacity.

Company Profile:

Telefonica Brasil, known as Vivo, is the largest wireless carrier in Brazil with nearly 80 million customers, equal to about 34% market share. The firm is strongest in the postpaid business, where it has 45 million customers, about 38% share of this market. It is the incumbent fixed-line telephone operator in Sao Paulo state and, following the acquisition of GVT, the owner of an extensive fiber network across the country. The firm provides Internet access to 6 million households on this network. Following its parent Telefonica’s footsteps, Vivo is cross-selling fixed-line and wireless services as a converged offering. The firm also sells pay-tv services to its fixed-line customers.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Dividend Stocks Expert Insights

Texas Instruments Has Secular Growth Opportunities in Industrial and Automotive

Texas Instruments has a leading share of the fragmented yet lucrative analog chip market. Analog chips are used to convert real-world signals, such as sound and temperature, into digital signals that can be processed. Since analog chips are neither particularly expensive, nor do they require cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, high-quality analog chipmakers tend to retain design wins for the life of the product, yet maintain healthy pricing and strong profitability on such sales over time.

Additionally, Texas Instruments’ size allows the firm to compete across a broader spectrum of industries, without its fortunes tied to a single customer or end market. Texas Instruments’ embedded chip business is a bit more exposed to the automotive and communications infrastructure end markets, but should also see healthy growth over the next few years. The “Internet of Things” is an interesting tailwind for TI, as the company’s chips could be key components in a massive array of new electronics devices with improved connectivity and processing power.

Financial Strength

Revenue in the September quarter was $4.64 billion, up 1% sequentially, up 22% year over year and above the midpoint of guidance of $4.40 billion-$4.76 billion as provided in July. Industrial chip demand was strongest, up 40% year over year, even though sales were down a mid-single-digit percentage sequentially. Automotive revenue was up 20% year over year and up more than 30% from pre-pandemic levels (fourth quarter of 2019). These near-term results still bode well for strong long-term tailwinds for TI, in terms of rising chip content per car and industrial device. Gross margin expanded 70 basis points sequentially to 67.9%, thanks to higher sales levels. In turn, operating margin expanded 130 basis points sequentially to 49.6%.

Texas Instruments is in a modest net debt position, with $6.6 billion of cash on hand versus $6.8 billion of debt as of December 2020. The company’s target is to pay out 100% of free cash flow (less debt repayments) to investors over time. The firm offers a $1.02 quarterly dividend that yields over 2%, and the company intends to issue 40%-60% of its 4-year trailing free cash flow out to investors via dividends. Meanwhile, Texas Instruments continues to make hefty share repurchases (over $2 billion per year in each of the last six years). Nonetheless, we do not believe Texas Instruments will adopt a balance sheet with reckless leverage anytime soon, as the industry is highly cyclical and firms with healthy cash cushions are often able to better handle the inevitable industry downturns.

Bulls Say’s 

  • Texas Instruments has a leading market share position in several chip segments, such as analog semiconductors and digital signal processors.
  • A key element of Texas Instruments’ success has come from its massive global sales staff, which allows the firm to cross-sell its extensive semiconductor product portfolio to existing customers.
  • Texas Instruments’ ability to manufacture analog parts on 300-millimeter silicon wafers has provided the company with robust gross margin expansion in recent years, and we anticipate further expansion in the years ahead.

Company Profile 

Dallas-based Texas Instruments generates about 95% of its revenue from semiconductors and the remainder from its well-known calculators. Texas Instruments is the world’s largest maker of analog chips, which are used to process real-world signals such as sound and power. Texas Instruments also has a leading market share position in digital signal processors, used in wireless communications, and microcontrollers used in a wide variety of electronics applications.

(Source: Morningstar)

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Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.

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Commodities Trading Ideas & Charts

Coal Prices Still a Tailwind for Whitehaven and Shares Remain Undervalued

Production in the September 2021 quarter was higher than in June, with managed saleable coal production up 22%. Narrabri was the sole driver, adding more than one million tonnes more of saleable coal in September from the woeful June quarter’s 0.3 million tonnes.

Coal prices soared in the last quarter, fuelled by strong demand with coal being sought globally for industrial and energy use by governments in COVID-19 economic stimulus projects. On the supply side, production from Australia has yet to recover from the bout of low prices in 2020. According to the Australian Government’s Resources and Energy Quarterly, thermal coal exports from Australia in fiscal 2021 were down about 7% from fiscal 2019 levels and are not expected to fully recover until fiscal 2023.

Financial Strength:

Whitehaven remains substantially undervalued with the market likely underestimating the near-term cash flow generation from this business given the buoyant coal prices.

Whitehaven went into fiscal 2022 with more than AUD 800 million of debt. However, with the buoyant coal prices, about AUD 100 million of debt a month is being repaid, and the company is expected to have net cash in the third quarter. fiscal 2022. Whitehaven favourably received Federal approval for the Vickery Extension Project in September, with production expected from around 2025.

Company Profile:

Whitehaven Coal is a large Australian independent thermal and semisoft metallurgical coal miner with several mines in the Gunnedah Basin, New South Wales. It also owns the large undeveloped Vickery and Winchester South deposits in New South Wales and Queensland respectively. Coal is railed to the port of Newcastle for export to Asian customers. Equity salable coal production expanded from 10 million tonnes in fiscal 2014 to about 15 million tonnes in fiscal 2021, largely due to Maules Creek. The Maules Creek and Narrabri mines should be the key driver of an expansion in equity coal production to approach 19 million tonnes from fiscal 2023. Development of the Vickery deposit could see approximately 8 million tonnes of additional equity production from around 2025.

(Source: Morningstar)

General Advice Warning

Any advice/ information provided is general in nature only and does not take into account the personal financial situation, objectives or needs of any particular person.