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Technology Stocks

Best Buy Co possess sound long-term strategy in spite of the fact that the future of retail is in flux

quick fulfillment across channels, and tech solutions to more problems than ever before. As a result, Best Buy’s “Building the New Blue” strategy continues to resonate, with the firm leveraging its physical footprint for fulfillment and post-sale services, emphasizing its differentiated service offering, and experimenting with newer store formats, as the “one size fits all” retail model across trade areas appears antiquated. 

With more than 40% of sales coming through digital channels in calendar 2020, the firm’s recent supply chain and e-commerce investments look prescient. Next-day delivery now covers 99% of U.S. zip codes, allowing the firm to compete on more level ground against e-commerce competitors, like wide-moat Amazon-as buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) volumes, at 40% of e-commerce sales, remain challenging for online-only stores to replicate.

Best Buy Health remains intriguing, with lower price elasticity and auspicious tailwinds from an insurer pay model. However, competition in the space remains rife, as a number of moaty firms with extensive healthcare aspirations (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) have invested heavily in the segment, as well.

Financial Strength:

The fair value of Best Buy has been increased by the analysts from $101 to $116 reflecting a longer horizon for excess returns, the time value of money, and the impact of high-single-digit anticipated comparable store sales growth through 2021. It also implies forward price/earnings of 12.1 times and an EV/2022 EBITDA of 5.4 times.

Best Buy’s financial strength is sound, with the firm maintaining a net cash position at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2022 and an investment-grade credit rating. With leverage well under 1 turn (0.4 debt/EBITDA at fiscal 2021 year-end), strong interest coverage (46 times at year-end 2021), and no meaningful maturities until 2028, very little financial risk is seen for the firm in the near to medium term. Access to a $1.25 billion credit facility adds a further degree of insulation.

Best Buy pays an attractive dividend, with a 2.6% yield at current market prices, and we anticipate 12.8% average growth over the next five years as the firm returns to its historical dividend payout ratio target (35%-45% of earnings).

Bulls Say:

  • With digital sales volumes projected to remain roughly double pre-COVID-19 levels, Best Buy should better compete for online volumes that it historically ceded to online-only competitors. 
  • Improving route densities should improve the margin profile of small parcel e-commerce sales, with 35% of store “hubs” now handling 70% of ship-from-store volume. 
  • The Best Buy Beta program should increase touchpoints with the firm’s best customers, increasing spending relative to pre-program behavior.

Company Profile:

With $47 billion in 2020 sales, Best Buy is the largest pure-play consumer electronics retailer in the U.S., with roughly 10% share of the aggregate market and nearly 40% share of offline sales, per our calculations, CTA industry, and Euromonitor data. The firm generates the bulk of its sales in-store, with mobile phones and tablets, computers, and appliances representing its three largest categories. Recent investments in e-commerce fulfillment, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have seen the U.S. e-commerce channel roughly double from prepandemic levels, with management estimating that it will represent a mid-30% mix of sales moving forward.

(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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Technology Stocks

TCS sees softer results than expected as it focuses on margin expansion

While in many regards there’s an uncanny resemblance between Tata and its India IT services’ competitors-Wipro and Infosys–such as in its offerings, offshore leverage mix (near 75%) or attrition rates (near 15%)-Tata stands out in regards to its scale. The company’s revenue is 1.6 times and 2.6 times greater than Infosys and Wipro, respectively, and this has its benefits.

While TCS’ best-in-industry attrition rate of 11.9% did not give the company, the extra boost needed to expand margins over this quarter as it is expected to lower in subsequent quarters and pay off in the future. It confirms that TCS is the best-of-breed Indian IT services firm. TCS’ status allows the company to attract and maintain India’s top talent, even amid fair competitors, such as moaty Infosys and Wipro.

It is estimated that TCS will grow at the compounded annual growth rate of 11%. This growth will be majorly driven by overall increased spend on IT services by enterprises as the IT landscape becomes more complex than ever and enterprises increasingly realize competitive edge in their products or services is distinguished foremost by their technological abilities.

Financial Strength:

Tata’s financial health is in very good shape. Tata had INR 356 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of March 2020 with zero debt, which has allowed Tata to feed significant payout to its shareholder base. Over fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2018, Tata’s average payout of its free cash flow to shareholders was 64%.

It is forecasted Tata’s dividend to grow to at least INR 53 per share in 2025 from INR 33 per share in 2020, which maintains the company’s 38% dividend payout ratio. It is expected that acquisitions over the next five years will continue to be moderate, at INR 350 million each year.

Analysts expect that Tata will fare in 2022 assuming revenue growth of nearly 18% as a result of a strong recovery from effects of COVID-19, followed by top-line growth of 11% in fiscal 2023 and long-term midcycle growth near 9% per year thereafter.

Bulls Say:

  • Tata should benefit from greater margin expansion than expected in our base case as more automated tech solutions decrease the variable costs associated with each incremental sale. 
  • Tata should profit from a wave of demand for more flexible IT infrastructures following the COVID-19 pandemic, as more companies seek to be prepared with the onset of similar events. 
  • As the European market becomes more comfortable with outsourcing their IT workloads offshore, Tata should expand their market share in the growing geo.

Company Profile:

Tata Consultancy Services is a leading global IT services provider, with nearly 450,000 employees. Based in Mumbai, the India IT services firm leverages its offshore outsourcing model to derive half of its revenue from North America. The company offers traditional IT services offerings: consulting, managed services, and cloud infrastructure services as well as business process outsourcing as a service, or BPaaS.

(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

ADP migrating to new HCM platform to increase its profitability and retention

As of fiscal 2021, ADP has successfully migrated most of its small and midsize clients to its strategic platforms and will be migrating enterprise clients to its new HCM platform over the coming decade, as well rolling out its new underlying payroll and tax engines. While we expect platform migrations to ultimately result in higher retention and profitability, the forced migrations will likely create a catalyst for enterprise clients to reassess providers, temporarily hindering both metrics.

ADP faces fierce competitive pressure from nimble upstarts, legacy peers, accounting software and ERP providers. We expect new solutions will allow ADP to compete more aggressively on functionality, reduce software maintenance costs and provide scope for greater operating leverage, supporting margin uplift. However, we anticipate increasing competitive pressure will result in greater pricing pressure and force ADP to sustain high levels of investment to ensure the functionality of its product offering remains competitive. This investment is in addition to the continued investment in sales and implementation required to roll out new solutions and migrate clients. As such, we expect ADP’s price increases will be limited to about 0.5% a year, in line with recent growth but below long-term averages, limiting margin expansion to about two percentage points over the next five years.

We expect increased regulatory complexity, tight labor markets and growing adoption of hybrid work will underpin strong demand for ADP’s solutions supporting greater share of wallet and modest market share gains in the small and midsize market. This includes greater penetration of the outsourced payroll and HR model. However, we expect forced platform migrations to hamper ADP’s enterprise market share over the next decade before gradually recovering as the new platform is adopted in the market. In aggregate, we expect ADP’s overall market share to remain broadly flat for the five years to fiscal 2026 before gradual growth as platform migrations complete.

Financial Strength

ADP is in a strong financial position. At the end of fiscal 2021, ADP’s balance sheet was modestly geared with net debt/EBITDA of 0.1. During fiscal 2021, ADP almost tripled long-term debt to USD 3 billion to fund share repurchases and optimise its capital structure with low cost debt. We expect ADP’s annual operating income can comfortably cover annual interest expense on its debt at least 60 times over our forecast period. ADP also has access to short term funding facilities to meet client’s obligations rather than liquidating available for sale securities. ADP has returned over USD 18 billion of capital to shareholders during the eight years to fiscal 2021 through dividends and share repurchases. We expect ADP’s strong free cash flow generation will support a dividend payout ratio of about 60% over our forecast period. The balance sheet is robust, and ADP has ample scope to increase leverage to execute on bolt on acquisitions. 

Bulls Say 

  • ADP benefits from high client switching costs, a scale based cost advantage, intangible brand assets and a powerful referral network.
  • Despite facing fierce competitive pressures and undergoing forced platform migrations, ADP has retained high revenue retention and improved operating margins over the past decade.
  • ADP has a strong track record of returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

Company Profile

Automatic Data Processing, or ADP, is a provider of payroll and human capital management, or HCM, solutions servicing the full scope of businesses from micro to global enterprises. ADP was established in 1949 and serves over 920,000 clients primarily in the United States. ADP’s employer services segment offers payroll, HCM solutions, HR outsourcing, insurance and retirement services. The smaller but faster-growing PEO segment provides HR outsourcing solutions to small and midsize businesses through a co-employment model.

 (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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Shares Small Cap

Wesfarmers’ Offer for API Still Appears the Most Likely

Businesswoman pointing at diagram in her hands when explaining marketing trends to her team during online meeting

It then extended the brand to the Priceline Pharmacy franchise network as Australia prevents community pharmacies having corporate ownership. Priceline contributes around one quarter of API’s revenue but over 40% of gross profit. While the conversion of stores to include a pharmacy is beneficial for distribution volumes, these stores dilute margin due to more PBS sales, and consequently have contributed to a decline in operating margin since fiscal 2017. Offsetting this is often higher foot traffic and sales. Nonetheless, as guided by management, this conversion process has played out and we expect no margin drag going forward.

Priceline’s key growth strategies are increasing its contribution from online sales and leveraging its loyalty scheme, the Sister Club. However, we have concerns regarding these endeavours. Market statistics suggest the Australian health and beauty retail market is growing at a mid-single-digit pace, which provides an attractive opportunity for API at first blush.

Company’s Future Outlook

API is in a strong financial position with net debt/adjusted EBITDA of 0.2 times at fiscal 2020. We forecast the company to hold a net cash position through fiscal 2025 and comfortably afford a 70% dividend payout ratio and continue to expand its retail footprint. We project API to open roughly 10 net new Priceline stores and five net Clear Skincare clinics per year. We forecast a total of AUD 225 million in capital expenditures over the next five years, including AUD 50 million for a new distribution centre in New South Wales, and also factor in the final AUD 32.9 million payment for Clear Skincare still outstanding. Working capital management has improved over a number of years, effectively having the net investment in working capital to 4.4% of sales over the five years to fiscal 2020. We forecast investment to be roughly maintained at an average of 4.7% of sales.

Bulls Say’s

  • The Priceline and Clear Skincare offerings are relatively high-margin segments and pitched in the beauty and personal-care market which is growing at a mid-single-digit pace.
  • API’s Corporate Priceline stores offers higher margin and more product opportunity than the purely franchise business model of peers Sigma and EBOS.
  • Management has demonstrated that it is opportunistic and having deleveraged the balance sheet, is looking to invest for growth. Value-additive acquisitions could present upside to our fair value estimate.

Company Profile 

Australian Pharmaceutical Industries, or API, is a major Australian pharmaceutical wholesaler and distributor. In addition, it is the franchisor of the Priceline Pharmacy network and directly owns and operates stand-alone Priceline stores which sell personal care and beauty products. In an effort to diversify away from the highly regulated low growth and low margin pharma distribution business which contributes 74% of revenue, API is actively growing a consumer brands portfolio and also acquired Clear Skincare, a skin treatment chain. These two emerging businesses each contribute approximately 1% of revenue but are higher margin than the core distribution segment.

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

Coach’s Enduring Popularity Provides Stability as Tapestry Works Through Its Acceleration Program

Due to the pandemic, all three of Tapestry’s brands suffered sales and operating profit declines in parts of the last two fiscal years, but results have been improving rapidly as it implements its three-year Acceleration Program strategy to cut costs and improve margins. 

Coach struggled with excessive distribution and competition in the past, but we think Tapestry has turned it around through store closures, restrictions on discounting, and increased e-commerce, which has grown by triple-digit percentages during the pandemic. Further, we expect growth in complementary categories like footwear and fashion. China to be a key growth region for Coach as Chinese consumers will compose 46% of the worldwide luxury goods spending in 2025, according to Bain & Company. We forecast Coach’s greater China sales will increase to nearly $1.5 billion in fiscal 2031 (24% of sales) from $931 million in fiscal 2021 (22% of sales). 

The acquisitions of Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman don’t contribute to Tapestry’s moat. Spade was a natural fit for Coach as both generate most of their sales from Asia-sourced handbags. However, Spade merchandise is priced lower than Coach and lacks its international reach. Still, we think Spade can grow in both North America and Asia through store openings and new products, such as shoes (currently licensed).As for Stuart Weitzman, while its women’s shoes achieve luxury price points, we view it as a niche brand (less than $300 million in fiscal 2021 sales) with fashion risk. Stuart Weitzman is struggling so much that Tapestry recently wrote off all the goodwill and intangibles related to its purchase and is downsizing its store base.

Financial Strength

As of the end of June 2021, Tapestry was in a net cash position, with total debt of $1.6 billion and $2 billion in cash and equivalents. Some (33.5% as of the end of fiscal 2021) of the cash is held outside of the U.S. but may be repatriated. Tapestry’s earliest debt maturity occurs in 2022, when $400 million in 3.0% notes come due. Tapestry suspended share repurchases and dividends to maintain liquidity during the pandemic but has resumed both in fiscal 2022. We forecast the firm will generate more than $5.3 billion in free cash flow to equity over the next five years, most of which will be returned to shareholders. Tapestry has limited the amount of cash returned to shareholders since 2015 due to the acquisitions of Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade and debt covenants. However, Tapestry approved a new $1.0 billion buyback program in May 2019, a clear signal it will resume significant buybacks. Further, we forecast Tapestry will pay out roughly 38% of earnings over the next 10 years as dividends. Finally, we expect Tapestry’s capital expenditures will be relatively high on store openings, remodels, and e-commerce investments. 

Bulls Say

  • Coach is one of the share leaders in the profitable categories of handbags and other leather goods. Coach bags achieve better pricing than many others, allowing for gross margins around 70%. 
  • Coach is a popular brand among Chinese consumers and has room for growth. Bain & Company estimates these consumers will compose 46% of worldwide luxury good spending in 2025, up from 33% in 2018. 
  • Tapestry unveiled a new strategic plan in August 2020 called the Acceleration Program to reduce operating expenses by about 10%, enhance e-commerce, and close low-performing stores.

Company Profile

Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman are the fashion and accessory brands that comprise Tapestry. The firm’s products are sold through about 1,400 company-operated stores, wholesale channels, and e-commerce in North America (62% of fiscal 2021 sales), Europe, Asia (33% of fiscal 2021 sales), and elsewhere. Coach (74% of fiscal 2021 sales) is best known for affordable luxury leather products. Kate Spade (21% of fiscal 2021 sales) is known for colorful patterns and graphics. Women’s handbags and accessories produced 70% of Tapestry’s sales in fiscal 2021. Stuart Weitzman, Tapestry’s smallest brand, generates nearly all (99%) of its revenue from women’s footwear.

 (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

Increasing Our Fair Value Estimate for LPL Financial to $161

Advisors on LPL’s platform serve approximately 4% of wealth management assets in the United States. Through its ClientWorks portal, the company offers a one-stop solution for advisors that incorporates billing, account analytics, research, trading, and relationship-management tools. LPL aims to offer services to all advisors regardless of business model.

Production retention, which measures the percentage of advisor-generated revenue maintained from the previous year, has recently been over 95%. Recently, LPL has been making moves to improve its value proposition to advisors, with the rollout of a new online portal and the purchase, and subsequent integration, of Advisory World. Acquisitions of advisor networks have also been a source of growth, with the 2017 acquisition of NPH for $325 million and the wealth management business of Waddell & Reed in 2021 for $300 million showing that LPL is willing and able to buy growth outright when it makes sense to do so. 

Financial Strength

LPL’s financial strength is adequate. At the end of 2020, the company had $2.3 billion of long-term debt. With a debt/equity ratio of about 1.8 times, the company is fairly leveraged. The company also has about $1.9 billion of goodwill and intangibles on its balance sheet, so has no tangible equity. The bulk of its debt, about $1.4 billion, will come due in 2024, with the rest due the following year. With a debt/adjusted EBITDA ratio of around 2.5 times, LPL should have sufficient cash to meet these financial obligations.LPL has paid a consistent $0.25 quarterly dividend since first-quarter 2015. 

Our fair value estimate correlates to a price/forward earnings multiple of 22 times and an enterprise value/EBITDA multiple of 12.5 times. Positive adjustments to our fair value estimate include $6.50 from earnings since our previous valuation update, $20.50 from recent growth in client assets and higher projected growth in client assets, $10.50 from increasing the growth rate and assumed returns on capital after year 10 in our model, and $3.50 of miscellaneous adjustments.

Bulls Say’s

  • LPL has been able to weather the storm of a changing industry, and expanding margins suggest that its business model remains intact.
  • The company has been moving toward more recurring revenue, such as advisory fees and revenue from client cash balances, which the market may reward.
  • LPL has the resources to recruit aggressively, and improvements in feedback receptiveness should help it maintain strong retention rates.

Company Profile 

LPL Financial Holdings is an independent broker/dealer that provides a platform of proprietary technology, brokerage, and investment advisory services to financial advisors and institutions. The company also provides financial advisors licensed with insurance companies customized clearing services, advisory platforms, and technology solutions. LPL provides a range of services through its subsidiaries. Private Trust supplies trust administration, investment management oversight, and custodial services for estates and families; Independent Advisers Group offers investment advisory solutions to insurance companies; and LPL Insurance Associates operates as a brokerage general agency that offers life, long-term care, and disability insurance sales and services.

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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Shares Technology Stocks

Twitter to Sell MoPub for $1.05 Billion; Maintaining FVE; Shares Fairly Valued

According to the firm, MoPub generated $188 million in revenue in 2020 (5% of total revenue), which makes this sale equivalent to 5.3 times revenue. Twitter is trading at more than 7 times our 2022 revenue estimate, excluding MoPub.

Company’s Future Outlook

Twitter said it plans to focus more on providing advertising opportunities for direct response marketers in addition to small- and medium-sized businesses. We think that this deal was also partially driven by questions surrounding how Apple’s IDFA and user privacy policies will impact in-app advertising. However, Twitter had also stated that some of its app ad offerings were already integrated with Apple’s SKAdNetwork that helps track and measure ads. Without MoPub, we expect slightly lower top-line growth and less margin expansion, both of which will not have a material effect on our $58 fair value estimate for the firm.

Twitter’s initial investment in MoPub  when it purchased the company in 2013 for only $350 million. However, cash received from this transaction likely will be offset by the $809.5 million charge that Twitter will recognize in the third quarter 2021 as the firm settled a case involving some of its investors who accused the firm of misleading them by providing lofty expectations of user count and engagement at an analyst day event in 2014. The event took place when Dick Costolo was at the helm at Twitter.

Company Profile 

Twitter is an open distribution platform for and a conversational platform around short-form text (a maximum of 280 characters), image, and video content. Its users can create different social networks based on their interests, thereby creating an interest graph. Many prominent celebrities and public figures have Twitter accounts. Twitter generates revenue from advertising (90%) and licensing the user data that it compiles (10%).

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

Supermarket Food Inflation Likely To Stage a Comeback in Fiscal 2022

We anticipate Coles and Woolworths to report food price deflation continued in the September quarter of 2021. However, we expect prices to reflate in the December quarter with food inflation to average 1.5% in fiscal 2022. We forecast higher prices to support the operating margins of supermarket operators, offsetting weak sales growth post-lockdowns. 

Morningstar’s proprietary Little Shopping Basket indicates prices were flat at Coles and declined by 1% at Woolworths in the September quarter 2021 versus the prior corresponding period against a backdrop of rising upstream costs, including cost pressures experienced by manufacturers of consumer-packaged goods, or CPGs.

Heading into the upcoming release of first-quarter fiscal 2022 sales figures in late October, we maintain our fair value estimates of AUD 24.00 and AUD 13.20 per share for narrow moat Woolworths and no-moat Coles, respectively. 

Although we estimate Woolworths dropped prices by more than Coles in the September quarter, our shopping basket was still cheaper at Coles than at Woolworths. Our average Coles basket was priced at a 2% discount to the average Woolworths basket consisting of identical items, suggesting Coles competed more aggressively on price.

 Large global suppliers have been sounding the alarm regarding inflationary pressures within their supply chains. 

Nonetheless, we don’t anticipate rising input costs to materially impact profit margins at Coles and Woolworth in fiscal 2022, as their suppliers are likely to partially internalise any inflation, and we expect the supermarkets to successfully pass on higher cost of goods sold to consumers in the form of low-single-digit price rises. Coles and Woolworths enjoy dominating positions within the Australian grocery retailing sector and can leverage buying power in their price negotiations with suppliers. Increasing the level of private label penetration also offers supermarkets the option to better manage the price of their baskets.

From fiscal 2024, we expect sales growth of the Australian food retailing industry to recover to a sustainable rate of about 4% annually, underpinned by food price inflation of 2.5% and population growth of around 1.5%. 

We also track a discount grocery basket, comparing private label product pricing at Woolworths, Coles, and Aldi. Our discount basket indicates prices were roughly the same at Woolworths and Aldi in the September quarter 2021, while the average private label product at Coles was priced at around a mid-single-digit premium, after adjusting for packaging sizes. 

We infer from our baskets differences in pricing strategies between the two majors. We conclude Woolworths aims to match Aldi on private label pricing, while Coles’ comparable private label range is less competitively priced. Rather, Coles seems to be focusing on matching Woolworths on its branded product range. 

However, we caution the readthrough from our baskets has its limitations due their small sample sizes. Morningstar’s Little Shopping Basket and our discount grocery basket each track only a small subset of products across the vast ranges stocked by Australian supermarket retailers. Also, over time periods shorter than a full year promotional cycle, differences in promotional schedules impact results.

 (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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Marvell taking aim at cloud, 5G and automotive markets

Between data processing units, or DPUs, optical interconnect, and ethernet solutions, Marvell has one of the broadest networking silicon portfolios in the world, and we think it is primed to steal market share from incumbent Broadcom with bleeding-edge technology.

Marvell has exited its low-margin legacy markets of consumer hard disk drives and Wi-Fi chipsets to focus on its networking portfolio and used the acquisitions of Cavium, Avera, Aquantia, Inphi, and Innovium to expand out of its enterprise market niche into the rapidly growing data center and 5G markets.

Marvell’s recent financial history has been choppy as a result of CEO Matt Murphy’s aggressive overhaul of the business’ focus. Trends toward disaggregated networks and merchant silicon, as well as 5G and data center buildouts, would act as secular tailwinds for Marvell.

Financial Strength:

As of May 1, 2021, the firm carried $522 million in cash and $4.7 billion in total debt—largely taken on to acquire Inphi. Marvell is expected to exit fiscal 2022 with a gross debt/adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.4 times, above its target of 2 times. As per the analysts, Marvell is expected to stay leveraged but to pay down debt as it matures.

The firm’s free cash flow generation is expected to ramp up toward $2 billion a year by fiscal 2026, up from just over $700 million in fiscal 2021, as it exacts material operating leverage with top-line growth.

The firm would be prudent to postpone any M&A until it returns below its debt/EBITDA target, following $11 billion spent so far in fiscal 2022 on Inphi and Innovium.

Bulls Say:

  • Marvell has best-of-breed data processing units and optical interconnect products that should allow it to benefit from the rapidly growing cloud and 5G markets.
  • We think the combination of Inphi and Innovium under the Marvell umbrella could give it a technological advantage to Broadcom in high-performance networking.
  • We expect Marvell to exact significant operating leverage as it incorporates acquisitions and adds volume to the top line.

Company Profile:

Marvell Technology is a leading fabless chipmaker focused on networking and storage applications. Marvell serves the data center, carrier, enterprise, automotive, and consumer end markets with processors, optical

interconnections, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and merchant silicon for ethernet applications. The firm is an active acquirer, with five large acquisitions since 2017 helping it pivot out of legacy consumer applications to focus on the cloud and 5G markets.

(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

Strong Fiscal 2021 Trends Persist Into First-Quarter Fiscal 2022

While dominating the fragmented Australian market, and being a large global player in commodity and environmental testing, it is trumped by the majors, Bureau Veritas, SGS, and Intertek in nondestructive testing and inspection. Services include laboratory testing for the mineral, coal, environmental, food, and pharmaceutical segments.

Excellent reputation, technical capabilities, a global network, and established relationships with global clients are key advantages over often fragmented competitors.ALS’ global network of more than 350 laboratories provides a geographically diverse revenue base: 37% Asia-Pacific, 36% Americas, 24% EMENA, and the balance Africa. This global network reduces region reliance and gives it the capability to leverage experience across borders and serve an international client base.

Financial Strength

ALS is in only reasonable financial health. At the end of fiscal 2015, acquisitions and capital expenditure had pushed net debt to AUD 776 million and gearing (net debt/equity) to 63%. A subsequent AUD 325 million capital raising meant gearing fell to near 40% and net debt/EBITDA from 2.6 times to a manageable 2.0 times. Incremental acquisitions in the life sciences segment’s EBITDA had been accompanied by a sharp rise in group net debt. This has since been paid down to AUD 675 million at end-March 2021. Somewhat elevated leverage (ND/ND+E) of 36% reflects ongoing incremental acquisitions in the life sciences segment, albeit within the limits of ALS’ sub-45% target ratio. Fiscal 2021 net debt/EBITDA of 1.6 is reasonable.

Bulls Say’s

  • ALS has diversified the earnings base to mitigate exposure to highly cyclical commodity markets. Expansion into food and pharma testing, as well as inspection and certification markets, should provide growth despite a significant slowdown in minerals testing.
  • Large clients are unlikely to move away on price alone, with quality and skills essential requirements.
  • Exposure to mineral and coal testing could once again provide earnings growth if the global economy’s appetite for commodities increases.

Company Profile 

Founded in the 1880s and listing on the ASX in 1952, ALS operates three divisions: commodities, life sciences, and industrial. ALS commodities traditionally generated the majority of underlying earnings, providing geochemistry, metallurgy, inspection and mine site services for the global mining industry. Expansion into environmental, pharmaceutical and food testing areas and commodity price weakness have lessened earnings exposure to commodities.

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.