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Dividend Stocks Shares Technical Picks

Domino’s Pizza Enterprises- Outlook

The stock suits investors seeking exposure to the food and beverage sector. Australia can still increase its store base by around 40% over the next decade. European growth is much more substantial, with potential to substantially increase the existing store base to around 2,850 outlets during the next decade. In its capacity as a master franchisee, Domino’s capital requirements are limited, which means that royalty payments should continue to be paid as dividends.

Key Considerations

  • Domino’s was an early adopter of digital. By migrating orders online, the company has been able to save costs, establish a customer database, and up-sell to customers.
  • Japan and Europe are underpenetrated markets. Replicating its success in Australia abroad presents a significant growth opportunity.
  • Short-term drivers can materially affect year-to-year earnings, including currency movements, raw material input costs, and changes to foreign government policies related to sales taxes and wages.
  • Domino’s is a highly visible brand based on a successful U.S. business model. Across Domino’s three regions, sales have increase at a CAGR of 14% over the past four years. We expect annual growth rates to continue in the low teens over the next five years.
  • The pizza market in Europe is highly fragmented, presenting significant opportunity for Domino’s to take market share with an attractive value proposition, increased convenience to the customer, and a differentiated product offering.
  • The company’s large network size has positive implications for discounted supplier arrangements.
  • There is a high level of competition, stemming from independent pizza stores and other quick-service restaurants.
  • The company might evaluate its target markets in new countries incorrectly, given the geographical distance and cultural variances.
  • The low-price business model may still be affected by slowing retail and discretionary spending.

 (Source: Morningstar)

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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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Commodities Trading Ideas & Charts

Cabot is the only natural gas producer to earn a narrow moat rating

Meats believes that the firm’s assets are ideally located in the northeast portion of the play fairway, which mainly yields dry gas with very little oil condensate or natural gas liquids content in the production stream. This geographic advantage not only allows the firm to keep costs low but also maintain very high daily production rates. These advantages have enabled the firm to be among the lowest-cost natural gas producers in the Appalachia region, and this competitive advantage enables it to consistently deliver very strong returns on invested capital. Meats do advise caution, however. The company has drilling opportunities in the Lower and Upper Marcellus. The opportunities in the Lower Marcellus are far more lucrative but are expected to last until the late 2020s. This means that the firm will eventually pivot to opportunities in the Upper Marcellus that are typically up to 30% less productive. Meats asserts that when the firm does pivot to the Upper Marcellus, it will be able to reuse existing roads and pad sites, and as there are no well configuration constraints in this undeveloped interval, it could enhance returns by drilling longer laterals. As a result, we expect well costs to decrease enough to offset the dip in flow rates, leaving potential returns unchanged.

Cabot is the only natural gas producer to earn a narrow moat rating. The main reason for this rating is the firm’s low operating and development costs in the Marcellus Shale, which puts Cabot at the lower end of the U.S. natural gas cost curve.

ESG is an important factor to consider when looking at exploration and production companies. This is due to the downside risk ESG factors possess for such companies due to reputational and regulatory risks. Meats does not think that these issues threaten the company’s economic moat due to the 5%-10% spread between projected returns and Cabot’s cost of capital that provides a comfortable margin of safety. The most significant ESG exposure for Cabot is greenhouse gas emissions. While greenhouse gas emissions are unavoidable for oil and natural gas producers, Cabot has taken steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensity in 2020 while also reporting zero flaring in the year. It is also worth noting that while consumers get more skeptical of fossil fuels, much of this aversion is directed toward coal. Natural gas, on the other hand, is less carbon-intense than coal but does not have the intermittency issues that plague wind and solar generators.

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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Dividend Stocks Technical Picks

Rio Tinto Ltd- Shares Remain Overvalued

Aluminium should constitute a substantially larger share, given the USD 40 billion that Rio Tinto controversially paid for Alcan in 2007, but Rio overpaid. Rio Tinto and BHP have the lowest operating costs of the iron ore players, but despite this being the bulk of company earnings; adjusted excess returns were destroyed by procyclical overinvestment during the China boom.

Key Investment Consideration

  • Rio Tinto is only mildly diversified. Iron ore generates most of the company’s value, and aluminium and copper nearly all of the rest. It’s highly leveraged to China’s steel demand.
  • Rio Tinto’s procyclical capital investment was poorly timed. The invested capital base grew from USD 16 billion in 2005 to USD 105 billion in 2015, after adding back write-offs. Subsequent cost deflation, and lower commodity prices, exposed the folly.
  • Rio overpaid for Alcan and the large acquisition was the first in a number of serious missteps. However, current management is rebuild Rio’s reputation and is favouring cash returns to shareholders.
  • As a commodity producer, Rio Tinto is a price-taker. The lack of pricing power is aggravated by the cyclical nature of commodity prices. Rio Tinto lacks a moat, given that the bloated invested capital base doesn’t permit returns in excess of the cost of capital. The firm’s assets are large, however, and despite being overcapitalised, generally have low operating costs.
  • Rio Tinto is one of the direct beneficiaries of China’s increasing appetite for natural resources. ORio’s cash flow base is somewhat diversified, and is less susceptible to the vagaries of the market than single-commodity producers.
  • The company’s operations are well run and are generally large-scale, low-operating-cost assets. OCapital allocation is likely to be significantly improved following the China boom. Competition for inputs will reduce substantially, while the reduction in cash flow available for investment will mean only the best projects are approved.
  • Mining is seen as a sin activity, and governments may use it as a source of tax revenue to plug shaky budgets.
  • The global economy is cooling. Demand for natural resources in China has peaked, and commodity markets are starting a painful structural decline.
  • Rio Tinto is being viewed as a high-yielding income stock, but resource companies are notoriously unreliable dividend-payers, with cyclical commodity prices often bringing attractive yields undone. ORio Tinto’s investment track record through the boom was woeful. The company paid too much for acquisitions and expanded when it was expensive, permanently diluting returns.

 (Source: Morningstar)

Disclaimer

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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Dividend Stocks

Lumen Technologies The Best Dividend Payer

“We think the market has overly punished Lumen’s stock and is overlooking the substantial free cash flow generation and margin expansion opportunities.

Lumen Technologies owns an extensive communications network of over 450,000 route miles of terrestrial and subsea fiber in over 60 countries and 900,000 route miles of copper. Three fourths of Lumen’s revenue is from business customers; the remaining fourth is from the consumer business. Both businesses have posted declining sales in recent years, and we expect that trend to continue.

Prices in the enterprise market are deflationary, as technological advances make data transport cheaper and allow software-defined solutions that cannibalize higher-revenue services. Lumen’s copper-based consumer business offers lower quality than cable alternatives, and it has been bleeding customers. We expect both trends to moderate but not cease, as the firm is upgrading its consumers to better speeds and legacy enterprise technologies will gradually make up a lower portion of sales.

“For income investors, the biggest knock on Lumen is the 54% dividend cut the company made in 2019, though Morningstar analysts believe the current dividend is secure: “We project free cash flow to remain fairly steady throughout our five-year forecast and cover the dividend by more than 2.5 times, on average…given the coverage we forecast, we don’t expect another cut in the near term.”

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

Dell Posts Strong First Quarter and Capitalizes on Digitalization-Induced Demand

We are encouraged by Dell’s broad-based expanding addressable markets, as the company continues to benefit from accelerated trends toward digitalization, remote working and learning environments, and cloud-based infrastructure. We believe the secular trends of organizations accelerating the adoption of digitalization, cloud-based infrastructure, and facilitating remote working and learning environments, are aligned with Dell’s core capabilities, and the company is executing well. With shares trading in the mid- to high $90 area, we continue to view shares as slightly overvalued.

First-quarter revenue grew 12% year over year to $24.5 billion, led by CSG’s 20% year-over-year revenue increase to $13.3 billion. CSG continues to heavily benefit from high demand for computers to enable remote learning and work. CSG’s consumer business contributed significantly to the group’s success, up 42% year over year, capitalizing on ecommerce and digital entertainment accelerations. ISG revenue grew 5% year over year to $7.9 billion as demand for hybrid cloud solutions continues to increase. ISG’s growth was led by server’s revenue, up 9% year over year. VMware revenue increased 9% annually to $3 billion.

Guidance for the second quarter includes sequential revenue growth that is expected to be less than the historical 6% increase and a low- to mid-single-digit sequential decline in adjusted operating income as costs return after pandemic-related savings.

Dell continues to place emphasis on deleveraging its balance sheet, committing to a target of at least $16 billion in debt reduction for the full year. Management remains confident that the completion of VMware’s spin-off in the fourth quarter will help the company achieve an investment grade rating.

Dell Technologies Company Profile

Dell Technologies, born from Dell’s 2016 acquisition of EMC, is a leading provider of servers and storage products through its ISG segment; PCs, monitors, and peripherals via its CSG division; and virtualization software through VMware. Its brands include Dell, Dell EMC, VMware (expected to be spun off toward the end of 2021), Boomi (expected to be sold by the end of 2021), Secure works, and Virtustream. The company focuses on supplementing its traditional mainstream servers and PCs with hardware and software products for hybrid-cloud environments. The Texas-based company employs around 158,000 people and sells globally.

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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Small Cap

O’Reilly Starts 2021 Strong as Sales and Profitability Move Sharply Higher, but Shares Seem Rich

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We suspect near-term volatility will remain high (stemming from the pandemic and lapping increasingly difficult comparable growth through 2021), but our long-term targets are still mid-single-digit top-line growth and roughly 20% adjusted operating margins on average over the next 10 years. In our view, O’Reilly remains the strongest of the auto-parts retailers we cover, but we suggest investors await an entry point that affords more of a margin of safety.

Management updated its 2021 guidance, now calling for $24.75-$24.95 in diluted EPS based on a 19.9%-20.4% operating margin (previously $22.70-$22.90 and 19.0%-19.5%, respectively). The exceptional start to 2021 will lead our prior targets higher (from 19.4% and $23.67, respectively), likely toward the top end of each range. Weather and stimulus effects contributed to the brisk sales, as a cold winter spurred vehicle repair needs and customers found themselves with more funds that could be directed toward keeping their cars and trucks on the road and maintained. With vehicle miles driven recovering but still around 10% lower than year-ago marks (as of February, the latest data available from the Federal Highway Administration), we suspect demand will remain robust. We are encouraged that O’Reilly saw strength in its do-ityourself and professional segments; although the former sector drove growth for much of 2020, we expect the latter to maintain momentum as rising vaccination rates lead more Americans who had the option of working from home back to the office. Although this creates some margin pressure (the DIY segment is more lucrative), cost leverage should be a powerful offset, and the professional sector should remain the industry’s long-term growth engine.

Capital Allocation

O’Reilly’s balance sheet remains hearty despite its footprint growth, with modest near-term debt maturities and an appropriate level of indebtedness. Management targets adjusted debt to be 2.5 times adjusted EBITDAR, with the company’s strong performance leading O’Reilly to undershoot that level for the past several years (most recently 2020, when it posted a 1.9 mark). Under CEO Greg Johnson (and his predecessor, Gregory Henslee, who retired in 2018), leadership has prudently prioritized maintaining investment-grade credit ratings, helping to ensure flexibility and continued attractive inventory financing terms.

The firm’s investment approach is noteworthy, as O’Reilly has done well to invest in expanding its store network (and associated cost leverage) while maintaining a top notch distribution infrastructure that is essential to providing industry-leading service levels. This high standard of part availability draws professional and DIY customers and is difficult for rivals to replicate. The company’s recent acquisition of Mayasa Auto Parts in Mexico should mark the start of increasing investments in the new market, but O’Reilly’s successful approach to domestic store network expansion gives us confidence that the firm will act prudently.

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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Commodities Trading Ideas & Charts

Worley Ltd

Worley says its strategic transformation is accelerating as it increasingly supports customers moving to a low-carbon future. While traditional business continues to be an important part of Worley’s activities, sustainability is providing a higher rate of future growth and margin. The company says its work backlog at end of March 2021 had increased to AUD 14.1 billion, from AUD 13.5 billion at December 2020’s end, with activity levels on long-term projects returning and key project awards in both sustainability and traditional services. Sustain ability focused work comprises 29% of current aggregated revenue, but a considerably higher 45% of the factored sales pipeline (upcoming work). In the half to December, Worley delivered AUD 1.2 billion in sustainability revenue at more favourable margin.

Worley characterises the global market size for sustainable design to 2035 as approximating USD 4.5 trillion per year, of which its addressable share is estimated at 10%-20%. And for decarbonisation investment, its addressable share is estimated at 3% to 15% of a total USD 1.5 trillion annual spend. It’s a big market for a company with current annual revenue approximating just AUD 10 billion.

And despite having a similar risk profile to other services– not lump sum turn-key–sustainability activities have more favourable gross margins. This reflects their technically complex nature involving technology integration and modification to existing facilities, with often challenging logistics requiring expertise in scaling-up. This provides opportunities to embed automation and digital solutions. Worley is accelerating its digital technology to create high value solutions and drive margin improvement including in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

At around AUD 10.70, Worely shares are up 75% on March 2020 lows, and are currently only somewhat undervalued, in 3-star territory. Our fair value estimate equates to an unchanged fiscal 2025 EV/EBITDA of 7.2, a P/E of 15.4, and dividend yield of 4.9%. We still assume a five-year EBITDA CAGR of 9.5% to AUD 1.15 billion. Our 9.2% midcycle EBITDA margin assumption betters the five-year historical average to June 2020 of 7.2%. In addition to the historical period including COVID-19 imposts, improvement reflects both cost-outs and higher assumed sustainability margins.

Worley achieved run rate cost synergies from the ECR acquisition of AUD 190 million in April 2021, already factored in our base-case valuation. We mention this completed program simply in recognition of form–the program being completed on time and at considerably greater magnitude than the original target of AUD 130 million. Future cost-outs are to come solely from operational savings targeted at a total AUD 350 million by June 2022. Worley said it had banked approximately 70% of these on an annualised basis at the December 2020 mark. We estimate this leaves around 1.0% of EBITDA margin improvement left from this source. The balance of our forecast margin improvement can be expected to come via the return of volumes post-COVID over which fixed costs can be disbursed, and via higher margins from growing sustainability activities.

At end December 2020, Worley’s net debt excluding operating leases stood at AUD 1.2 billion, (ND/(ND+E)) 18.4% and annualised net debt/EBITDA of 2.4. Net debt/ EBITDA was somewhat elevated, reflective of the AUD 4.6 billion ECR takeover. We estimate current net debt little changed, but project sub-1.0 net debt/EBITDA by as soon as fiscal 2022 and an unleveraged balance sheet by fiscal 2025, all else equal. This includes assumption of a 75% payout ratio for a prospective plus 6.0% unfranked yield from fiscal 2023.

Source:Morningstar

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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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Uncategorized

Dell Technologies Benefiting from Heighted PC Demand as It Expands Its Cloud Offerings

Although Dell Technologies has substantial exposure to commoditized markets and carries considerable financial leverage, we believe synergistic opportunities across its brands should drive success as businesses migrate to hybrid cloud IT infrastructures. Dell Technologies’ business centers around PCs and peripherals, servers, storage, networking equipment, as well as software, services, and financial services. Its brands include Dell, Dell EMC, VMware, SecureWorks, and Virtustream. The company returned to the public market in late 2018 through a reverse merger of the VMware tracking stock, DVMT.

The company’s largest revenue streams of commercial PCs and servers are in cutthroat pricing environments that rely on services and support to generate profit. We expect the overall PC market to continue consolidating toward an oligopoly and for consumer-based profits to come from high-end and gaming PC sales. While storage is a challenging marketplace, we believe flash-based arrays and hyperconverged infrastructure provide avenues for rampant growth. We posit that the company’s majority ownership of VMware and other cloud-centric software brands provides growth catalysts as firms augment hardware with software-based solutions. After the acquisition of EMC, we view Dell Technologies as an end-to-end IT infrastructure provider that is supplementing hardware prowess with emerging software and cloud-based solutions. We’re optimistic about its ability to upsell VMware and other cloud-based solutions, especially in high-growth areas of hyperconverged infrastructure and software-defined networking, but we do expect competitive markets to challenge the company’s overall profitability.

We think that Dell Technologies’ debt burden may affect its ability to invest in the development and sales of future innovative products. Public shareholders have very little influence on the company’s strategy and rely heavily on CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners making value-accretive decisions.

Fair Value and Profit Driver’s

Our fair value estimate of $80 per share is consistent with an enterprise value/adjusted EBITDA of 10 times and adjusted price/earnings of 10 times for fiscal 2022.

We project that Dell Technologies’ revenue will rise at a five-year revenue compound annual growth rate of 2%. By product line, we project the ISG segment to slightly grow, which includes storage and servers. We model a low single-digit five-year CAGR for storage, primarily driven by flash array demand, data proliferation, and software-defined networking. We model CSG to be flattish in the long run, which includes PCs.

We project VMware growing around the high-single-digit or low-double-digit range due to strong demand for VMware’s hybrid cloud ecosystems and networking solutions, in addition to cross-selling opportunities. We expect the other businesses (SecureWorks and Virtustream) to contribute revenue growth during the same time period due to cloud-based software adoption across IT and security teams.

In our view, Dell Technologies should be able to maintain gross margins in the low 30% range, up from the mid-20% range in fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019 through increasing product cross-sales and upsells, especially through adding software suites. In our view, Dell Technologies has substantial cross-selling and upselling opportunities as well as collaborative development efforts that will lower operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. We model operating margin to remain in the mid-single digits over our explicit forecast.

Dell’s Company Profile

Dell Technologies, born from Dell’s 2016 acquisition of EMC, is a leading provider of servers and storage products through its ISG segment; PCs, monitors, and peripherals via its CSG division; and virtualization software through VMware. Its brands include Dell, Dell EMC, VMware (expected to be spun off toward the end of 2021), Boomi (expected to be sold by the end of 2021), Secureworks, and Virtustream. The company focuses on supplementing its traditional mainstream servers and PCs with hardware and software products for hybrid-cloud environments. The Texas-based company employs around 158,000 people and sells globally.

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

Fletcher Building materials businesses possess many strong brands

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At the group level, however, returns are below the cost of capital, as the firm has made poor acquisitions in adjacent segments and new geographies and suffered execution issues in the construction division. This has overwhelmed the positive impact of an unprecedented building cycle in Australia and New Zealand which peaked in 2018. Following the substantial losses sustained in its construction segment, Fletcher has taken corrective action–divesting its global Formica business and backing away from commercial construction projects which led to significant losses. But we’d like to have seen a more comprehensive restructure, involving a marked reduction in the group’s level of diversification. We’d advocate for Fletcher to re-focus the group’s attention on its businesses which are well positioned competitively. The potential for management to create value for shareholders is maximised when it’s free from the distraction that comes with the ownership of a plethora of disparate businesses.

The company operates across seven divisions: building products, distribution, steel, concrete, construction, residential and development, and Australia. We forecast improving EBIT margins across most divisions, with the most pronounced improvement in building products and Australia, but aren’t confident ROICs can sustainably remain above cost of capital. Nonetheless, strong brands, dominant market share in key categories, and control of distribution should help to sustain pricing and margins in the building products division, which generates around 6% of group revenue and 20% of adjusted EBIT. We see steady growth in revenue and slight margin expansion, resulting in mid-single-digit EBIT growth over the long term.

Financial Strength

With the balance sheet awash with liquidity, Fletcher also announced a NZD 300 million share buyback. With the cyclical revival of residential construction activity in New Zealand and Australia, we think the return of cash to shareholders is well-timed. With the buyback to commence in June 2021, we anticipate the lion’s portion of share repurchases will occur in fiscal 2022. Upon conclusion of the share buyback, we forecast leverage–defined as net debt/EBITDA including IFRS 16 lease liabilities–of 1.4 times at fiscal 2022 year-end, near the midpoint of Fletcher’s through-the-cycle leverage target of 1-2 times and up from 1 times at fiscal 2021 year-end. As such, significant debt covenant headroom exists relative to Fletcher’s leverage covenant, which is calibrated at 3.25 times net debt/EBITDA. While further capital expenditure will be allocated to Fletcher’s new plasterboard facility–with total project spending of an estimated NZD 400 million—other nonessential capital outlays have been pared back in order to minimise cash outflows in fiscal 2021. Management anticipates NZD 230 million in capital expenditure in fiscal 2021. We forecast full-year dividends of NZD 0.27 per share, reflecting a 70% payout of net income–near the top end of Fletcher’s targeted 50%-75% payout ratio.

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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Dividend Stocks Shares

Vocus Group Ltd – Spin Off Business

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The February 2016 merger between these companies transformed the enlarged Vocus into a full-service, vertically integrated player with the necessary ammunition to materially lift its share in all segments of the Australian and New Zealand telecommunications markets. However, the group has been beset by integration and execution risks, leading to a string of board and management changes. Under new management, the turnaround is now progressing solidly.

Key Considerations

  • Vocus’ extensive fibre network infrastructure has the potential to materially lift the company’s share of the corporate and small business telecommunications markets.
  • Vocus’ Australian retail unit faces margin pressure in the National Broadband Network, or NBN, era.
  • Vocus is well and truly past the “fix and repair” stage, and is on the “shed and grow” phase of its journey, with network services clearly identified as its core unit longer-term.
  • Vocus owns and operates an extensive fibre network that drives attractive economics in its fibre and Ethernet business and provides a durable competitive advantage.
  • The marriage of Vocus’ infrastructure and M2’s strong salesforce has the potential to materially lift the company’s share of both the corporate and the small business markets.
  • Vocus’ presence in the New Zealand telecommunications market is underappreciated by investors and is a fertile source of growth.
  • The merger with M2 has exposed Vocus to the margindilutive NBN regime.
  • While steps are being taken to improve in these areas, it is abundantly clear Vocus has bitten off more than it can chew with its recent spate of mergers and acquisitions, with reporting and technology systems woefully inadequate for what is a major player in the telecom big leagues.

 (Source: Morningstar)

Disclaimer

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.