Roger Montgomery is the Founder and Chairman of Montgomery Investment Management. Roger has over three decades of experience in funds management and related activities, including equities analysis, equity and derivatives strategy, trading and stockbroking. Prior to establishing Montgomery, Roger held positions at Ord Minnett Jardine Fleming, BT (Australia) Limited and Merrill Lynch.
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Tatts Group’s purchase of NSW Lotteries could reduce its intrinsic value. A lottery ticket might be a better investment. Read Roger’s article at eurekareport.com.au.
Developer and funds manager Mirvac has unveiled a $500 million capital raising and revealed it is in exclusive takeover talks with Westpac’s fund management arm. Fund manager Roger Montgomery says he’s not surprised at Mirvac’s interest. Read article.
Developer and funds manager Mirvac has unveiled a $500 million capital raising and revealed it is in exclusive takeover talks with Westpac’s fund management arm. Fund manager Roger Montgomery says he’s not surprised at Mirvac’s interest. Read transcript. Read related blog post.
Twelve months ago TheBull.com.au asked four stock pickers to select a portfolio of 10 stocks to hold for one year. So how did they fare? Independent investment analyst Roger Montgomery blitzed the field with a whopping 51.90% gain, beating off his competitors by as much as 24% as well as the All Ordinaries index by a hefty 13% margin. Read article.
Heading into Easter, I received an enormous pile of valuation requests and while many were little mining explorers burning through $500,000 of cash per month and with just $3 million in the bank, quite a few were solid companies that hadn’t been covered before.
And to confess, some of the requests were quite rightly keeping me accountable and making sure I post the company valuations I said I would, when I have appeared on Sky Business with either Nina May, Ricardo Goncalves and Peter Switzer.
What are they, I hear you ask? Forge Group (FGE), Grange Resources (GRR), Arrow Energy (AOE), Cabcharge (CAB), Coca Cola (CCL), Data 3 (DTL), Hutchison (HTA), Incitec Pivot (IPL), Metcash (MTS), Sedgeman (SDM) and UXC (UXC)
I am really impressed by the frequency with which I am now receiving emails containing insights I didn’t know about companies that I have covered.
As a fund manager it was not unusual for me to adopt Phil Fisher’s ‘scuttlebutt’ approach to investing. By way of background, Warren Buffett has previously described his approach to investing as 85 per cent Ben Graham and 15 per cent Phil Fisher. Fisher advocated scuttlebutt – talking to staff, to customers and to competitors. I did the same and would often end my interview of a company’s CEO or CFO with I’d learned from reading Lynch; “if I handed you a gun with one silver bullet, which one of your competitors would you get rid of?” The answers were always revealing. Sometimes I would get; “there’s noone worth wasting a silver bullet on”, but most of the time, I would find out a lot more about the competitive landscape than I had bargained for. Occasionally, I would learn that there was another company I really should be researching.
Back to your insights, they are amazing. Now you know why I enjoy sharing my own insights and valuations with you as much as I enjoy the process of investing.
One thought for you; Many of you are sending your best work via email. I would really like to see everyone benefit from the knowledge and experiences you all have so hit reply and if you have some insights (as opposed to an opinion), just click on ‘REPLY’ at the bottom of this post and leave as much information as you would like.
So here are a few more valuations to ponder over Easter. I hope they add another dimension to your research. And before you go calling me about coal seam gas hopeful Arrow Energy, note that the valuation is a 2009 valuation based on actual results. The forecasts for Arrow for the next two years are for losses, and using my model, a company earning nothing is worth nothing. Of course Royal Dutch Shell and Petro China think its worth more and perhaps to them it is, but as a going concern its worth a lot less for some time to a passive investor.
I hope you are enjoying the Easter break and look forward to reading and replying to your insights.
Posted by Roger Montgomery, 1 April 2010
They might be able to run a business, but many managers are incompetent at allocating capital. Read article.
On 31 March 2010 Roger Montgomery’s YouTube channel,www.youtube.com/RogerJMontgomery, ranked as the #16 Most Viewed Guru Channel in Australia. Following is a message from Roger.
“Today my YouTube channel achieved a new record, # 16 Most Viewed (Today) – Gurus – Australia. Once again I would like to say thank you for your encouraging Facebook comments, emails and blog interactions. I enjoy sharing my knowledge almost as much as I enjoy the process of investing, and to be able to interact with so many of you online makes the process even more rewarding.”
On balance, there’s a lot that appears in a company’s books that’s simply not worth bothering about. Read article.
Using The Reject Shop as a case study, Roger Montgomery reveals to viewers of Peter Switzers Switzer TV how to use a balance sheet to calculate the cash flow of a business. Watch Part II for the second step in the process. Broadcast 25 March 2010. Watch Part I. Watch Part II.
I am guessing from the many emails I received this week about healthcare stocks that the quantity may have something to do with the sector being in the headlines (remember it is an election year)?
Government numbers show that spending on healthcare is expected to nearly double as a proportion of GDP over the next 40 years. With fewer babies being born and people living longer, it is inevitable that the population is ageing. In the next thirty years, the proportion of the population aged over 65 will double to 22% and in the next forty years, the number of Australian’s aged 85 and over is expected to increase from 1.8% of the population to 5.1%.
Government estimates show that this will exact a heavy toll on the cost of providing health and the following chart reveals where those costs for the government and opportunities for healthcare companies lie.
Using government estimates for GDP growth, the above charts suggests the government will spend $38 billion on medicare and $68 billion on the PBS in 2040. Figures such as these have provided the large community of buy-and-hold investors with a sound investment theme to pursue. But in some cases this theme has led to some extremely irrational pricing, as we will discover.
There are more than 20 healthcare stocks listed on the ASX that essentially fall into two categories.
1. The provision of care and related services. This can mean pathology companies such as Sonic Healthcare, private hospitals such as Ramsay Healthcare, and providers of specialist ancillary services, such as software provider iSoft.
2. Research and development. This can mean companies that produce generic pharmaceuticals, such as Sigma, or research into and development of cancer drugs, such as Sirtex.
Like another exploratory industry, the mining sector, the size of these companies can vary from the very small, such as Capitol Health with a market cap of just $15 million, to global blood products and plasma giant CSL, which has a market cap of about $20 billion.
The ideal combination of characteristics for a healthcare company that an investor would seek out is no different to those that should be sought more generally; a very high quality balance sheet, stable performance, a high Return on Equity, little or no debt and a discount to intrinsic value.
So what do I think are the superior businesses? Following is a table of my findings.
Using a combination of 15 financial hurdles, I note that the best quality companies, but not necessarily the cheapest in the sector, are CSL, Cochlear, Sirtex, Biota and Blackmores.
Do you see that Search box to the right, just under my photo? You will need to scroll up. Type CSL, Cochlear or Blackmores into the box and click GO to read my past insights. And if your appetite remains unsatisfied, visit my YouTube channel, youtube.com/rogerjmontgomery, and search there too (there are many videos in which I talk about CSL and Cochlear).
I should point out that each of the remaining three – Sirtex, Biota and Blackmores – are generating high Returns on Equity and has manageable or no debt.
The lowest ranked by quality are Primary Healthcare, Sigma, Australian Pharmaceuticals and Vision Group. I won’t be buying these at any price and their Returns on Equity are less than those available from a risk-free term deposit.
Alchemia, which manufactures a generic treatment for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, Phosphagenics, with its patented transdermal insulin delivery system, and Capitol Health are also low in terms of quality and also highly speculative because they are yet to report profits. Analysts, however, are forecasting profits for all three in 2011 and 2012 and Alchemia is forecast to earn more than 30% Returns on Equity after a loss in 2010.
In between this group are companies whose quality is neither compelling nor frightening; these are businesses that if I was forced to by I might only if very large discounts to intrinsic value were presented and in some cases, only if I was happy to speculate – which generally I am not. Sonic, Ramsay (search RHC for more analysis), iSoft, Pro Medicus, Healthscope, Halcygen Pharmaceuticals, ChemGenex, Acrux and SDI fall into this band.
I have ranked all of the healthcare companies by their safety margin: a measure of their discount or premium to the current year’s intrinsic value. This reveals that some companies are trading at discounts to intrinsic value. As an investor you need to be satisfied that the companies you choose also meet your quality criteria, which should mimic your tolerance for risk.
Take a close look at Biota, for example. Its price of $2.38 is significantly lower than the estimated intrinsic value, however you will also see that the return on equity is forecast to fall from 50% to 11%. There will be a commensurate decline in intrinsic value in coming years and the apparent discount will no longer exist, meaning that unless return on equity improves considerably in a few years it will cease to be a good investment.
If my portfolio approach were to include some exposure to healthcare then my first choices would be CSL and Cochlear. These are both well managed, large-cap businesses with stable returns on equity and zero or low levels of gearing.
My next preferred exposure would be pathology and radiology operator Sonic, alternative medicine distributor Blackmores, and liver cancer treatment marketer Sirtex
Finally, if I was comfortable speculating on stocks then the companies I would seek to conduct further research on would be the two pharmaceutical minnows, Halcygen and cancer drug developer Chemgenex. Both companies are forecast to generate attractive rates of return on equity in 2011 and 2012 and have little or no debt. Halcygen is also currently trading at a discount to its estimated intrinsic value.
REMEMBER… Before making any investment decisions, my comments should only be seen as an additional opinion to the essential requirement to conduct your own research and see a qualified financial professional.
Everyone is capable of being terrific investors, you just need to remember that there is serious work to be done by YOU in the business of investing.
Posted by Roger Montgomery, 25 March 2010
