Can Fifth Third Grasp All That It's Reaching For?

Plans and goals can be great things, but reaching them can be tricky and a set-up for disappointment. In the case of Fifth Third (NASDAQ:FITB), management has had no problem laying out bold targets tied to its Project North Star self-improvement plan, but recent performance creates some valid questions about the magnitude of growth this Midwestern bank can really achieve and where that growth will come from.

The Street is already expecting a lot of improvement from Fifth Third, and I struggle to see how these shares are a bargain. Even with a lower tax rate, today’s share price more than rewards Fifth Third for the robust Project North Star targets, as well as a healthy overall banking environment.

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Can Fifth Third Grasp All That It's Reaching For?

BBVA Posting Better Results And Making Better Decisions

Spanish banks have done alright over the past year, with BBVA (BBVA), Santander (SAN), and Caixa (OTCPK:CAIXY) all up between 20% and 30%, in line with other well-liked European banks like ING (ING), and well ahead of some of their other large European peers. Even with the turbulence in Catalonia, economic conditions have been improving in Spain, and with that so has credit quality. What’s more, both BBVA and Santander have gotten a little more proactive about selling underperforming assets.

While BBVA has done fine over the past year, there could still be a little upside left in the shares. Even though I don’t think BBVA will get to the psychologically important 10% ROE level for a few years, I do expect double-digit earnings growth over the next five years and high single-digit growth over the long term, supporting a fair value around $9/ADR.

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BBVA Posting Better Results And Making Better Decisions

AerCap Holdings Still At A Double-Digit Discount To Fair Value

The last year or so has seen aircraft leasing company AerCap (NYSE:AER) finally get some of its due. While the Street seemingly ignored the value that management has created by selling older planes above book value, buying back stock below book value, and maintaining a high-quality, virtually fully-leased fleet, the last year has at least seen the shares outperform the S&P 500.

I liked AerCap back in the fall of 2016 and I still like it now. I do expect lower net spreads, net income, and share buybacks over the next two years, but I expect AerCap to continue growing earnings at a long-term rate around 4% and to maintain a double-digit ROE. With aircraft productivity likely plateauing and ongoing growth in passenger traffic, AerCap should have ample opportunities to grow its fleet while maintaining attractive utilization and spreads.

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AerCap Holdings Still At A Double-Digit Discount To Fair Value

Innospec Offers More Upside On Growth And Margins

The last year or so has been a choppy one for Innospec (IOSP), as volumes and price/mix have been choppy across the business and the company absorbs the lower-margin business it acquired from Huntsman (HUN) at the end of December 2016. As far as peer comparisons go, Innospec is a tricky stock to benchmark given its mix of businesses, but I’d call its performance since October of 2016 “middle of the pack,” with companies like NewMarket (NEU) and Solvay (OTCPK:SOLVY) doing worse and companies like Ecolab (ECL), BASF (OTCQX:BASFY) and Lonza (OTCPK:LZAGY) doing better.

Looking ahead, I believe it will be quite a while before the electric vehicle revolution materially impacts the fuel specialties business, and I think the company has a long growth runway for its performance chemicals business. Its oilfield chemicals business should continue to benefit from improving U.S. onshore activity, while the octane additives business will continue to exist in a regulatory twilight zone.

If Innospec can generate mid-single-digit revenue growth and drive FCF margins back toward 10% on sustained improvements in the performance and oilfield chemical businesses, a fair value in the low-to-mid $70s seems reasonable and can support a long position today.

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Innospec Offers More Upside On Growth And Margins

Hartford Financial Services Repositioned For Better Returns

The sell-side had long been waiting for Hartford (HIG) to “do something” on the M&A front, with widespread expectations that the company would eventually sell its Talcott run-off annuity business as well as rumors that Hartford could be a buyer or a seller in other areas of insurance. The last couple of months have seen most of these expectations come true, as the company sold its Talcott business and acquired Aetna’s (AET) group insurance business.

These deals leave Hartford better-positioned to reach and exceed that elusive 10% ROE threshold and shrink the valuation gap with peers like Travelers (TRV) and Chubb (CB). To that end, the shares are up about 25% since my last write-up, more or less running in line with Travelers and Chubb over that time.

At this point, I would consider Hartford more of a strong hold than a buy. The company has improved itself over the past two years and is active in attractive segments of the market, but there are increasing competitive risks and opportunities to improve returns that management may or may not be able to execute.

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Hartford Financial Services Repositioned For Better Returns

AGT Looks Undervalued, But This Pulse Business Has Taken A Pounding

As I have written in the past, one of the hardest parts of “buy the pullback” advice is that it sometimes leads you to grab at falling knives. Such has been the case with AGT Food and Ingredients (OTCPK:AGXXF) (AGT.TO), where the shares have fallen another 20% since my mid-May update as management (and I) seriously underestimated the depth and breadth of the business downturn spurred by a robust 2017 pulse crop in India.

Feeble volumes have hammered margins in the traditional pulse processing and handling/distribution operations, while the company’s food and ingredients businesses are not yet large enough to do much more than slightly cushion that blow. This company has been through this before, with the last serious downturn in 2012, and there are some reasons to think that business will bottom out in the second half of 2017. Even if that’s the case, though, it seems unlikely that 2018 is going to be a “business as usual” year and investors have to consider the long run of negative free cash flow here, as well as the debt situation and management’s sometimes-questionable strategic priorities and decisions.

I may be a glutton for punishment here, but I’m keeping this on my watchlist. A long-term revenue growth rate of 5%, underpinned by ongoing global growth in pulse consumption and growth in pulse-derived ingredients, and a mid-single-digit FCF margin can support a fair value about 15% higher than today’s price. I’m not buying today, though, as I would like to see fourth quarter results before making a commitment.

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AGT Looks Undervalued, But This Pulse Business Has Taken A Pounding

Microsoft Looks Like An Elephant That Can Still Dance

Very large companies tend to struggle to innovate and grow, and large tech companies in particular historically have a very hard time remaking themselves over time. With that, yesterday’s leaders in tech are seldom today’s leaders and today’s leaders seldom become tomorrow’s leaders.

And then there’s Microsoft (MSFT). This company certainly has several missteps in its scrapbook, including multiple failures in mobile devices (phones especially), but with Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365, Microsoft looks to be in a good place with respect to cloud computing, and businesses like LinkedIn and Xbox offer additional avenues to growth.

It is admittedly hard to come up with a novel scoop or thesis on a huge, well-covered stock like Microsoft, but I have nevertheless large companies like this trade at attractive multiples and generate above-average returns. If my expectation of mid-single-digit growth is valid, a fair value of $90 or more seems appropriate and these shares are worth considering even late in this bull market.

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Microsoft Looks Like An Elephant That Can Still Dance

Orbotech's Multi-Prong Growth Strategy Looking Better And Better

I liked Orbotech (ORBK) back in the summer of 2016, but my bullishness then underestimated the emergent momentum in the company’s business and the market’s enthusiasm for tool/machinery plays leveraged to trends like OLEDs. While Orbotech’s revenue growth can be erratic from quarter to quarter, the third quarter saw all the pieces coming together and management’s November analyst day laid out a bullish outlook for the next three years.

Valuation is less clear-cut to me now, with the shares up about 60% over the past twelve months and close to 250% over the past three years. Demand tied to advanced smartphones, AR/VR, OLED, and other applications should be able to drive double-digit revenue growth for the next few years and high single-digit growth for the long term, but it’s hard to have confidence that the good times will just keep rolling in what has long been a cyclical industry. Although, I think you can make a cogent argument that the company’s growth and margin prospects over the next three years can support a higher price; there’s not much of a safety net from discounted cash flow and I consider this a higher-risk prospect from valuation and earnings predictability standpoints.

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Orbotech's Multi-Prong Growth Strategy Looking Better And Better

A Little Near-Term Softness Hasn't Changed The FEMSA Story

Although FEMSA (NYSE:FMX) haven’t done all that well since my last write-up, I think the modest pullback could be another opportunity for long-term investors to acquire shares in one of the best-run Mexican companies, not to mention one with consider room left to grow. FEMSA shares have been hurt by a combination of currency moves, natural disaster-related traffic disruptions, and some concerns about capital allocation, but I believe these are all short-term issues that don’t impinge upon the underlying value.

I continue to believe that FEMSA will leverage long-term high single-digit revenue growth into double-digit FCF growth, supporting a fair value in the $105 to $115 range. FEMSA has several NPV-positive potential capital projects to choose from, including accelerating the growth of OXXO, acquiring more drug stores, or expanding further outside Mexico, and I believe pullbacks below $100 are good buying opportunities.

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A Little Near-Term Softness Hasn't Changed The FEMSA Story

Roche Delivers Some Clinical Wins, But Skepticism Remains Largely Intact

Even though Swiss drug giant Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY) has managed to deliver a series of largely better-than-expected clinical trial results, you wouldn’t really know it from the share price. Despite a lot of skepticism going into the IMPower 150 read-out for Tecentriq in first-line lung cancer, Roche’s successful result seems to not to have done much to resolve questions and concerns about how it will stack up with rivals like Merck’s (MRK) Keytruda. So too with the very positive results from the HAVEN 3 study of Hemlibra.

As IMPower 150 was only the first, and arguably the riskiest, of five front-line Tecentriq trials in lung cancer, I think Roche is in a good position going into further read-outs in 2018. Likewise, I believe Roche has a long-term winner with Hemlibra even as gene therapy approaches look to gain meaningful share in the hemophilia space. At a minimum, then, I would argue that Roche has established three strong new drug platforms (Tecentriq, Hemlibra, Ocrevus) with blockbuster potential on top of a very robust R&D pipeline.

I believe Roche is undervalued up into the mid-$30s. Competition from biosimilars is going to do its damage to near-term reported financial results, but the market has known about this for some time. With Roche having, at least in my opinion, reestablished credibility that it can develop meaningful new therapeutics, I believe the shares are undervalued today on the basis of both its existing business and the potential pipeline contributions over the next decade.

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Roche Delivers Some Clinical Wins, But Skepticism Remains Largely Intact

Orchids Could Bloom Again After Withering Competitive Pressure

Orchids Paper Products (TIS) has been an awful call for me over the past 18 months, as this manufacturer of primary private-label tissue products was hit hard by pricing moves from the competition and its own elevated costs and challenges tied to getting a new plant up and running. At the worst, the company saw revenue drop more than 20% year over year, leading to its first quarterly operating losses in a decade, serious liquidity pressures, and the suspension of the dividend. With all that, the shares are less than half the price they were the last time I wrote about this company.

On the positive side, the company's new Barnwell facility is up and running, the company has been successful in targeting more premium business, and the book of business over the next year would suggest record revenue and EBITDA. On the negative side, price and cost pressures remain a risk and the company must do something about its liquidity situation, as there is little room for error here.

I believe a lot of things went wrong for the company all at the same time, but I don't believe the story is broken. If the new business comes through as expected, Orchids should be back on a path toward high-single-digit/low-double-digit revenue growth and a return to operating and free cash flow margins in the mid-teens. Those, in turn, support a fair value in the mid-to-high teens, making Orchids a high-risk story that does at least offer some upside.

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Orchids Could Bloom Again After Withering Competitive Pressure

Trouble With ING Is That Everyone Knows It Is Good

I’ve liked Dutch multinational bank ING Groep (NYSE:ING) for quite some time now and seen investors run hot and cold on the bank due to issues like its unbalanced exposure to dollar-denominated lending, its exposure to energy lending (which wasn’t that large), its capital requirements, and economic concerns about the markets in which it operates. More recently, though, ING seems to be getting more of its due on the basis of its solidly profitable retail banking franchises, its expense leverage, and its best-in-class digital offerings.

ING shares have performed toward the upper end of its peer group range over the last few years, lagging ABN Amro (OTCPK:ABNRY) a bit, but otherwise performing well next to KBC Group (OTCPK:KBCSY), BNP Paribas (OTCPK:BNPZY), Erste Bank (OTCPK:EBKDY), Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), Banco Santander (NYSE:SAN), and Nordea Bank (OTCPK:NRBAY). With that, I can’t really say these shares are undervalued anymore. There are certainly worse things than holding the shares of a fairly valued bank that is executing well and that pays a good dividend, but this isn’t really a name for bargain hunters looking to pay $0.80 and get a dollar back.

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Trouble With ING Is That Everyone Knows It Is Good

Compass Continues To Offer Some Value

It has been a while since I’ve written on Compass Diversified Holdings (NYSE:CODI), a trust that specializes in acquiring stakes in small-to-mid-sized companies, letting those management teams do their thing, and then harvesting the cash flow for distribution to shareholders and/or reinvestment in expanding the business. In the interim, CODI has basically stuck to its core model – disposing of a few assets, raising some capital, and redeploying capital into new acquisitions that should provide growing distributable cash flow into the future.

CODI shares are up about 15% since I last wrote about the business, but during that time, shareholders also collected sizable distributions (which are taxed differently than regular dividends). Although I do still have some concerns about the modest long-term growth prospects of the portfolio and the frequent quarter-to-quarter turbulence in portfolio company results, I still see enough value to make this a worthwhile name to consider for investors who want returns that are more skewed toward income. Should opportunities like 5.11 Tactical live up to their potential, though, there may be a little more growth potential than commonly appreciated.

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Compass Continues To Offer Some Value

It's Early, But PRA's Fundamentals Looking Better

It's too soon to sound the "all clear" and much too soon to just assume that PRA Group (NASDAQ:PRAA) will get back to historical levels of productivity and financial success, but there is a stronger base for a positive view now than there has been in some time. PRA still has to get its staffing situation sorted out (and improve productivity), and there are still big challenges in Europe, but the supply situation is looking better, and yields could potentially improve from here.

The "but" is that the shares are up about a third from their lows in the fall. However much of that was short-covering, the reality is that the current valuation reflects what I think is a reasonable recovery scenario. There are still avenues toward higher estimates (improved collections is the key one), but I'd say a mid-$30s price is pretty fair for the time being.

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It's Early, But PRA's Fundamentals Looking Better

A Drawn-Out Reset Of Expectations Should Lead To Better Days For Lenovo Shares

Lenovo's (OTCPK:LNVGY) bold and controversial decisions to try to work its PC magic in the mobile handset and server markets has thus far proved the doubters right. Margins have eroded since the acquisition of IBM's (IBM) x86 server business and Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Motorola business, and the share price has fallen by two-thirds from its mid-2015 high as investors have grown weary of the delays in transforming the acquired businesses into profitable contributors and grown more concerned about the long-term health of the PC business.

There are still valid reasons to worry that Lenovo shares could be a value trap, but expectations have been beaten down to a low bar. Lenovo's strategy to target higher-performance, higher-value markets in mobile and servers is a break with the company's past, but a logical one. What's more, management has not had to surrender much market share in PCs in its effort to support margins.

If Lenovo can grow revenue at a long-term rate between 2% and 3% and pull its adjusted free cash flow margins back up into the 2%-3% range, a fair value in the range of $15 to $17 still makes sense, even with a double-digit discount rate. The key question, though, remains whether or not the company can turn its mobile and server businesses into positive contributors (and/or jettison them) and restore investor confidence in Lenovo's business model and strategy.

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A Drawn-Out Reset Of Expectations Should Lead To Better Days For Lenovo Shares

Geared To Growth, Societe Generale's New Plan Doesn't Offer Much That's New

Between disappointing third quarter earnings and a new multiyear strategic plan that I believe many investors found underwhelming, Societe Generale (OTCPK:SCGLY) (GLE.FR) has seen its shares pressured once again. Although there have been some signs of life in this French bank’s international operations, the domestic operations have been lackluster, as have the capital markets businesses. Still, this is a bank that is structurally geared toward growth, and if economic growth does in fact pick up across Europe, Societe Generale may yet hit its long-awaited 10%-plus ROE target and unlock meaningful value.

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Geared To Growth, Societe Generale's New Plan Doesn't Offer Much That's New

GenMark's Credibility Is Dented, But The Sell-Off Is Excessive

If anything has been consistent about GenMark (NASDAQ:GNMK) over the past couple of its years, it has been this small diagnostic company’s difficulties in meeting its own development timelines. While the company did see the approval of its key ePlex multiplex molecular diagnostics system this June (after a roughly two-year delay), the company recently missed earnings expectations in a big way, lowered guidance for both revenue and system placements, and announced further delays for its blood culture cartridge.

GenMark is the kind of stock that will make investors prematurely grey as they wrestle with the meaningful potential of the system (and the molecular diagnostics market more generally), management’s execution issues, and the competitive landscape. I do believe the major downward move in the stock since August has created another opportunity for aggressive investors, but that opportunity has to be balanced against the very real risk that this is a company that will never get its ducks in a row and/or will not be bailed out by a buyout at an attractive multiple.

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GenMark's Credibility Is Dented, But The Sell-Off Is Excessive

Familiar Concerns Dogging Middleby

Even though value-oriented investors tend to approach the investment process with more patience than growth or momentum investors, timing still matters. Had I been writing this article on Middleby (MIDD) just three weeks ago, I’d probably have concluded that the shares offered a rare chance to pick up a proven (if controversial) grower at a reasonable valuation. With the third quarter results in the books, though, the shares have shot up more than 15%.

Although Middleby isn’t back at peak multiples, I’m more cautious on the shares with that recent run. There are still growth issues here, and I’m not fully convinced that the Commercial Foodservice and Residential businesses are in the clear. There are still ample growth opportunities for Middleby, but Welbilt (WBT) seems to be performing better than it has in recent years and it’s tough to make the cash flow numbers work unless you’re willing to accept what I believe is a relatively low required rate of return given the risks in the business model.

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Familiar Concerns Dogging Middleby

ABB Seeing Key Markets Starting To Turn

ABB (ABB) hasn’t been able to keep pace with Rockwell (ROK) during this industrial upswing, but the shares of this power and automation company haven’t fared too badly next to Siemens (OTCPK:SIEGY), Schneider (OTCPK:SBGSY) or Emerson (EMR) over the past year, as management has used M&A to patch some holes and as key markets start to turn around. With major end-markets like utilities, oil/gas, and metals/mining only just starting to improve, there could be meaningful late-cycle potential for ABB. Longer-term, opportunities in automation and EV-related spending likewise look promising.

ABB shares still look a little undervalued, which I attribute in part to the fact that the company’s sales haven’t rebounded to the same extent as other industrials (more late-cycle exposure) and also to ongoing worries/doubts about management’s ability to drive margin improvements and better capital efficiency. Although Siemens and Schneider have their merits, and I’d definitely consider Rockwell on a rare meaningful pullback, I think ABB shares still offer enough value to be worth a closer look.

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ABB Seeing Key Markets Starting To Turn

Can Accuray Build Some Momentum?

Small-cap radiation oncology specialist Accuray (ARAY) has long been an exercise in patience (and/or frustration, depending on whether you’re a “glass half-full” investor), but the strength in the shares since October’s earning release (up more than 30%) has been nice to see. The biggest question, though, remains unchanged – can Accuray string together a meaningful run of good quarters, exceed guidance, and establish a reasonable basis for believing that the company can grow to be both a viable competitor to Varian (VAR) and Elekta (OTCPK:EKTAY) and a profitable company?

I remain in the camp of “disappointed optimist”; I continue to hold my small position in these shares in large part because I believe the clinical benefits of Accuray’s platform are meaningful and underappreciated. The question of whether Accuray’s management can translate those benefits into tangible profits and cash flow for shareholders remains firmly open. Valuation likewise remains very tricky – I don’t believe the shares are all that cheap if the company can’t generate more than 4% long-term annualized revenue growth, but the story changes if and when mid-to-high single-digit revenue growth becomes plausible.

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Can Accuray Build Some Momentum?