Showing posts with label Equity research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Equity research. Show all posts

Monday, September 8, 2008

Low-coverage stock brings high return

Well it didn't take very long for me to find a good example to illustrate what I suggested in my last blog "The relative value of stock analysis". Just a few hours after posting, I made a very nice gain because of my analysis of a "low-coverage" stock, ADF Group (ticker: DRX on the Toronto Stock Exchange). After reading everything I could find about this company, I came to the conclusion that I had just found a highly undervalued stock. This company isn't often in the media and isn't covered by any of the major research firms. It seems to be covered mainly by three analysts of smaller firms. Today, ADF Group announced fantastic second quarter results and the stock climbed 12.31%.

Here's some things I liked about it after finishing my research:
-Fast growing order backlog
-Backlog gives revenue visibility for many quarters to come
-Operates in a niche
-Qualified workforce
-Using most recent technology
-Management is financially involved through stock ownership
-High profile contracts which help the company's reputation (Freedom Towers, Encana building, Miami International Airport, etc.)
-Lowering debt brings flinancial flexibility in case of slowdown
-Room to grow since about 50% of capacity is used
-Market punished non-residential construction even if it's situation isn't like residential construction.
-Opportunities to grab new contracts in Western Canada and all over North America (infrastructure needs).
-Currently in the final stages of negociation for big contract(s).

I then found my own price target with 4 methods: DCF, multiples, RIM and EVA. My results indicated that ADF Group was mispriced and I bought some shares.

Today, my well hidden secret was revealed to more market participants through a news release and a conference call. Those participants rewarded my research efforts by pushing the stock price up. By performing what I call value-adding analysis, I was able to find an underpriced company with a great future and have an impressive 12.31% gain once the market discovered my hidden gem.

Stock Market Investment Partner encourages you to take a look at ADF Group and any potentially attractive low-coverage stocks and decide by yourself if they are worth the investment.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The relative value of stock analysis

You will never catch me saying that stock analysis is useless in the investment process. It is an important part of every decision and should always be done. However, is it possible that analyzing certain stocks adds more value to your decisions? I believe so and I will explain why.

Researching potential (and current) investments boils down to extracting information. If you wish to make great amounts of money, I suggest extracting usefull information and, most importantly, information unknown by most investors. In general, information is traveling very fast and is reflected rapidly in stock prices. One of your missions as a greedy and intelligent investor is to uncover situations where information travels slowly and prices do not reflect all the available information. Doing that is the definition of value-adding analysis because you're reading and crunching numbers about stuff that most of the market hasn't had the time or the desire to look at. You're not analyzing information that has been known for a week by the people of Wall Street, their brothers, their sisters, their friends, and their gardeners.

Value-adding analysis is performed on the "forgotten" stocks - i.e. the stocks that aren't followed by the big firms' research analysts and those followed by only a few small firms' analysts. The less coverage a company receives, the bigger comparative advantage you can gain by doing a complete analysis. Indeed, the stock prices of companies with low coverage have a greater chance of not representing all the information. Information travels slowly so such mispricings will eventually end. It is your role to profit from these mispricings while they last. You just have to be ready to read anything (and I really mean anything) you can find about your low-coverage companies of choice and hope to find that precious piece of information that hasn't been digested by the market yet.

While analysis of some stocks has "higher" value, analysis of any stock is valuable and Stock Market Investment Partner recommands serious analysis in all investing decisions.