Going into the final six weeks of the year, the major U.S. stock markets have already registered 20%-plus gains, and most are at or near record levels. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 is up 26% to 1798, finishing the week at a new high. This is the best year for the S&P since 2003. Small stocks have soared even higher, with the Russell 2000 index up 31%. And the workhorse Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week at a record 15,961, having moved up almost 22%.
The widespread gains have prompted talk of a bubble similar to ones in 2000 and 2007. And in certain pockets of technology, including social media and cloud-related companies, that is no doubt true. Highfliers like Twitter (ticker: TWTR), LinkedIn (LNKD) and Workday (WDAY) all look overextended. And in the strongest IPO market since 2007, shares of up-start restaurant chains Noodles & Co. (NDLS) and Potbelly (PBPB) are rich enough to give you heartburn.
But big blue chip stocks, including large financial, technology, and energy companies, still look attractive. The S&P 500 is valued at 16 times projected 2013 operating profits of $109 and at 15 times estimated 2014 earnings of $120. Those price/earnings ratios are about equal to the long-run average. Even if next year's earnings growth is closer to this year's projected 5% than to the aggressive current estimate of 10%, the S&P 500 forward P/E is 15.6, which doesn't look excessive at a time of near-zero short-term rates, a 2.71% yield on the 10-year Treasury note, and sub-6% average yield on junk bonds. The S&P 500 dividend yield is 2%, but the earnings payout ratio is historically low at about 35%, meaning companies have room to further boost dividends.
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This is the best year for the S&P since 2003. Small stocks have soared even higher.
"The first stage of the bull market was a revaluation to something resembling reasonable levels as it dawned on investors that the world wasn't going to end," says Stephen Auth, chief investment officer at Federated Investors. "The second stage began this summer with a transition to the view that the economy is accelerating and that earnings are poised to increase significantly in the coming years."
Tom Lee, the bullish JPMorgan strategist, says "We're in a secular bull market that will last at least another three years." Adds Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management, "If inflation stays at 3% or less, the market P/E could get into the 20s."
(For a differing view, see the interview with GMO's Ben Inker, "Bright Spots in a Pricey Market.")
Auth, who has been one of the most bullish analysts in Barron's periodic surveys of Wall Street strategists, thinks the S&P 500 could hit 2000 by the end of next year, about 11% above current levels.
Among major asset classes, stocks are by far the best, he says. "The fundamentals are good for stocks and terrible for everything else: bonds, commodities, and cash." Treasury and junk-bond yields are at historically low levels, while slowing growth in China and much of the developing world is cooling demand for a range of commodities, which are in the red this year based on broad-based indexes.
Barron's consistently has been bullish on the stocks in recent years, starting from the market low in March 2009 ("Ouch! That Hurt," March 9, 2009) and including a cover story early this year when the Dow industrials traded around 14,000 ("New Highs in Sight," February 4).
One of the biggest coming challenges for stocks is the likely curtailment of the Federal Reserve's aggressive bond purchases during 2014. When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke raised the prospect of "tapering" in the spring -- an action that the Fed has since postponed -- stocks stumbled. But Auth argues stocks can appreciate in 2014 in the face of higher bond yields.
THERE ARE PLENTY of reasons for caution. Margin debt has risen to record levels, investor complacency is high with the VIX index -- a gauge of volatility known as the "fear index" -- near a 10-year low, and many professional investors are raising cash or hedging their portfolios. Warnings about bubble-like conditions are coming from the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and longtime bull Warren Buffett who said two months ago, when the S&P was 5% below current levels, that he's "having a hard time finding things to buy." That said, last week Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) disclosed that it had taken a $3.45 billion stake in ExxonMobil (XOM).
Barron's Roundtable member Scott Black of Delphi Management in Boston notes this year's bull move is different because "the market hasn't left anything behind." All major sectors of the stock market have rallied this year, a contrast to the situation in 1999 and 2000 when technology soared and most other areas of the stock market trailed badly. Among the few weak spots in 2013 are coal and gold shares.
Another laggard has been real-estate investment trusts, which have risen just 5% including dividends, as measured by the MSCI U.S. REIT index. That's behind telecom, utilities, and master limited partnerships. REITs appear to be one of the most attractive income-oriented sectors of the stock market given average dividend yields of about 4%, the prospect of mid-single digit annual profit growth and some inflation protection.
The case for small and mid-cap stocks is harder to make after outsize gains this year and more than a decade of outperformance relative to their larger brethren. The median mid-cap stock in the S&P MidCap 400 has a market value of about $3.4 billion while the median issue in the S&P SmallCap 600 is just under $1 billion.
"Small caps are awfully expensive on an absolute basis and relative to large-cap stocks," says Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategist Steven DeSanctis. He calculates that the Russell 2000 index is valued at about 18.5 times forward earnings. The small-cap benchmark historically has had a higher P/E than the S&P 500, but the spread has averaged less than one multiple point. The gap, based on 2014 earnings estimates, is now more than two points.
DeSanctis's work shows that when small stocks have been this expensive -- dating back to 1979 -- the return in the subsequent 12 months has averaged a negative 1% and they have trailed large-cap stocks by about five percentage points. Black agrees, noting that small- and mid-cap indexes look overpriced and that large-cap stocks are fairly valued. "It's getting especially difficult to find good value among small and mid-cap stocks," he says.
One indication of how scarce bargains are in the small- and mid-cap arenas is that there are just 10 stocks in the S&P mid-cap index with P/Es of 10 or lower based on estimated 2013 earnings and just 14 such stocks in the S&P small-cap index. There are 21 sub-10 P/E stocks in the S&P 500 with the largest representation from financials, including MetLife (MET), Prudential Financial (PRU), and Capital One Financial (COF), and technology, such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Western Digital (WDC), and Micron Technology (MU).
What still looks reasonable in a record-high market? JPMorgan's Lee favors large-cap technology stocks. So does Black, who has recommended Qualcomm (QCOM) and Oracle (ORCL). Most big tech stocks still trade for low double-digit P/Es based on 2014 earnings -- below the market multiple -- and carry dividend yields of 2% or more.
GROWTH IS A PROBLEM. Cisco Systems (CSCO) gave surprisingly weak guidance of an 8% to 10% revenue drop in its current quarter in conjunction with its quarterly earnings report last week, prompting a 11% drop in its shares Thursday. And International Business Machines (IBM) has been beset by consistently weak revenue.
The big-cap tech growth challenge, however, appears to be reflected in stock prices and P/Es. And the effective P/Es for stocks like Apple (AAPL), Cisco, and Microsoft (MSFT) are even lower than they appear thanks to huge cash positions. Apple's P/E, for instance, falls to about nine from 12 when factoring in its $143 a share in cash, which is nearly 30% of its $525 share price.
Not surprising, activists like Carl Icahn are pouncing, trying to unlock some of the value in these behemoths. A less aggressive activist, ValueAct Capital, has been involved with Microsoft. Its shares are up 20% since CEO Steve Ballmer's August announcement that he plans to step down amid expectations that his successor will take shareholder-friendly actions to boost earnings like selling the company's unprofitable search engine Bing and cutting bloated costs.
Cisco could become the next activist target in tech. Investors could push Cisco to use its great balance sheet -- with about $6 a share in net cash and investments, or 30% of its current stock price of $21 -- to return more cash to holders. Change could come at Cisco with longtime CEO John Chambers facing greater criticism. Cisco's P/E is around 10 based on reduced current-year profit estimates.
Many big financials have stalled after early-year gains and trade for around 10 times next year's projected earnings. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) may finally be getting past its legal woes and that could drive its share price, now $54, above $60 in 2014. The bank's core franchises -- investment banking, trading, commercial and consumer banking, credit cards, asset management and private banking -- look better than ever. That's not reflected in its rock-bottom P/E of nine based on estimated 2014 earnings. The shares yield nearly 3%.
A well-managed Wells Fargo (WFC) has a lucrative consumer-banking business and a big fan in Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway has steadily added to its stake in recent years. Berkshire holds over $19 billion worth of Wells Fargo, making it Buffett's single largest equity investment.
The two largest U.S. energy companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron (CVX), have trailed the market this year mostly because investors worry about the high cost of maintaining -- and expanding -- their huge reserve bases. Those problems are reflected in their share prices with Exxon, at $93, trading for 12 times estimated 2013 earnings, and Chevron, at $120, carrying a 10 P/E. Both yield around 3%.
THREE DEFENSIVE LAGGARDS this year have been AT&T (T), Southern Co. (SO), and Simon Property Group (SPG), the country's largest REIT. AT&T has a bond-like 5% yield -- its dividend may be lifted by about a penny per quarter soon -- and seems capable of mid-single earnings growth thanks to its large wireless business.
Simon, a mall REIT, has one of the industry's best management teams, ample free cash flow in excess of its dividend that goes toward expansion and a history of regular dividend increases, including a recent hike in the quarterly payout to $1.20 from $1.15. At $152, the shares yield 3.2%. Southern, a slow-growth electric utility has been hurt by cost overruns at new power plants, but its dividend yield, at 4.8%, appears to be secure.
Caterpillar (CAT) and Deere (DE) have bucked the upward trend in most big industrial stocks this year and now have some of the lowest P/Es in that group. Weakness in North American farm prices -- corn is down 30%, to $4.30 a bushel, this year -- has weighed on Deere, while tough conditions in the global mining industry have hurt Caterpillar. Both are world-class companies that are exposed to strong long-term trends in agriculture and infrastructure development.
Although there has been some cooling lately in the stock market's hottest sectors, mainly Internet, social media, and cloud computing, the marquee stocks still are up sharply for the year (see table below.).
Many of these stocks have little or no earnings and thus are being valued on revenues and some dubious financial measures, notably earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) and adjusted earnings per share. Both these figures exclude often high costs associated with restricted stock grants to employees. It's tough to make a strong case for any of them at current levels.
Twitter is an extreme example. At $44, it's valued at about $31 billion with an enterprise value (market value minus net cash) of around $29 billion, based on a fully diluted share count of around 705 million shares. That's more than 25 times projected 2014 sales, more than double the rich valuations of Facebook (FB), LinkedIn, and Zillow (Z). The S&P 500 is valued at less than two times sales.
Twitter isn't expected to be profitable until 2015 or 2016, though some think it could top $1 a share in earnings by 2017. That means it trades for 40 times on potential profits four years out. Twitter has enticing potential with its ad-targeting capabilities to its 232 million subscribers based on their demonstrated interests, but that's more than already reflected in its share price. A sevenfold rise in revenue between 2013 and 2017, which is what the Street is expecting, could be tough to achieve.
TWITTER ALSO IS A MAJOR OFFENDER when it comes to excessive employee stock grants. It issued over 50 million shares of stock to employees this year, whose value exceeds current-year projected revenue of about $650 million. That's based on the pre-IPO grant prices of around $20, not the current market price.
Analysts generally exclude the high cost of those grants, which typically vest over a four-year period, from Ebitda and adjusted earnings calculations even though the stock is equivalent to cash -- and viewed as such by employees. GAAP earnings properly require stock compensation to be treated as the expense. That's why GAAP earnings are a better financial measure than non-GAAP, or adjusted, earnings. Outside of the tech and biotechnology industries, companies rarely try to exclude restricted stock from their expenses.
Cloud-computing stocks have similar valuations to social networking shares. Industry leader Salesforce.com (CRM) doesn't earn a profit based on GAAP earnings that includes its stock compensation expense and yet it has a market value of $34 billion. Other hot plays with 2014 price/sales ratios above 10 and no GAAP earnings include Workday, NetSuite (N), and ServiceNow (NOW). One skeptic on some of the cloud stocks has been veteran tech manager Paul Wick, who runs the Columbia Seligman Communications and Information fund (SLMCX; see "Keep Your Head -- and Money -- Out of the Clouds," Sept. 30).
Investors are also chowing down on restaurant stocks like 2013 IPOs Noodles & Co., Potbelly, and longtime favorite Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG). Noodles has more than doubled its June IPO price, to a recent $43, valuing the company at more than 100 times current-year earnings. The chain, which offers macaroni and cheese and other, often high-calorie, noodle dishes, is opening plenty of new restaurants but comparable-store sales rose only 2.7% in the latest quarter, hardly impressive for a triple-digit P/E stock.
Wall Street got too aggressive in pricing one hyped initial public offering last week and buyers paid the price. Chegg (CHGG), an unprofitable college textbook rental company, went public at $12.50 a share, above the top of its projected IPO pricing range of $11.50 and ended the week around $9. Through a series of Internet acquisitions, Chegg has tried to position itself as a "student-first connected learning platform" thanks to its involvement in e-textbooks and online college recruitment for high-school students. The company still gets about 80% of its revenue from college textbook rentals, a competitive field threatened by e-textbooks, another highly competitive area. Even with the decline, Chegg is valued at around $800 million, compared with Barnes & Noble (BKS) at $1 billion. Barnes & Noble has about 30 times Chegg's sales and a profitable college bookstore business.
The Chegg comedown could happen to many more hot stocks. While the bull market may have much longer to run, it may soon be dominated by the shares of large, quality companies rather than the many speculative stocks that have done so well this year. In our February cover story, we wrote that alternative investments like hedge funds starred in this century's first decade, but that stocks would dominate in the current decade. So far, that call looks good.
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