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Musings From The Oil Patch July 30th 2019

Thanks to a subscriber for this edition of Allen Brooks’ ever-interesting report for PPHB. Here is a section:



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Starbucks Looks Like Its Old Self Again as Brisk Growth Returns

This article by Leslie Patton and Anne Riley Moffat for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

The strong report comes one year after longtime leader Howard Schultz retired from the chairman’s job and left the company, putting decision-making squarely in the hands of Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson, who’d been in the post for about a year at that point. Johnson got right to work, bringing life back to an aging brand that had started to lose its cachet among the hipper, smaller chains sprouting up in its shadow.

His playbook included closing underperforming locations in densely penetrated U.S. markets, turning over some foreign regions to licensees and revamping the chain’s loyalty program. He has also expanded food offerings to compete with trendy salad shops and found ways to launch the new drinks that Gen Z and millennial customers want, like Nitro cold brew and high-protein offerings, in as little as 100 days. In the past that may have taken up to 18 months.



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Record $100 Billion Buyback Proves Strategy to Beat U.S. Stocks

This article by Ksenia Galouchko for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

European companies’ equity buybacks have surged to a record $100 billion over the past 12 months, with the strategy of betting on those firms beating returns from U.S. counterparts over the past five years, according to Morgan Stanley. The strategy is also rewarding company stocks more than the payment of high dividends, according to the bank.

“This is the first time we have seen strong buyback performance outside of bear markets or recessions,” strategists led by Graham Secker wrote in a note Tuesday. “More striking, our net buyback factor has shown much greater efficacy in Europe than the U.S. over all time frames.”

One of the reasons European stock repurchasers are faring better is that the practice is less common in the region than among American firms, said the strategists. Buying back equity can provide a much-needed boost to the world’s most-shorted equities, which have been seeing almost non-stop outflows for more than a year amid sluggish economic growth and political uncertainty. Doing so should boost earnings growth, trading liquidity and demand for shares, Morgan Stanley wrote.



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Most of the World's Companies Are Duds

This article by Vildana Hajric for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribes. Here is a section:  

Investors have heard this refrain before, that just a scant few pull the pack. And it’s easy to see their outsize influence: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon.com and Facebook Inc. account for more than 20% of the S&P 500’s returns this year. That number is even starker for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, for instance, where those four companies account for about 50% of gains.

But Bessembinder and his team, including two co-authors from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Goeun Choi of Arizona State, are among the first to look at the phenomenon long-term. The best-performing 306 firms accounted for about three-quarters of global net wealth creation during the 28-year period of the study, they found. Just 811 companies could be framed as accounting for all of it.

Their findings echo Bessembinder’s previous work. In looking at nearly nine decades of U.S. stock and bond performance, he found that out of 26,000 stocks, about 58% underperform Treasury bills in their lifespan.



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Can Low Rates Explain High Stock Prices? Not So Fast

This article by Mark Hulbert for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

One such model was proposed in a 2017 article in the Journal of Portfolio Management by Research Affiliates founder Robert Arnott and several colleagues. They found that P/E ratios tend to be lower when real interest rates, or those adjusted to remove the effects of inflation, are either too high or too low. The “sweet spot,” as far as P/E ratios are concerned, is when real rates are between 3% and 4%. Since real rates currently are below 1%, Mr. Arnott’s research provides no support for the above-average current P/E ratio.

In an email, Mr. Arnott poses a rhetorical question for those who believe that today’s low interest rates should automatically translate into higher P/E ratios. If that were the case, “then why don’t negative real interest rates in Europe and Japan justify even higher valuation levels [than in the U.S.]?! Instead, these markets are priced 20-40% cheaper than the U.S.” as judged by their P/E and CAPE ratios, he writes.



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Walmart's Supplier Says Chinese Factories in "Desperate" State

This article by Daniela Wei and Jinshan Hong for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

“U.S. clients are definitely very, very worried,” Fung said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Everyone is making razor-thin margins already and most people have a huge percentage in China. So if the biggest source increases the price by 25%, they are worried,” he said, referring to the scale of tariffs threatened on all Chinese imports to the U.S. by President Donald Trump.

Though Fung didn’t specify Walmart by name, the U.S. retailer is the company’s second-biggest customer after Kohl’s, accounting for 7.6% of revenue, according to Bloomberg data. A spokeswoman for Walmart declined to comment.



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Powell Signals Rate Cut as Trade War Outweighs Strong Job Market

This article by Craig Torres and Katia Dmitrieva for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

Powell carefully explained the reasons why the policy committee has shifted its views this year, and noted that “crosscurrents have reemerged, creating greater uncertainty.” Despite a current trade war truce with China, he continued to stress downside risks to the outlook.

“Uncertainties about the outlook have increased in recent months,” Powell said in the text of his remarks. “Economic momentum appears to have slowed in some major foreign economies, and that weakness could affect the U.S. economy. Moreover, a number of government policy issues have yet to be resolved, including trade developments, the federal debt ceiling, and Brexit.”

He noted that policy makers are carefully monitoring developments including the risk that weak readings on inflation could be “even more persistent than we currently anticipate.”

In addition, Powell pointed to a slowdown in business investment, decelerating global growth, and declines in housing investment and manufacturing output.

“It strongly suggests they’re going to be inclined to ease at the meeting later this month,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “He continued to highlight the uncertainties that are weighing on the outlook rather than highlighting the better jobs report.”



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Elliott's $34 Billion Roundup Fix Is No Magic Pill

This article by Chris Hughes for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

Fighting to settle, rather than win, would be the best approach. Bayer has argued Roundup is safe when correctly used, but it has lost three consecutive cases. Its expert evidence has been weighed by juries and has failed to convince them.

A new legal team could try to put different arguments and experts in front of jurors. But consider, too, the heavy punitive damages being awarded – $2 billion in the last case. These are likely to reflect jurors’ dim view of Monsanto's corporate conduct as concerns about the weedkiller’s safety emerged. This issue will recur in every future case.

Appealing would cost Bayer time. By the same token, a settlement would deliver a certain and faster resolution for the thousands of plaintiffs. The individual circumstances of each case make it hard to gather them together into a swiftly-resolved class action.

The snag is that even a fair settlement would not mean a return to business as usual. The best financial scenario for the company would be a deal that is affordable, with farmers continuing to use glyphosate and Roundup staying on sale, perhaps with modified instructions about how consumers should use it appropriately. This is not assured.

Moreover, Bayer will still merit a management discount for all that has happened, and a conglomerate discount given its unproven strategy of combining pharmaceuticals and crop science. CEO Werner Baumann misjudged the risks of buying Monsanto, a deal that brought Roundup with it; he has taken too long to revise his litigation strategy. He could yet turn the situation around by resolving the lawsuits and extracting synergies from the acquisition. Until he does, the jury is out both on his future and a break-up.



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Google's Quantum Processor May Achieve Quantum Supremacy in Months

Thanks to a subscriber for this article from Interesting Engineering. Here is a section:

After the list goes above 6, the numbers start becoming so large and abstracted you lose the sense of the gulf between where Google is and where it will be at the next step.

In the case of Moore's Law, it started out in the 1970s as doubling every year, before being revised up to about every two years. According to Neven, Google is exponentially increasing the power of its processors on a monthly to semi-monthly basis. If December 2018 is the 1 on this list, when Neven first began his calculations, then we are already between 5 and 7.

In December 2019, only six months from now, the power of Google's quantum computing processor might be anywhere from 24096 times to 28192 times as powerful as it was at the start of the year. According to Neven's telling, by February--only three months after they began their tests, so 3 on our list--, there were no longer any classical computers in the building that could recreate the results of Google's quantum computer's calculations, which a laptop had been doing just two months earlier.

Neven said that as a result, Google is preparing to reach quantum supremacy--the point where quantum computers start to outperform supercomputers simulating quantum algorithms--in a only a matter of months, not years: “We often say we think we will achieve it in 2019. The writing is on the wall.”



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Visa, Mastercard, PayPal Join Facebook to Form Crypto Effort

This article by Julie Verhage, Jenny Surane and Kurt Wagner for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

The currency, called Libra, will launch as soon as next year. It’s what’s known as a stablecoin, one that can avoid massive fluctuations in value so it can be used for everyday transactions. Industry experts and insiders say the payments companies want a seat at the table to help shape the new currency.

“It’s not unusual for the incumbents -- Visa, Mastercard, PayPal -- to partner with a disruptor,” Harshita Rawat, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said in an interview. “They would at least want to participate in how this product is being developed.”

New payment methods such as Apple Pay and other mobile wallets are often slow to take off, so any competition is likely to be years away. Still, the earlier payments companies come to the project, the more time they have to ensure their businesses don’t suffer.



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