As Ann mentions here, the April Round Table was challenged by barking dogs and thick thunder/lightning in Houston — but we persisted. In a subtle shift, we’re going to move Round Table highlights to the Stocks folder. Why? Although the portfolio design & management, and Round Table tracking portfolio are important, we do want to emphasize that the program core is centered on identifying stock study opportunities. We can do that and still stay focused on achieving those long-term superior relative returns.
Sorry to everyone I had to end my Round Table presentation so quickly. I am not sure any of what I said made sense. It’s hard to concentrate when you are being bombarded by lightning. The worst of the thunderstorm lasted about 45 minutes and we did lose power for a little while. Hope the rest of the Round Table went well.
Qualcomm (QCOM)
As for Qualcomm, I believe it is definitely a stock you should research. For a company of its size (24.12B estimated revenue for 2013), it continues to show signs of growth. I estimated the future growth sales at 13% and the future earnings per share at 11.5%. This results in a future eps of $6.12 which is a little higher than Value Line and a little lower than MI.
Qualcomm leads the list of companies that produce mobile chip sets for phones. It has a large amount of patents and they receive royalties from millions of mobile devices each year that should continue over the next 5-10 years.
Their chip sets are found in the current popular mobile devices from Apple, Samsung, Blackberry and Nokia.
The only concern that I could find was that some investors and analysts did not like that management has increased their spending (21% this past year). To me Qualcomm’s management appears to be doing a good job. They have no debt, their pre-tax profit is high and their return on equity is good. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
The recent drop in price offers a good opportunity to pick up the stock.
Anne
Polaris Industries (PII)
Ken Kavula’s presentation can be summed up pretty quickly.
“Polaris? You mean that snow mobile company???”
“Not exactly.” “Study it and see that there’s more, a lot more, to this story.”
Caterpillar (CAT)
Hugh McManus described one of his favorite shopping methods, the quest for stocks that are trading near their 52-week low. In fact, we’ll probably spend more time with this notion because as he said, “One of the things we’ve witnessed over the years is that long-term investors, particularly those getting started, tend to purchase at stock prices which prove to be too high. We know that the typical stock will often trade at a low during a given year that is on the order of 50% of its 52-week high … so it makes sense (with patience and discipline) to watch for good companies trading at low prices.”
He also shared an intriguing tidbit about different treatment of large, higher-quality stocks versus vs. promising, emerging companies in that he’ll settle for 1-year lows for the larger companies … while demanding multi-year lows for the others. Fascinating and worthy of further exploration, in my opinion.
C.H. Robinson (CHRW)
Mark doubled down on Cy Lynch’s fairly recent selection of C.H. Robinson (CHRW) — the transportation and logistics company. CHRW is the Solomon Select stock feature for May — so we’ll cover it “there.”
The audience seconded (thirded?) CHRW by choosing it from the alternatives.
There was some concern expressed during the polling about the potential for continued price “sag” in Caterpillar (CAT). Hugh’s response? “I hope so. I prefer a little sag while I’m accumulating.” (Grin)
Expecting Alpha 