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This screen is inspired by a similar screen devised and backtested here by the Old School Value blog for the US market. It looks for stable, cash rich companies growing their FCF, yet selling at a cheap multiple to FCF. Free cash flow is defined as cash from operations minus capital expenditure. The idea is that FCF is the ultimate driver of intrinsic value - the more FCF a company can generate and reduce debt, the higher the intrinsic value of the company becomes. more »
Some companies trade so cheaply that their cash balance is worth more than the company's enterprise value (i.e. the sum of the market cap and total long term debts). This is known as a negative enterprise value (EV) and searching for such companies is a common bargain stock strategy. While, in theory, a negative EV may seem to be an easy arbitrage opportunity, whereby one could buy all of the debt and equity in a firm and use its cash balance to cover costs and keep the difference, there are a number of reasons to be cautious: Firstly, the enterprise value may not have captured all of the debt outstanding in the firm (e.g. the present value of lease commitments) and secondly the cash balance is from the balance sheet (rather than stated at the today's date used for the market cap). Given how quickly firms burn through cash, what you see on the balance sheet may not reflect what the firm has as of today as a cash balance so be careful! You can read more here. more »
This strategy is one of Ben Graham's most famous bargain stock strategies aiming to find stocks trading for less than their liquidation value. The idea is to find stocks trading at such a cheap price that you could buy the whole company and sell off all the assets at a profit with near minimal risk. It is a simplistic screen which just looks for stocks where the market cap is less than the so called 'Net Net Working Capital' (defined as Cash and short-term investments + (75% of accounts receivable) + (50% of inventory) - All Liabilities). The formula is very conservative in estimating the value of inventory and receivables due to the likelihood that not all will be collectible in a firesale. About such stocks Graham wrote: ‘ No proprietor or majority holder would think of selling what he owned at so ridiculously low a figure…In various ways practically all these bargain issues turned out to be profitable and the average annual result proved much more remunerative than most other investments’. This is not a strategy for the faint-hearted due to the high risk companies that qualify. Graham sought safety from individual bankruptcy risk by diversifying his portfolio with a large numbers of companies – he suggested 30. more »
Kirkpatrick’s Bargain Screen combines the best triggers found in his testing of relative value, relative reported earnings growth. Kirkpatrick's testing of relative price-to-sales ratio percentile rankings indicated optimal performance in percentiles greater than 17 but not higher than the 42nd percentile. For relative strength, he found that setting the bar at the 90th percentile resulted in too many passing companies to manage in a portfolio. To reduce the number of passing companies to just 20, Kirkpatrick upped the requirement to only include companies in the 97th percentile or higher. Initial testing of the Bargain Model was promising but Kirkpatrick conceded that several more years of testing were needed before labeling it a successful stock selection methodology. You can read more here. more »
This is a deep value screen based on Ben Graham's writings. It is a simplistic screen which just looks for stocks where the market cap is less than net current asset value. It is not to be confused with his more involved Enterprising Investor and Defensive Investor criteria which have been modelled separately. As a reminder, NCAV = Current Assets - Total Liabilities. That's a stringent requirement, since most companies have negative NCAVs but Graham was looking for firms trading so cheap that there was little danger of falling further. In addition, Graham would have requested a margin of safety of at least 33%, so his P/NCAV threshold would have been 0.66. Graham argued such companies were typically priced at significant discounts to the likely value that stockholders could receive in an actual sale or liquidation of the entire corporation. Because of the kind of unloved/troubled companies it generates, this is not a strategy for the faint-hearted. Graham sought safety from individual bankruptcy risk by diversifying his portfolio with a large numbers of companies – he suggested 30. more »
This screen is loosely based on the "Cash Index" approach outlined by James Altucher in his book, "Trade Like Warren Buffett". He suggests a multi-pronged approach to analysing potential bargain/arbitrage stocks in times of market distress (post 2001 bubble / Iraq War). First of all, he suggests that it's important to recognise that these stocks are likely to be trading for less than cash for a reason, namely the market thinks they will eventually declare bankruptcy. Some of the possible risks include: i) Inaccurate reflection of "cash on hand" in their books (leases, severance packages, etc), ii) Business model destined to fail, iii) Management with no incentive to return value to shareholders. To minimise risk of buying a turkey, Altucher looks for eight factors: i) Market cap below cash, ii) Very low leverage, iii) Enough cash headroom to cover the current annual burn-rate, and iv) some stability in revenues and earnings. In addition to these easily-screenable criteria, he suggested looking out for more qualitative factors: v) A reasonable belief that the sell-off in the stock was partly irrational, vi) Favorable arbitrage analysis - , i) Insider buying and viii) Institutional ownership. more »
A demanding intrinsic value-based screen designed for less experienced investors which focuses on “important” companies with long histories of profitable operations and strong financial condition. Graham felt defensive investors should confine their holdings to the shares of large, prominent, and conservatively financed companies with long histories of profitable operations. By this, he meant a firm of substantial size and with a leading position in its respective industry. Additionally, Graham sought companies with: 1) Strong financial position (based on the current ratio & debt to working capital). 2) 20 years of uninterrupted dividends 3) No negative earnings in the last 10 years & a 10-year annual earnings growth rate of at least 3% 4) A reasonable price-earnings ratio & a moderately low ratio of price to assets more »
A value investing screen based on Walter Schloss's dedicated focus on stocks that are hitting new lows and those trading at a price lower than their Book Value per Share. Schloss summarized his own approach as being: “We want to buy cheap stocks based on a small premium over book value, usually a depressed market price, a record that goes back at least 20 years…and one that doesn’t have much debt. You can read more here. more »
