Does Big Tech Hold More Cash Than the Federal Government?

 Summary:

• How much cash does the U.S. Federal Government carry on its balance sheet?

• How does that cash compare to the money on Big Tech's balance sheet?

• How is Big Tech spending on share repurchases?

• Theoretically, how much cash could Big Tech have on its balance sheet, including the repurchase amounts?

How much cash does the U.S. Federal government carry in its Balance Sheet?

The U.S. Treasury Department owns and publishes the government's balance sheet annually. At the end of 2023, the U.S. government held $922 billion in cash (Exhibit 1). Although the Federal government, with congressional authorization, can print money to bolster its balance sheet at any time, we are using this amount as a fun exercise to compare against the cash held by the private sector, especially by the tech giants.

Exhibit 1: Assets Portion of the U.S. Government Balance Sheet

Bureau Of Fiscal Service

How does the federal government's cash holding compare to the private sector?

I queried the U.S. SEC filings using Snowflake to examine the cash held by various companies (Exhibit 2). I wanted to examine Big Tech but also threw in data from other companies, from Berkshire to Coca-Cola. Berkshire Hathaway had to be included in this list since its cash, bonds, and securities on its balance sheet total over $325 billion. The table below details only the cash holdings without looking at long-term bonds and securities companies may hold.

Warren Buffett believes in having a fortress balance sheet and has been selling his stock positions in Apple and Bank of America to bolster it over the past few quarters. So, what does Warren know about the markets that concern him? There's a cottage industry trying to guess Buffett's thinking and investment strategy. Buffett may be saying that U.S. stocks are overvalued, so it's time to cash in on the capital gains he has secured on Apple. My guess is as good as yours. If the market takes a beating in the coming months, Warren might be in a prime position to buy excellent businesses at a cheaper valuation.

Note: It was easy to create an AI app in Snowflake to learn from Warren Buffett's annual letters. You can learn about it here.

Amazon has the highest cash position, with $75 billion on its balance sheet, followed by Meta (Facebook), which has $43 billion. The top 10 companies on this list, from Amazon to Salesforce, held $273 billion in cash.

Note: Procter & Gamble (PG) data has a bug since the cash position is for 2019. I hypothesize that PG started using a different US GAAP tag after the 2019 fiscal year than the one I used in my query. I will look into this. You can learn more about my architecture in a series of blogs here and here.

Exhibit 2: Cash Held By U.S. Companies

Cash Held By U.S. Companies.

This amount of cash on the balance sheet feels tiny compared to many big tech companies' annual free cash flows. Where did all the money go?

How much is Big Tech spending on share repurchases?

Share repurchase is a financial technique companies use to buy back their shares. Repurchases reduce the total outstanding shares, offering multiple benefits to the company and its shareholders.

1. Companies can show earnings per share growth without increasing earnings from their business operations.

2. Existing shareholders see their stake in the business increase. Now, they own more of the business.

3. Reduce the total dividend that the company has to pay out annually.

If you and your friend were partners in a business and you bought out your friend's share, you would end up owning 100% of the company and keeping all the profits. Share repurchases are similar, except on a much bigger scale.

Let's look at an example to see the benefits of share repurchases.

Exhibit 3: Share Repurchase Example

Share Repurchase Example

Suppose a company had a net income of $1000 and a total outstanding shares of 10 in year 1. In this case, its earnings per share (EPS) is $100. Suppose the company earns the same amount of $1000 in net income in year 2 but repurchased 2 of its shares at the end of year 1. The number of outstanding shares is now eight instead of 10. The EPS has jumped from $100 to $125, a remarkable 25% increase without the business earning a single penny more. When EPS grows, the stock price should follow, benefitting the company and its shareholders.

When paying dividends to existing shareholders, share repurchases save the company money, assuming it decides not to increase its dividend per share. In this example, the total dividend amount the company has to pay is reduced from $100 to $80.

In the partnership example, when you buy out your friend, you would consider paying a fair price for his share of the business. You would be careful not to overpay. If you overpay, the returns you generate on your investment will be less. Similarly, buying back shares at any valuation is not recommended. Warren Buffett's rule on buybacks is only to repurchase shares when the stock is trading below its intrinsic value.

How much did Apple spend on buying back its shares?

Since 2018, Apple has spent a mammoth $559 billion on buying back its shares (Exhibit 4 & 5).

Exhibit 4: Amount of Money Apple Has Spent on Share Repurchase Since 2018.

Apple Share Repurchases

Exhibit 5: Apple's Spending on Share Buy Backs in Bar Chart Form.

Apple's Share Repurchases

How much has Apple managed to reduce its share count since 2018?

Apple has reduced its total outstanding shares from 20 billion to 15.4 billion, a 22% reduction.

Exhibit 6: Apple's Weighted Average Diluted Shares Outstanding

How much did Microsoft spend on buying back its shares?

Microsoft has spent $152 billion on share buybacks since 2018 (Exhibits 7 & 8).

Exhibit 7: Microsoft's Spending on Share Repurchases

Microsoft's Spending on Share Repurchases

Exhibit 8: Microsoft's Spending on Share Repurchases in Bar Chart Form

Microsoft's Repurchases.

How much has Microsoft managed to reduce its share count since 2018?

Microsoft has reduced its outstanding shares from 7.79 billion to 7.46 billion, a 4.2% reduction (Exhibit 9).

Exhibit 9: Microsoft's Outstanding Shares.

Microsoft's Outstanding Shares

In theory, Big Tech could have more money on its balance sheet than the Federal government if desired. It spends a lot on Capex, R&D, and share repurchases.

Note: All data analysis was done on Snowflake using Snowsight Worksheets and Snowflake Notebooks. If you like the analytics presented here and wish to do similar analytics with your data, Snowflake may be the easiest platform to gain insights quickly. Try Snowflake for free for 30 days here.

Disclosures: I am a Sales Engineer at Snowflake. All opinions in this blog post are solely mine and do not reflect Snowflake's views. I am not a Registered Investment Advisor, and any discussion on securities or investments is not an inducement to make a particular investment.

The Costco Paradox

What can we learn from the success of Costco?

Summary:

• An analysis of Costco and Walmart's revenue growth over the past eight years.
• A look at the gross margins of these two retailers.
• An analysis of the inventory costs of these retailers.

Costco (COST) is one of the most successful retailers in the world. It has a loyal customer base, its employees are among the highest paid in the retail sector, and that leads to lower employee turnover, and it has a very generous return policy, furthering its customer loyalty. The company presents multiple paradoxes. Here are just a few:

• How is Costco, with such low gross margins, not only still in business but thriving in the highly competitive retail sector?
• How does Costco succeed in the internet era when its e-commerce strategy is an afterthought?
• How does a retailer who pays and treats employees so well, but still manages to deliver superior shareholder returns?

Each retail company is unique in its own way. In many ways, uniquesness is a required feature for retailers. If a retailer is unable to distinguish themselves from the competition, they will not last long. Even among a crowded field of retailers, Costco and Trader Joe's standout. About 80% of products Trader Joe's sells is private label. In comparison, the U.S., with companies with strong brands and billions in marketing budgets, has seen only a 20% penetration by private label brands. Other retailers are yet to replicate Trader Joe's success in private label. Costco, for its part, does well with its Kirkland private label brand, selling many products under this label. Since this is an article about Costco, let's turn our attention to this great American company.

Costco Wholesale is unique in it own way. The way company operates and caters to its customers is a study in human psychology. Over 90% of its members renew each year. The store delivers a treasure hunt experience because you never know what you will find in each aisle. The aisles remain unmarked yet customers aren't frustrated. Over the years Costco has trained its customers to have a mental map of where they could typically find essential items. For example, paper towels and cleaning supplies are typically found at the back of the store.

Costco's executive memberships cost $130 annually yet, over 35 million out of their 76 million total members chose this level rather than pay $65 for the Gold Star membership (Exhibit 1). People perceive much value received from their executive membership. Members know Costco will never overcharge them. The company prides itself in keeping its mark-up 14%-15% above its costs, an extremely low number for a retailer. Costco pays a 2% reward on purchases to their executive members which many feel will help them recoup their membership cost. This reward eats into their already tiny margins, but Costco chose loyal customer base over higher margins. I am willing to theorize that consumers, if given a choice to pick between Amazon Prime and Costco memberships, will overwhelmingly pick Costco.

Exhibit 1: Costco Q4 FY 2024 Membership Numbers and Renewal Rate.

Source: Costco Investor Relations.

What are Costco's Revenue and Growth Rate?

Since 2008, Costco has increased its revenue by 3.5x, from $72 billion to $254 billion in 2024 (Exhibit 2). During the same period, Walmart (WMT), a much larger company, increased its revenue by 1.7x, from $377 billion in 2008 to $648 billion in 2024 (Exhibit 3). Just when people think that the market is saturated with Costco Warehouses, it finds new locations and customers. It has been expanding in China for years, although this comes with a side of geopolitical risk.

Exhibit 2: Costco Wholesale Revenue (2008 - 2024)

SEC.GOV, Snowflake Snowsight

Exhibit 3: Walmart Revenue (2008 - 2024)

SEC.GOV

Costco's revenue grew at an average annual rate of 8.2% between 2008 and 2024. But, if you remove the pandemic-era binge shopping between 2020 and 2022, the growth rate was 6.9%, still an impressive number. Walmart averaged a revenue growth rate of 3.4% between 2008 and 2024, including the pandemic years.

Exhibit 4: Costco's Annual Revenue Growth Rate.

Snowflake Cortex Analyst, Excel

Exhibit 5: Walmart's Annual Revenue Growth Rate.

Snowflake Cortex Analyst, Excel

What are Costco's Gross Margins?

Costco has one of the lowest gross margins among retailers. Costco's gross margin in 2024 was 12.6% compared to 27.6% for Target (TGT), and 24.3% for Walmart. This is by design and may be their secret weapon. A company has to have strict financial discipline when it starts off with such low gross margins. Richard Galanti, the former CFO of Costco, was adept at managing costs. For the most part he was Costco's voice in Wall Street, presenting at the company quarterly earnings calls. Richard managed Costco's investments well, from inventory costs, new store openings, and e-commerce expenditures.

Costco's gross margins are well below that of Target and Walmart.

Exhibit 6: Gross Margins of Target, Walmart, and Costco.

SEC.GOV

How does Costco's Inventory Costs Compare with Walmart's and Target's?

Inventory is one of the largest costs for any retailer. When managed efficiently, inventory can boost operating cashflows and margins. When managed poorly, inventory can lead to losses or worse, bankruptcy.

Days of Sales in Inventory ( DSI) is a good metric to measure the efficiency of a company's inventory costs. This ratio indicates the average time in days it takes a company to sell its inventory. This metric also helps comparing inventory management efficiency across companies in a sector. Costco carries the least amount of inventory as possible on its balance sheet. It also helps that its loyal customer base regularly shops at the stores and helps clean out their inventory quickly.

Costco manages its inventory very efficiently compared to Walmart or Target. Costco manages to turnover its inventory every 31 days compared to nearly 41 days for Walmart and 56 days for Target (Exhibit 7 & 8). I have used ending inventory for each fiscal year in this calculation. When the ending inventory is used to calculate the days sales in inventory, the average number of days for Costco to turnover its inventory is 31.2 days.

Exhibit 7: Days Sales In Inventory For Walmart, Target, Costco.

Snowflake Snowsight

Exhibit 8: Costco Revenue, COGS, Gross Margin, and Days Sales in Inventory (Using Ending Inventory)

Snowflake, Excel

In Exhibit 9, I have used the average inventory to calculate the days sales in inventory. The average number of days it takes Costco to turnver its inventory in this case is 29.9 days.

Exhibit 9: Costco Revenue, COGS, Gross Margin, and Days Sales in Inventory (Using Average Inventory)

Snowflake, Excel.

Costco teaches us that margins are just a number. How you manage that efficiently while focusing on delivering value to the customer is what makes or breaks a company. Costco focus on keeping costs low for their customers helps it sell more stuff faster reducing its inventory costs and giving it enormous clout over its suppliers.

Finally, I have used Snowflake Data Cloud for almost all of my analysis. Snowflake platform is easy to use to gain business insights. I have shown you example of that here.

Disclosures: I am a Sales Engineer at Snowflake. You can reach me here. All opinions in this blog post are solely mine and do not reflect Snowflake's views. I am not a Registered Investment Advisor, and any discussion on securities or investments is not an inducement to make a particular investment.

Impact of GenAI on R&D Expenditure

 Summary:

• Describe the AI money flow using an illustration.
• How much do Adobe, Salesforce, and others spend on Research and Development (R&D)?
• How has the R&D expense changed over time?
• What can we infer about the impact of GenAI on R&D expenses?

In this post, we examined Microsoft's capital expenditures (capex) as a proxy for the billions of dollars hyper-scaler cloud providers are investing in AI. Who is consuming this capex? We will answer this fundamental question in this post. Most people may already know the answer to this question. Cloud providers are packaging Nvidia GPUs into various IaaS services, offering them to companies such as Adobe, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and every other company in every industry experimenting with GenAI. These companies' investments in AI show up in research and development expenditures in the income statement.

The AI Money Flow

Here's how the investments in AI flows through various companies. Let's look at each step.

Source: Prasanna Rajagopal

1. Nvidia designs the GPUs.

2. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) brings Nvidia's dreams to the market.

3. Dell, HP, and other server manufacturers, primarily based in Asia, buy these GPUs from Nvidia and package them into servers. The cost of the GPUs is included in the server manufacturers' Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

4. Cloud providers purchase these servers. The cost of these AI servers is included in the capital expenditures.

5. Companies worldwide purchase IaaS and PaaS services created by cloud providers to experiment with and create various AI products and services for their customers.

6. Github Copilot, Salesforce's Einstein AI, ServiceNow AI agent, Apple Intelligence, and other products are examples of GenAI in the marketplace.

7. Once a product is ready to be released, companies typically create a SaaS service and introduce their GenAI products to consumers and other companies across various industries.

8. Consumers and companies pay for the GenAI service. Many services currently have a free and paid tier. The free service may typically have some restrictions on product use.

Companies such as Apple, Delta Airlines or Expedia build Chatbots, which they hope would help increase revenue, reduce the cost of serving their customers and thus boost their profit margins. But, most companies bringing GenAI products to market will have to see cost reductions in their operations soon or generate a profitable revenue stream.

Note about #2:

By now, most people are familiar with Jensen Huang, the unassuming, charismatic Nvidia founder. Most people probably have never heard of Morris Chang - the unassuming, spotlight-shunning, nonagenarian Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) founder. Here are a couple of articles to learn more about him:

• The Chip Titan Whose Life’s Work Is at the Center of a Tech Cold War

• He Turned 55. Then He Started the World’s Most Important Company.

Note about #5:

The cloud providers themselves are massive users of the GPUs they purchase. Internal product teams at Amazon and Microsoft are experimenting with and creating new GenAI products. These product development expenses appear as research and development (R&D) expenses. So, in addition to spending billions on capital expenditure, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are racing to create new genAI products and, in turn, invest billions more in R&D.

Companies like Adobe, Apple, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and others are investing in GenAI R&D to create new products. Since Adobe, ServiceNow, and others do not buy the GPUs directly and maintain, for the most part, their own data centers, they rely on the cloud providers for their GPU and include the cost of buying those services in R&D. In this post, we will examine how those R&D expenses have changed for these companies with the advent of GenAI.

Note about #7:

When a product is released to the market by the R&D teams, the responsibility of maintaining the service is turned over to the Cloud Operations and Support teams at Adobe, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and others. The cost of providing these services to customers and the associated GPU use is included in the cost of goods sold (COGS).

Research and Development Spending By Companies

Apple's R&D Spending

Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet in terms of revenue, profits, and market value. They have also been slow to announce AI services, only recently announcing Apple Intelligence. Apple is a big R&D spender with one of the largest R&D budgets in the world. Apple spent nearly $30 billion on R&D in 2023.

Chart: Apple's Annual R&D Expense (2007 - 2023)

(Chart Created Using Snowflake Snowsight)

Table: Apple's Annual R&D Spending

Queried in Snowflake, Table Formatted in Excel

Apple has increased its R&D budget by 38x since 2007. With the GenAI race just getting started, I do not see these massive expenses abating anytime soon. When you look at the chart below the R&D expense (yellow bar) compared to Revenue (blue bar) looks so tiny.

In fact, Apple only spent 7.8% of revenue on R&D. But, this is the company's highest spend in terms of dollar amounts and as a percent of revenue. The company increased its R&D spend by 114 basis points from 2022, adding over $3 billion to its R&D expense. Apple's motivation to release AI products and services may be behind this increase in R&D expense, especially at a time when its revenue declined from 2022 to 2023.

Chart: Apple's Annual R&D Spending Compared to Revenue

Created Using Snowflake Snowsight

Table: Apple's R&D Expense As a Percent of Revenue.

Queried in Snowflake, Table Formatted in Excel

Salesforce's R&D Expense

Let's look at R&D spending by Salesforce and how that's changed over time and feeling the pressure to invest in GenAI. Here's Salesforce's R&D expense compared to its annual revenues.

Chart: Salesforce's Revenue (blue bar) and R&D Expense (yellow bar)

Created Using Snowflake Snowsight

Table: Salesforce's Revenue and R&D Expense as a Percent of Revenue

Queried in Snowflake, Table Formatted in Excel

Salesforce has been spending above 14% of its revenue on R&D since 2017, well above Apple's expenditure in this category. Salesforce has probably decided that it is spending much on R&D already and only needs to reallocate, prioritize funds and teams to focus on GenAI projects.

Microsoft's R&D Expense

Microsoft is already spending plenty on capex. It is spending billions more on R&D. But as a percent of revenue, the company has not increased its spending. On dollar terms Microsoft has definitely increased it spending. Its R&D expense as a percent of revenue in 2024 was lower compared to 2023. But, in dollar terms the company increased its spending by over $2 billion.

Chart: Microsoft Revenue and R&D Expense

Created Using Snowflake Snowsight

Table: Microsoft's Revenue, R&D Expense, and R&D as a Percent of Revenue

Queried in Snowflake, Table Formatted in Excel

Companies that have were already spending well above 10% on R&D have probably prioritized the budgets with a focus on GenAI. Megatech companies such as Apple and Microsoft have increased their R&D expense by a few billion dollars. These fresh dollars are mostly likely focused on creating new AI products and services.

Disclosures: I am a Sales Engineer at Snowflake. All opinions in this blog post are solely mine and do not reflect Snowflake's views. I am not a Registered Investment Advisor, and any discussion on securities or investments is not an inducement to make a particular investment.

Paccar: Peak Demand For Trucks

 Paccar (PCAR) produced 185,900 trucks in 2022 and is on track for another record year in 2023. The company has experienced good revenue growth in 2021 and 2022. The company has experienced stellar gross and operating margins over the past few years. The company registered a 16% gross and 13% operating margin in 2022. The current fiscal year, 2023, may bring even more good news on the margin front. The company registered a 20% gross and 17% operating margin in its March 2023 quarter and maintained its 17% operating margin in June 2023. 

Unfortunately, the demand for trucks may have peaked, given high-interest rates, high inflation, and waning consumer demand. Some of the strength in the truck market was due to the stimulus and subsidies provided by the U.S. Federal Government that bolstered infrastructure spending and brought about a manufacturing renaissance in this country. Although the bills passed by Congress in 2022 have more spending left for a few more years, the weakening consumer and lack of demand in the real estate sector may counteract the spending by the Federal Government. Fiscal year 2023 may be as good as it gets for Paccar. The stock has performed well over the past year, and its dividend yield has fallen. Dividend income seekers may have to wait for a much higher dividend before buying the stock. Treasury rates have increased enough that bonds offer an attractive alternative for investors waiting for a higher yield. Due to these reasons, I rate it a hold.

Exceptional performance of Paccar.

Paccar has performed exceptionally well over the past year, gaining 50% (Exhibit 1). The stock has handily outperformed the S&P 500, which has returned 15% over the past year. Cummins (CMI) gained just 3% over the past year. Year-to-date, the stock has gained 33% compared to the 12% return of the S&P 500 Index (SP500). The Vanguard Industrials Index Fund ETF (VIS) has had a great year, with a return of 16% over the past year. The industrial sector has benefitted from the stimulus and subsidy spending by the U.S. Federal Government. Although more subsidy spending is left in the coming years under the bill authorized by Congress in 2022, a combination of high interest rates and a slowing global economy may cap any upside in this stock.

Exhibit 1: 

Performance of Paccar, S&P 500, and Cummins (Seeking Alpha)

Fully valued

Although the stock, trading at a forward GAAP PE of 11.4x, looks undervalued compared to its five-year average of 14.4x, given the economic environment and the rate increase, this lower valuation may be deserved. The Vanguard Industrial Index ETF (VIS) may be overvalued, trading at a weighted average PE of 20x and a price/book ratio of 4x. The EV/EBITDA multiple may better assess the company’s valuation. The stock trades at a 10.2x forward EV/EBITDA multiple compared to the sector median of 10.7x. This indicates the stock may be fully valued. Cummins (CMI), a Paccar peer, looks undervalued, trading at a 7.8x forward EV/EBITDA multiple.

Dividends, buybacks, and debt.

Given the stock's performance over the past year, the yield has dropped to 1.2%. The Vanguard Industrials ETF offers a yield of 1.4%, and the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF yields 1.58%. The payout ratio is 12%, a rather conservative number. But, given the cyclical nature of the truck business, Paccar may be suitable to be cautious with its payout. A low payout may also free up cash for stock repurchases. The company paid $483 million in total dividend payments over the trailing twelve months. The company has grown its dividend annually at the pace of 7.5%, compared to 6.8% for the sector, over the past five years.

Paccar has spent $828 million in share buybacks over the past decade. But, the company has issued over $300 million in stock over the past decade, blunting the share buybacks' effects. The diluted share count is reduced from 532.8 million in 2013 to 524.1 million over the trailing twelve months, just 8.7 million. Using this share count reduction, the average price paid for the buybacks is $95 compared to its current price of $86.

The company generated $5.4 billion in EBITDA during the trailing twelve months. Paccar generated $3.5 billion in operating cash and $2.37 billion in free cash flow. This free cash flow number is derived by deducting the company’s capital expenditures from its operating cash. These numbers are good, but investors should remember that 2022 was one of the strongest years for truck demand globally, and 2023 is shaping to be another good year. I am concerned these good times, and any demand reduction could dent its cash flows. Also, the company generates a lot of revenue from its financing division. If the economy slows further and demand wanes, it could increase bad loans and decrease the demand for new loans, as the U.S. Treasury rates have increased to their highest levels in over a decade.

Paccar has performed exceptionally well over the past decade, returning 237% on a total return basis compared to the 210% return of the S&P 500 Index. But, weakening consumers coupled with high rates may put a substantial dent in demand across the various sectors of the economy. The stock’s performance has been impressive, and the industrial sector has been strong over the past year. Most of this strength may be attributed to the various bills passed by the U.S. Congress that have billions of dollars in outlays for renewable energy, electric vehicles, infrastructure modernization, and efforts to re-shore manufacturing and build semiconductor plants. Investors should be concerned that most of the demand across the industrial sector and Paccar is driven not by consumer organic demand but by the government's industrial policy. Paccar’s strength may not last, and it may be best for investors to wait for a much lower entry point.

The Industrials Sector is on a Tear

 The Vanguard Industrials Index ETF (VIS) touched a 52-week high of $202.86 on Friday, June 16 (Exhibit 1).  

Exhibit 1:

Vanguard Industrial Index ETF (VIS) 5-Day Performance
Source: Seeking Alpha

The top performer in this ETF was Vertiv Holdings, returning 133% over the past year (as of June 16, 2023). The company describes itself as follows:

"Vertiv is a global leader in the design, manufacturing and servicing of critical digital infrastructure for data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial environments. Our customers operate in some of the world's most critical and growing industries, including cloud services, financial services, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, energy, education, government, social media, and retail." (Source: SEC.GOV)

This renewed interest in data centers is not surprising, given the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) and the investments in new applications powered by AI. 

In the Q1 2023 Earnings call, Vertiv's management said the following about AI:

"We are distinctly seeing the first signs of the AI investment cycle in our pipelines and orders. Vertiv is uniquely positioned to win here, given our market leadership and deep domain expertise in areas like thermal management and controls, which are vital to support the complexity of future AI infrastructures." (Source: Seeking Alpha)

"Let me go back to the investments in AI. You may have heard it as generally characterized as the next infrastructure arms race, Vertiv benefits from this race and is an agnostic partner of choice to the risk participants. The acceleration in investment in AI will turn into a net infrastructure capacity demand acceleration, and this starts to be visible in our pipeline. AI applications’ demand and net capacity increase in the industry, higher power density, a gradual migration to an air and liquid hybrid cooling environment and a transition to liquid-ready facility designed." (Source: Seeking Alpha)

 Here's the list of the top 10 performers in the Vanguard Industrials Index ETF over the past year (Exhibit 2).  

Exhibit 2:

Top 10 Performers in the Vanguard Industrials Index ETF
Source: Barchart.com, Data Provided by IEX Cloud

 Here's the list of the bottom 10 worst performers in the Industrials ETF over the past year (Exhibit 3):

Exhibit 3:

Bottom 10 Worst Performers in the Vanguard Industrials Index ETF
Source: Barchart.com, Data Provided by IEX Cloud

The Chemours Company had a fantastic start to 2023

The Chemours Company is a diversified chemical company serving multiple industries. Here are its products:

Exhibit 1:

Here's the graph of the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF and the Chemours Company:  

Exhibit 2:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Graph Created Using Microsoft Excel and RStudio

The Chemours Company averaged a monthly return of 2.59% compared to a 1% return for the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (Exhibits 3 & 4). 

Exhibit 3:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Calculated Using Microsoft Excel

Exhibit 4:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Calculated Using Microsoft Excel

A linear regression of the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF and the Chemours Company estimates the beta (the coefficient of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index) as 1.82. Yahoo Finance estimates the beta as 1.88 based on five years of monthly returns.   

Here's the output from the linear model:  
 

Call:

lm(formula = CC_Monthly_Return ~ VOO_Monthly_Return, data = VOOandCC)

Residuals:

     Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 

-0.23930 -0.07880  0.01016  0.07621  0.29157 

Coefficients:

                   Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    

(Intercept)        0.006698   0.018764   0.357    0.723    

VOO_Monthly_Return 1.825643   0.325520   5.608 1.45e-06 ***

---

Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 0.1224 on 42 degrees of freedom

Multiple R-squared:  0.4282, Adjusted R-squared:  0.4146 

F-statistic: 31.45 on 1 and 42 DF,  p-value: 1.45e-06

The stock had a great January 2023 with a return of 18% compared to a 6.2% return of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF.  

Here's the chart of the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index and the Chemours Company:

Exhibit 5:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Calculated Using Microsoft Excel

Hormel Foods' Lower Returns than the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF

Hormel Foods own several iconic brands shown in the images below.  

Source: Hormel Foods Corporation

Hormel Foods (HRL) has averaged a lower monthly return than the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (VOO). The company has averaged a monthly return of 46 basis points compared to 105 basis points for the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (Exhibits 1& 2).     

Exhibit 1:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel

Exhibit 2:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel

A linear regression of the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF and Hormel Foods yields a beta of 0.237.  

Here's the output from the linear regression model created using RStudio:

Call:

lm(formula = HRL_Monthly_Return ~ VOO_Monthly_Return, data = VOOandHRL)

Residuals:

      Min        1Q    Median        3Q       Max 

-0.102639 -0.023972 -0.001719  0.022192  0.166993 

Coefficients:

                   Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept)        0.002084   0.008249   0.253    0.802

VOO_Monthly_Return 0.237144   0.143102   1.657    0.105

Residual standard error: 0.0538 on 42 degrees of freedom

Multiple R-squared:  0.06137, Adjusted R-squared:  0.03902 

F-statistic: 2.746 on 1 and 42 DF,  p-value: 0.1049

The p-value of 0.1 indicates that the relationship is insignificant at the 95% confidence interval.

Between June 2019 and January 2023, the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF and Hormel Foods had a positive correlation of 0.24. But between September 2020 and August 2021, the correlation was a negative 0.13 (Exhibit: 3). This was when stocks such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla went on an epic, once-in-a-lifetime run into the trillion-dollar club in terms of market capitalization. Consumer staples stocks such as Hormel Foods went out of favor during this period, dropping 10.8%. 

Exhibit 3:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel and RStudio

Hormel Foods may be the perfect stock to own during a bear market. Its low volatility and, at times, negative correlation with the S&P 500 Index means it performs well when the markets perform poorly.  
 

     

Clorox's Poor Average Monthly Returns

Clorox makes household products such as wipes, sprays, and bleach (Exhibit 1). 

Exhibit 1: 

Source: Clorox Website

Over the past decade, Clorox has underperformed compared to the S&P 500 Index. An analysis of the monthly returns of Clorox and the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF between June 2019 and January 2023 shows that Clorox continued its poor performance. Clorox's monthly return averaged 0.1%, while the Vanguard S&P 500 Index returned 1% (Exhibits 2 & 3). Even the third quartile average monthly return of 3.2% of Clorox fell below the 4.8% returned by the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (Exhibits 2 & 3).  

Exhibit 2:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel

Exhibit 3:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel

The monthly returns of Clorox and the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF between June 2019 and January 2023 show a low correlation of 0.24. 

A rolling correlation of the monthly returns conducted using RStudio shows a low positive correlation of 0.02 between August 2020 and July 2021 (Exhibit 4). 

Exhibit 4:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel, RStudio

 A linear regression of the monthly returns shows a very low beta of 0.25 for Clorox. But, the p-value of 0.1 shows that the relationship may not be significant at the 95% confidence interval.  

Call:

lm(formula = CLX_Monthly_Return ~ VOO_Monthly_Return, data = VOOandCLX)

Residuals:

      Min        1Q    Median        3Q       Max 

-0.141038 -0.033613  0.000236  0.036959  0.120780 

Coefficients:

                    Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept)        -0.001581   0.008864  -0.178    0.859

VOO_Monthly_Return  0.252497   0.153777   1.642    0.108

Residual standard error: 0.05781 on 42 degrees of freedom

Multiple R-squared:  0.06032, Adjusted R-squared:  0.03795 

F-statistic: 2.696 on 1 and 42 DF,  p-value: 0.1081 

Here's the graph of the monthly returns of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF and Clorox (Exhibit 5) and the residuals plot from the linear regression (Exhibit 6).

Exhibit 5:   

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel, RStudio

Exhibit 6:

Source: Data Provided by IEX Cloud, Author Calculations using Microsoft Excel, RStudio