BY MARK SEBASTIAN
November 2, 2023
Each week, I’ll give an overview of a stock and Licia Leslie will follow that up with a chart analysis the next day. Bill Griffo will chime in with macro analysis and Andrew Giovinazzi will then finish out the week with a volatility breakdown.
Have a stock YOU want us to review? Email my team here. – Mark
Hey Traders,
At the end of July the S&P 500 was up over 20%…
That is no longer the case with higher rates and economic worries, compact earnings multiples.
But even before the sell off, there were names that are VERY good quality companies that have been getting smoked.
The companies that produce things…make STUFF…have had a bad 2023.
Look at the multiples on names like X or even GE and you will know what I’m talking about.
What is crazy is that in this era of soaring food costs, some of the names that produce food have been crushed. John Deere, the maker of all the equipment farmers need to grow food that costs A LOT right now, is down 28 dollars on the year, that is over 7%.
But that is not the industry I am focusing on today. Instead I want to turn your attention to the stocks that actually make food grow…the fertilizer companies.
The entire industry is in the dumps frankly. CF is down 27%, NTR is down 37%, I could pick any of these names as a stock to focus on. For this week we are going to focus on the most well known, if not the biggest fertilizer stock…Mosaic Co (Ticker: MOS).
Mosaic is currently priced at a valuation of 10.8 billion dollars. The stock is off 42% in the last 12 months…
That is ABYSMAL, worse than both CF and NTR. All of these companies seem cheap when you look at the fundamentals.
Here is what I see in MOS.
The Good
The company pays a .20 quarterly dividend that is a 2.5% yield. No, it’s not a money market pay out, but you are getting ownership.
EPS is high at 6.33 per share, the cash flow per share is almost 9 dollars per share. The book value of the company is 5 dollars more than the actual stock price at 37.34.
That is something you see in companies about to go belly up, not companies that are paying a dividend.
IN the last year the company has made 2.17 billion dollars…and the revenue per share exceeds the stock price at 49.36.
The PE…5.13, that is exceptionally low.
So why is the stock getting punished?
The Bad
Long term debt…
The company, while reducing debt does have a lot on the books, nothing insane, but at 2.4 billion dollars, that is a lot.
Still long term debt is falling, thus the company is in pretty good shape financially.
The issue mosaic has is likely more geopolitical than anything else. These stocks got a nice jolt when Russia invaded Ukraine, but politically, ammonia is not loved by environmentalists.
Ukraine did cause these generally low PE stocks to explode, but the recoil of markets adjusting back to the conflict probably overshot the mark.
The Verdict
From a long term portfolio standpoint, I am a buyer
For the near term…I’ll leave that to Licia.
Your Only Option,
Mark Sebastian
Mark Sebastian
Founder & CEO, Option Pit
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