S&P 500's Top Decile Economic Margin Companies

Traditional Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) models have been been underutilized in equity analysis over the years primarily because of the assumptions one has to sign off on. We will concentrate on just two of the major issues we have with traditional DCF models, the lack of ability to deal with competition and the perpetuity assumption embedded in a DCF model. These assumptions lead to irrational calculations of intrinsic value and force analysts to make compromising decisions in their model building efforts.

AFG uses a modified DCF model that accurately addresses the competitive nature of the business while also dealing with the perpetuity issue through our Economic Margin decay or competitive advantage period.

The four factors that affect AFG’s Competitive Advantage Period (CAP) are;

Profitability – High Profit leads to increased competition and a higher decay rate
Variability – Higher volatility leads to less predictability and a higher decay rate
Trend – AFG gives the benefit of the doubt to an upward trend which leads to a lower decay rate
Invested Capital – Large Invested Capital creates barriers to entry and leads to lower decay rate

The Decay Rate is the rate at which the Economic Margins™ will diminish over time due to competition, market conditions and limited investment opportunities. Higher decay rates translate into shorter competitive advantage periods, while lower decay rates translate into longer competitive advantage periods.

The Decay Rate profile is downward sloping to the right, which means that Economic Margins™ over time diminish to zero. This does not mean that the company will not have earnings, but instead the company will have an Economic Margin™ of zero, which indicates there are no excess profits after the investors are paid and the depreciating assets are replaced.When selecting securities, companies that are maintaining a high level of economic profitability or growing their profits rapidly are attractive from an investment standpoint. However, the more profitable a firm is the more likely other companies will attempt compete away excess returns.

To illustrate this, one has to look no further than Dell Computer (DELL). Dell Computer had Economic Margins™ hovering around 40% (top 5% of all companies) in 1997 and 1998, but soon every major firm was announcing that they were going to build computers to order. Why? Because they saw the huge profits that Dell was making. The result is that Dell's Economic Margin™ for 1999 was around 25%, a decline of 37.5% in just one year. The remaining factors are relatively straight-forward, in that volatile returns are worth less than consistent returns, companies with an increasing Economic Margins™ are worth more than a company in decline, and large companies have a natural barrier to entry, thus a lower decay rate.

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Theory: Excess return gets competed away

Fact: In 1997, the median top decile Economic Margin (EM) firm = 17.4%. 10 years later, that same group of companies had a median EM of 6.5%. On the other hand, the bottom decile had an EM of -12.2%, 10 years later that same group had a median EM of -1.0%.

Current Top Decile Economic Margin Companies (S&P 500 ex. financials)

Comments

[relayer75:]

Sure would be nice if the top decile were ranked. I guess it's proprietary. Glad to see my top two holdings (AAPL and CELG) are on the list.

Jun 17 02:59 PM