Favoritos para nuevo dinero de Morningstar (Septiembre):
- Coca-Cola
- Novo Nordisk
- ITC Holdings
- CH Robinson
- Kinder Morgan Management
- Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan
Coca-Cola is home to some of the world’s most well-known and
well-liked beverage brands, as well as an unmatched global
distribution system. Management is exceptional; the company
described its strategic vision for 2020 back in 2009 and has
been steadily executing against the goals it set for itself ever
since. While some of Coke’s products are past the point of
saturation—especially carbonated soft drinks in North America—
the company still has plenty of room to grow in emerging
markets and through its diversified portfolio, which includes sodas,
waters, juices, teas, sports drinks, and endless variations on
these themes: diet versions, “zero” versions, different package sizes,
and so on.
Novo Nordisk has one of the widest moats in health care. The worldwide leader in diabetes treatments enjoys numerous competitive
advantages, including manufacturing scale (Novo has 50% market share of global insulin volumes), intellectual property, marketing
expertise, and brand loyalty. Novo also has exemplary stewardship, with a consistent track record of innovation and disciplined capital allocation. Diabetes is an attractive niche for drugmakers, with rising incidence driven by aging populations, unhealthy diets, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
ITC’s stock could see elevated volatility in the near term as the
company’s planned acquisition of transmission assets from Entergy
ETR faces a variety of state regulatory hurdles. However, we
haven’t incorporated any benefit from the merger in our $98 fair
value estimate, and this deal isn’t essential to our investment
thesis. ITC has a unique focus on independent electricity transmission, which means its primary regulator is the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission. FERC tends to be more transparent and
less affected by local political pressures than state regulators.
After the 2003 blackout that stretched across much of the Northeast,
Midwest, and parts of Canada, FERC made the reliability of the
U.S. electricity grid a top priority. The regulator has been allowing
ITC to earn returns on equity north of 12%, which combined with
ITC’s robust pipeline of capital spending projects and low cost of
equity results in a powerful growth engine.
C.H. Robinson experienced a low-single-digit decline in earnings
per share in the first two quarters of 2013, which is the first time in
at least a decade this has peine. The big unknown is whether
recent margin pressure is primarily due to cyclical factors, or if the
freight brokerage business has become permanently more competitive. Competition is nothing new to Robinson—despite being the
nation’s pre-eminent third-party logistics provider, Robinson still only
touches about 3% of total trucking volumes. However, I think the
company maintains an advantage because of its scale and network
effect, which generally enable it to offer a higher level of service
and procure shipping capacity more cheaply than competitors.
Kinder Morgan Management is economically equivalent to Kinder
Morgan Energy Partners KMP, except that it avoids the tax complications of a master limited partnership by paying distributions
in additional shares instead of cash. KMP faces several hurdles to
growth—in particular, it must share 50% of incremental distributions with its general partner, and the tertiary oil recovery business
is exposed to commodity price fluctuations and the likelihood of
declining production over the long run. However, management
keeps finding creative new ways to grow, such as acquiring Copano
Energy and El Paso. KMR’s implied distribution yield is 6.6%,
which combined with our outlook for mid-single-digit annual distribution growth should make for an attractive total return.
The dispute between Russian potash miner Uralkali and Belarusian
miner Belaruskali—discussed in the August issue—threatens
to end the oligopolistic pricing that has benefited potash miners for
years. Uralkali has said that its new volume-over-price strategy
could push potash prices down 25% to below $300 per ton. This is
undoubtedly bad for the industry, but investors seem to be overreacting—POT looks undervalued even after lowering our longterm base potash price forecast to $300/ton. This remains a highly
dynamic situation—Uralkali and Belaruskali might eventually
reconcile, which could create upside to our fair value estimate.