The Emerging Market Profit Collapse

August 29, 2013 Leave a comment

The Emerging Market Profit Collapse

ED YARDENI, DR. ED’S BLOG AUG. 28, 2013, 10:57 AM 1,911

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I don’t expect that yesterday’s anxiety attack over the deteriorating Middle East situation will turn into another panic attack for the US stock market. On the other hand, while US stock prices have been quite resilient this summer, the currencies, bonds, and stocks of emerging market (EM) economies have been getting clobbered. This has happened because global investors fear that the consequences of prospective Fed QE tapering will be more severe for the EMs than for developed economies. That’s only part of the story. The fact is that the forward earnings of the MSCI Emerging Markets composite peaked at a record high during the week of August 4, 2011 and has been trending lower since then. Analysts’ consensus estimates for both 2013 and 2014 also are falling, and at a faster pace in recent weeks. Net earnings revisions have been negative for the past 30 months.Revenues still are rising for the companies included in the MSCI EM index, but at a significantly slower pace since 2011 than during the global economic recovery of 2009 and 2010. The big story is the collapse of the forward profit margin since early 2011 from around 8.5% to 6.5% now. The likely cause of that is rising labor costs. The recent rise in oil prices must also be squeezing margins.

Today’s Morning Briefing: Arab Winter. (1) Anxiety attack about US attacking Syria. (2) Geopolitical premium in oil prices rising again. (3) From spring to winter in the Middle East. (4) An Arab world war between Sunnis and Shiites. (5) Meet the Hatfields and McCoys of the Middle East. (6) A short guide to the region. (7) Bibi’s warning. (8) Why Syria matters to oil prices. (9) Putting a lid on valuation, for now. (10) Emerging markets had issues before the price of oil moved higher. (11) EM profit margins have been squeezed significantly.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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