America’s Most Overvalued Companies Are…

March 14, 2014 Leave a comment

America’s Most Overvalued Companies Are…

Tyler Durden on 03/10/2014 19:45 -0400

Over the weekend we reported that even Goldman has now highlighted what has been clear to most, but certainly not the Fed, for quite some time: stocks are in such an epic bubble, with many of the key valuation metrics notably EV/sales, off the charts and at all time highs, that even Goldman’s own clients are asking “When does the party end?” Never one, however, to tell clients to sell and hold to cash (just think of the lost flow trading commissions, not to mention the potential prop trading losses from frontrunning said flow), Goldman Sachs was kind enough to point out that while buying into undervalued stocks at this record high market junction may be a safe bet, the alternative, going long the most overvalued stocks usually ends in tears.

So just what are these most overvalued stocks? To answer this question David Kostin screens for those Russell 1000 companies with the highest EV/Sales ratios (because in the new normal actual earnings – not the non-GAAP, adjusted, recasted, added back mumbo jombo, and certainly cash flows no longer matter), and finds 40 companies, with a ratio between 10x and 875x (median of 15x compared to the overall Russell’s 2x), that fit the bill (and which have returned 10% YTD compared to just 3% for the broader index).

The answer – the list of America’s most overvalued companies – is shown in the table below.

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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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