Investir en bourse pendant la crise ?

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Investir en bourse pendant la crise ?

Dans le Wall Street Journal du 10/11, le financier expérimenté -excellent et iconoclaste- Evan Newmark nous donne sa vision des investissements boursiers en période de crise économique. C'est très instructif notamment sa réflexion sur la valeur d'une société, la valeur de l'actif comptable, l'importance de la dette et les avantages concurrentiels avec l'exemple de Fedex.

Je trouve l'analyse pertinente, après tout, qu'est ce qu'il y a de mieux pour l'investisseur qu'un duopole si ce n'est un monopole ?
A mon sens, tout investisseur en bourse devrait raisonner de cette façon qui est proche de l'approche value de Warren Buffet.

"The Beauty of Investing in Bad Times
Posted by Deal Journal
There is no way around it. The news from Friday was bad. Real bad.

The October jobs report showed rocketing unemployment. General Motors confessed it was on the verge of bankruptcy. And President-elect Obama admitted there was no quick economic fix.

On CNBC, an assembled jobs panel disintegrated into an orgy of pessimism. “We’re not halfway done.” “There’s really no place to go.” “It’s an accelerator.…The economy is deteriorating beneath our feet.”

This is how the “bunker” mentality takes hold. Fear feeds on itself until investors convince themselves a global recession will last the next five years.

If you are a contrarian, this is exactly the time to consider buying shares. If you are a supercontrarian, you consider buying shares in a company like FedEx.

The shippers like UPS and FedEx are the “canary in the coal mine” for the U.S. economy. The shippers no doubt will suffer from lower volume and pricing pressures as the economy weakens. The only question is how bad will it get?

Here is the good news for the long-term investor. There is so much bad news priced into FedEx shares that they are worth a wager.

On Friday, FedEx closed at $64.58, off 37% from the 52-week high. FedEx trades at about 13 times expected May 2009 earnings, an inexpensive but not dirt-cheap multiple. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index trades at about this level.

In classic Wall Street jargon, Merrill Lynch explains its “underperform” rating and a $69 price target on FedEx shares. “Our $69 price objective is based on 14x forward P/E multiple on our F2009 EPS estimate of $4.90. We target a 14x multiple, which is within one standard deviation of its 15 year historical average of forward P/E.”

Seems reasonable. But this is Wall Street “recession math.” Conservative, focused on simple P/Es and short-term earnings forecasts.

This is exactly the kind of stuff a long-term investor needs to see beyond. It basically ignores FedEx’s book value–the value of its assets less liabilities. Today, that value stands at almost $49 a share–not too far below where the shares trade.

When a company’s share price approaches its book value, investors are saying they either don’t trust the company’s balance sheet or that they expect no real earnings growth.

Unsurprisingly, Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley trade well below book value. Apple trades at four times book value.

But FedEx is no broker-dealer. It has a rock solid balance sheet–negligible debt and hard assets underneath. And it has enormous earnings potential.

In the U.S., the company basically operates a duopoly with UPS — especially now that DHL is cutting its U.S. operation. Prices for fuel–a huge cost component for FedEx — have plummeted. And FedEx can shrink or expand its operations as well as any company in the world.

A pessimist can paint a scenario where earnings for FedEx don’t increase for many years. But look at the history of FedEx. The company is a survivor.

It was born in the stagflation of the 1970s.

In the October 1987 crash, the shares fell by a third and bounced around, doing little through the recession of 1990-91 until 1992. Then the shares marched higher, rising more than 10-fold by 2007.

Many investors may not have the patience to wait five years for the stock to come around. And the shares could certainly flatline for a couple of years.

But the smart long-term investor looks at the downside. And even though horrible economic data will pour forth in the next few months, it is hard to see FedEx shares dropping well below book value–global recession or not."