Investors interested in quality ratios for Albemarle Corporation (ALB) should take a good look at the Gross Profitability of the stock. Robert Novy-Marx, a professor at the university of Rochester, discovered that gross profitability – a quality factor – has as much power predicting stock returns as traditional value metrics. He found that while other quality measures had some predictive power, especially on small caps and in conjunction with value measures, gross profitability generates significant excess returns as a stand alone strategy, especially on large cap stocks.The Gross profitability for Albemarle Corporation (ALB) is 16.2662%.
Investors may be searching for various types of stocks to help diversify the portfolio. Growth stocks include shares of companies that may have the possibility of generating higher than average profit growth and revenues. These companies tend to pump earnings back into the business, and they generally expand quicker than the overall economy. Although growth stocks can be a bit riskier, they can also provide a higher level of reward down the line. Cyclical stocks consist of companies that typically will ride the wave of the overall economy. These shares tend to perform well when the economy is doing well and perform poorer when the economy is faltering.
Professor Novy-Marx’s key insight was that you don’t need to go further down the income statement as these numbers may get manipulated with accounting tricks. To identify really profitable firms, one should look at the top line, not the bottom line. In one of his papers, Novy-Marx compares gross profitability to the other most famous strategies such as Greenblatt magic formula, Piortoski F-Score, etc.
Investors may be looking closely at current stock market levels as we move towards the closing stages of the year. Investors might be reviewing current holdings to see if there are any changes that need to be made. Even when things are going good with equities, it may be wise to regularly check the portfolio to make sure that everything is still balanced properly. Being prepared for various market conditions may be a great help to the investor when the winds of change eventually blow in.
Total Asset Growth
In their 2008 paper, professors Cooper, Gulen and Schill provided evidence that a firm’s assets growth rates are strong predictors of future abnormal returns.
“The findings suggest that corporate events associated with asset expansion (i.e., acquisitions, public equity offerings, public debt offerings, and bank loan initiations) tend to be followed by periods of abnormally low returns, whereas events associated with asset contraction (i.e., spin-offs, share repurchases, debt prepayments, and dividend initiations) tend to be followed by periods of abnormally high returns.” – Cooper, Gulen & Shill in Asset Growth and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns. In a study on US data during the period 1967-2007, they find that:
– A hedge portfolio rebalanced annually that is long (short) the stocks of companies with the lowest (highest) percentage growth in total assets over the previous 12 months generates an average annual return of 22%.
– This asset growth effect is stronger for small capitalization stocks, but is still substantial for large capitalization stocks.
– The effect is strongest in the month of January.
– Asset growth rate retains large explanatory power for future stock returns after accounting for firm size, book-to-market ratio and momentum. In fact the asset growth effect is at least as powerful in explaining returns as these other widely used factors.
We calculate asset growth as follows:
Total Asset Growth = (Total AssetsTotal Assets y-1) − 1. Albemarle Corporation (ALB) has a total asset growth number of -0.4799%.
Net Debt to Market Cap
This ratio gives a sense of how much debt a company has relative to its market value. Companies with high debt levels compared to their peers can be volatile. We calculate it as follows:
Net Debt to Market Cap = (Total Debt−Cash and ST Investments) / Market Cap
Albemarle Corporation (ALB) has a net debt to market cap ratio of 0.002484.
Altman Z Score
Albemarle Corporation (ALB) has an Altman Z score of 3.074906. The Z-Score for predicting bankruptcy was published in 1968 by Edward I. Altman, who was assistant professor of finance at New York University at that time. It measures the financial health of a company based on a set of income and balance sheet values. The Altman Z-Score predicts the probability that a firm will go bankrupt within 2 years. In its initial test, the Altman Z-Score was found to be 72% accurate in predicting bankruptcy two years before the event. In a series of subsequent tests, the model was found to be approximately 80%–90% accurate in predicting bankruptcy one year before the event
Atman built the model by applying the statistical method of discriminant analysis to a dataset of publicly held manufacturers. Since then he has published new versions based on other datasets for private manufacturing (Z’-Score), non-manufacturing, service companies and companies in emerging markets. (Z”-Score)
Please also note that the original dataset used was quite small and consisted of only 66 firms of which half filed for bankruptcy. All companies were manufacturers and small firms (total assets less than $1m) were removed.
When the stock market is doing well, there may be plenty of winners in the portfolio. Figuring out when to sell a winner can be a tricky proposition. Many investors will be quick to take profits while others may want to hold out for further gains. Selling winners too early or holding on to winners too long may have a negative impact on the trading portfolio. Finding that balance between securing profits and holding out to take higher profits in the future can be very helpful for the active investor.
VC3
Value Composite Three (VC3) is another adaptation of O’Shaughnessy’s value composite but here he combines the factors used in VC1 with buyback yield. This factor is interesting for investors who’re looking for stocks with the best value characteristics, but are indifferent to whether these companies pay a dividend.
VC3 is the combination of the following factors:
- Price-to-Book
- Price-to-Earnings
- Price-to-Sales
- EBITDA/EV
- Price-to-Cash flow
- Buyback Yield
As with the VC1 and VC2, companies are put into groups from 1 to 100 for each ratio and the individual scores are summed up. This total score is then put into groups again from 1 to 100. 1 is cheap, 100 is expensive.
The scorecard also displays variants of the VC3 where the score is calculated for the selected company compared to peer companies in the same industry, industry group or sector.
Please note that we use Book-to-Market instead of P/B since it allows a more accurate sorting compared to P/B. Stocks with a high B/M show up at the top of the list, stocks with negative B/M are at the bottom of the list. For the same reason we use Earnings-to-Price instead of Price-to-Earnings and Cash flow-to-price instead instead of Price-to-cash flow.
Also important is that we always make sure that companies with the same score get added to the same percentile. For stock universes where the number of stocks is less than 100, we make sure that the stocks are still allocated to percentiles from 0 to 100 instead of 0 to the total number of stocks. This is particularly relevant for the industry, industry group or sector variants where if additional filters are used, the number of stocks often drops below 100.
