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11 Dividend stock picking criteria: is ENIA a good stock?

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Value investor often look into those 11 creteria when evluating a dividend stock:

Criterion #1: Credit Rating   Look for stocks with a grade of B+ or higher ( Moody’s www.moodys.com and Standard and Poor’s www.standardandpoors.com)

ENIA passed with its Baa3 rating. See the news below:

New York, December 19, 2019 — Moody’s Investors Service (“Moody’s“) today changed to positive from stable the outlook on Enel Américas S.A. (ENIA). Moody’s also affirmed the ‘Baa3‘ senior unsecured rating of ENIA.Dec 19, 2019

Criterion #2: Cash Flow Assessment

A strong cash flow allows a company to scale its operations and develop innovative products. It provides the means to fund dividend payouts . We look for Net Income growing at 5-10% per year (from Income Statement) – we also prefer stable or growing Operating Cash flow (From Cash Flow Statement).

We may use financial data from morningstar.

ENIA:

Net Income:

201720182019TTM3-Yr Trend
0.711.201.611.61Increase every year

Operating cash flow: ?

Not found in morning star for the last 3 years somehow.

Criterion #3: Cash & Cash Equivalents       

We prefer a company with consistent growth in cash and cash equivalents, as seen from Balance Sheets from financial web sites such as morning star.

ENIA:

201720182019Q4 2019
1.58 2.05 2.04 2.04

Criterion #4: Debt Repayment Capacity

We prefer a company with a debt coverage ratio of at least 3:1.

We can use data from morning star.

debt coverage ratio = Net Income / (Interest Expenses + Other Payments)

Other payments could be principle, sinking, lease payments etc.

Interest Coverage is another ratio similar to debt coverage ratio above. The ratio is calculated by dividing a company’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by the company’s interest expenses for the same period. 

Per WSJ, as of 09/11/2020, ENIA’s Interest Coverage is 3.29. PASSED.

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/ENIA/financials

Criterion #5: Management Performance 

Read company reports as well as analyst reports. Understand its management team. Know the company’s long term growth and expansion plans.    

ENIA: Recent quarterly call transcripts:

https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/ENIA/earnings/transcripts

Criterion #6:    Current Dividend Yield

It should be at least 4% or 5%. ENIA: 12.51% (Paid Semiannually)

Criterion #7: Dividend Growth Rate

It should be at least 5%. Check out dividend.com and know the company’s dividend policy. ENIA: 5 years: 4.60%

Criterion #8: Dividend Payout Ratio

It should be less than 60% (check out dividend.com). Otherwise it cannot fund its growth.

Payout ratio of 60%-70% is acceptable only if its dividend yield is compelling (8-10%). Considering selling it if its payout ratio is too high.

ENIA Dividend Payout Ratio:

59.77%, PASSED (Based on Cash Flow, https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/ENIA/dividend/)

But other sites are showing different numbers:

122.43% (FWD PAYOUT RATIO, https://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/utilities/electric-utilities/enia-enersis-americashttps://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/ENIA/dividend/-sa/#tm=3-ticker-best-div-capture&r=ES%3A%3ADividendStock%3A%3AStock%23ENIA–NYSE&f_28=true&only=meta%2Cdata%2Cthead)

114.03% – FAIL ??? (https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/ENIA/dividends/dividend-safety)

Criterion #9: ROE

ROE for the last 3 or more years is 12% or higher.

TTM ROE is at least 15%. Use financial data from morningstar/Key Ratios/Profitability.

During the past 13 years, Enel Americas/ENIA’s highest ROE % was 19.87%. The lowest was 7.46%. And the median was 11.22%. (https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ROE/NYSE:ENIA/ROE–ttm/Enel-Americas)

Enel Americas/ENIA’s return on equity, or ROE TTM, is 11.16% , as of 9/11/2020 (https://www.zacks.com/stock/chart/ENIA/fundamental/return-on-equity-ttm).

Criterion #10: Insider Activity

Buy when insiders are holding or buying more shares. Data can be extracted from:

a. Morningstar/Insiders/Insider Activity

b. Yahoo Finance/Insider Transactions

c. Zacks.com/More Research/Insiders

ENIA: No inside activities for the last 6 months: https://in.finance.yahoo.com/quote/ENIA/insider-transactions/

Criterion #11: Intrinsic value

Buy at or below its instrinsic value because your performance is determined not only by dividends but also capital appreciation.

ENIA: $10.66, current price $7.21 USD as of 09/11/2020. PASSED.

as of

12/31/201910.658

Freelancer.com is full of scammers

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I had a freelancer.com account a while ago. Recently I just tried to login and see if I could still have access. Turned out to be, right after I logged in, I see a few direct-hire “offers” without me even sending any proposals.

Fantastic! I thought that’s great I could start working on it right away.

One of the scammers with user name “dakosa98798sam” 2 days agosent me a chat:

Hello

Creativity Household is in need of a virtual assistant  to represent and work virtually for the gallery in handling customers services,invoice,data entry and also data processing .Biding freelancers should have an excellent customer service and must be outcome-oriented. The gallery needs an assistant that will help manage its data entry,customer,Ed services,reply to emails,handle data processing and also handle all that deals with invoicing and recordings,creating and design website…JI went through your profile and I think you are qualified for this job. I am looking forward to working with you.i want you to know that you will be paid 300$ per week. You are required to work for three hours a day and you let me know when it’s okay for you to work each day of the week so i can work around such time with you. however, you are not required to make any form of financial investment into  This project as the gallery will bear the full cost of running the gallery. Likewise,your major duty will be to attend to customers’ requests via mail. I also want you to know that the gallery specializes in the online sales of artwork via freelancers who are interested in representing the gallery at their various location please send me a mail at creativityhousehold@gmail.com so i can provide you more details regarding this project and also on how to proceed. Thank you

Immediately after, I received another “direct-hire” offer:

I am currently on a business trip so i need a customer assistant to represent my gallery. I want you to know that you will be paid $400 per week. You are to work for just three hours a day and you are to let me know the convenient … chat me on email bennyroyaltygalleryinc101@gmail.com so i can provide you more information about the project.

This made me a bit suspicious but I responded to each of them anyway. However, they did not respond in freelancer platform. They may expect me to respond to their email they provided in the chat instead.

I did some research on Google. What they actually do is like this:

They may use someone else’s credit cards to purchase lots of merchandise. But they cannot change the shipping address because if they do that credit card company may reject the payment if the shipping address does not match billing address. They will then call the credit card holders and disguise them as a courier service saying they delivered a package to their home “by mistake” and their “employees” will go pick them up from their house soon. So they will “hire” you as their virtual/personal assistant in freelancer.com to pick up those packages for them and mail to the addresses they provide you. Later, they may send you a check, but that’s fake, you’ll end up “working” for them for free, potentially being charged by your bank as the check will eventually be bounced back.

More seriously, you may be on the hook for those criminal activities. Police may track you down and get you arrested as you seem to be involved in this fraudulent activities.

I reported to freelancer.com. I am surprised that their platform is full of those fake jobs and they did not take any actions upon them. Who will join this site infested with scammers?

This is not over.

The most bizzar thing is, on the same night, I got a scammer saying that they are very interested in my profile and may offer me the opportunity. Here are our conversation in Freelancer chat:

Hello good day
User Avatar
How are you doing?
Hi
Thanks
I am good.
I am very interested in the project you posted.
I have done the imports many times with WP
When can I get started?
User Avatar
Are you available for the job?
Yes
User Avatar
Can i see your previous portfolio?
I am new to Freelancer.com , but I have been in software industry for many years
I have a few of my own WP web sites
such as blog.dengsoft.com
I am very confident that I can get yours done with professional grade
User Avatar
Hold let me check
Sure
Okay nice work
User Avatar
I love your design
Thanks
User Avatar
Can i forward the project details so you can have a clearer picture of what i want?
Yes, please
Is it via email?
Kindly download the document via wettransfer https://fil.email/nn2WEBSP
User Avatar
I await your feedback
Sure
Sorry somehow Chrome blocked it. Any other way to access it?
Try another way to download it
That is a zip file
Download and extract
I'm on mobile now
User Avatar
The doc is inside
I am trying with another browser
You may have to re-zip
my 7-zip said it's not a valid archive/zip file
What are you trying to say
User Avatar
Did you click on it?
I downloaded, but cannot open that zip file somehow
Extracting that file failed
User Avatar
Can you make a screenshot of it
image.png
image.png
I used MS Edge browser
now I can see, it's an .exe file?
Is this the one you sent me?
If this .exe is the only file you sent me, can you send me the actual files - text files etc as long as it provided info what to be done. My PC / anti-virus does not allow me to open this .exe file, sorry
You have do al you can to download it
User Avatar
That's the file for the Company
Seen by superjasper41
I downloaded it, but in that zip file, it has only one .exe file
Can you let me know why it's an .exe file? My PC would not open an .exe file from third-party, sorry
Can you screen capture all the necessary info as imgaes and send them to me?
Can you kindly confirm/clarify and get back to me?
??
13 SEP 2020 · 12:10 PM
If you do not respond, I am going to report to freelancer and police as you are trying to scam me and lure me to download an exe file that may have virus and damage my PC.
Message not delivered.
Unfortunately, you are not allowed to send a message to this thread.
Enter your message...

This freelancer.com user, superjasper41, posted the following job:

Need help finishing a WordPress import feature Open Details

Project Details

$250.00 – 750.00 USD BIDDING ENDS IN 4 DAYS, 9 HOURS

I need help understanding how an import feature was configured by a prior developer. We would then need to determine the next steps to complete the importer (possibly other solutions if they are more user friendly). Ideally the candidate would have experience in custom WordPress builds and large data sets (over 100k entries).

https://www.freelancer.com/projects/wordpress/Need-help-finishing-Wordpress-import-27319772/details

Actually, superjasper41 tried to scam me and lure me to download an .exe file that may have virus and damage my PC. I am going to report to freelancer.com and police as this user has the intent to steal my data and damage my PC after I download and click that .exe file he/she sent me. – Why he/she sent an .exe for project details anyway? Is there any other explanation a company/job poster sent you an .exe to provide job description?? I later sent superjasper41 a chat message via freelancer platform to ask for clarification – as you expected it, this user blocked me from sending messages as I may be scammed and victimized. This user superjasper41 should be banned and reported to police from freelancer.com and get prosecuted so innocent people there will get protected!

5G CIENA stock price: a similar ROE method to calculate its intrinsic value

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Use a similar ROE model method described here:

Lesson 21

Use the above mentioned calculator,

Cash Taken Out of Business ($): I entered 0 * This is dividends recieved for 1 year.

Current Book Value ($): 14.57 * We need to know this so we can determine the base value that’s changing.

Average Percent Change in Book Value Per Year (%): 6.67 * This will determine the estimate BV at the end of the next 10 years.

Years: 5 * This will most likely be 10 (if you’re comparing a 10 year federal note).

(Discount Rate) 10 Year Federal Note (%): 0.80 * Look up the ten year treasury note by clicking on this text.


Intrinsic Value ($): 19.33607699236469

I got this number as its intrinsic value:

19.33607699236469

The main difference is, I used 9% as discount rate when calculating NPV, while this calculator uses treasury 10-year note rate (0.80%).

Related blog posts:

  1. How to evaluate a stock? The PE multiple method, CIENA as example
  2. ciena stock price: $44.28 is still overvalued based on my valuations
  3. How to evaluate a stock? The ROE valuation method, CIENA as example
  4. how to evaluate a stock

ciena stock price: $44.28 is still overvalued based on my valuations

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In my previous blog posts, I laid out a plan how to evaluate stocks using three methods.

In the blog post on how to evaluate a stock, I listed three methods when valuing a stock:

  1. P/E Multiple method
  2. DCF model
  3. Return on equity valuation method

I later dive deep into PE multiple method, and calculate CIEN’s intrinsic value as 39.7379.

If I believe my intrinsic value of CIEN, I will consider buying it below $39.73 per share. That’s close to its price 37.34 on Mar 27, 2020.
Before the broad stock market drop last week, CIEN was traded at 60.07 when market closed on Wednesday 9/2.
Yahoo Finance site says this stock price now is Near Fair Value.
According to GuruFocus,  Ciena Intrinsic Value: Projected FCF : USD 33.40 (As of 9/5/2020).
Per https://trendshare.org/stocks/CIEN/view:
CIEN Price
(Ciena Corporation stock price per share)		 $59.93
[?] CIEN Fair Price
(based on intrinsic value)		 $25.84
[?] CIEN Safety Price (based on a variable margin of safety) $15.50

In my latest blog post, I used ROE model and calculated the intrinsic value of CIEN as $23.74639 .

I later said,

The current share price $44.28 of CIEN as of Friday 9/5/2020 is very much overvalued, in my opinion.
By the way, Ciena price target lowered to $37 from $53 at Barclays. Reiterate Underweight.
Barclay’s analyst Tim Long lowered the firms price target on Ciena to $37 from $53 and keeps an Underweight weight rating on the shares. The company’s fiscal Q3 beat on sales, margin, and earnings; but guidance surprised to the downside.

So based on the above research, I think $23.74639 is CIEN’s intrinsic value, and the safe price to buy is around $15.50 for the margin of safety.

The current share price $44.28 of CIEN as of Friday 9/5/2020 is very much overvalued, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I am just sharing my information, not suggesting you to buy any stocks or investments. Use the info here at your own risk. Please make your own judgements when making investment decisions.

How to evaluate a stock? The ROE valuation method, CIENA as example

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Disclaimer: I am just sharing my information, not suggesting you to buy any stocks or investments. Use the info here at your own risk. Please make your own judgements when making investment decisions.

In my last blog post on how to evaluate a stock, I listed three methods when valuing a stock:

  1. P/E Multiple method
  2. DCF model
  3. Return on equity valuation method

Today I am going to deep dive into the third method: Return on equity valuation method.

We use Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) as an example. We’ll answer this question, is CIEN current price $44.28 over valued? Can I buy CIEN at this price?

Return on equity valuation method

Warren Buffet’s favorate metric of profitability is Return on equity (ROE).
In its simple terms, it is Net income / shareholder’s equity.
In general, 15% ROE or higher is good.
Let’s deep dive in, and see if CIEN is overvalued.
All new data inputs specific to this Return on equity (ROE) valuation method:
a. Return on equity, of the last 5 years
CIEN Return on Equity %:
2015-10 2016-10 2017-10 2018-10 2019-10
4.23 10.46 86.95 -16.96 12.36
(Source: https://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=0P0000019J&culture=en&platform=sal)
(4.23+10.46 +86.95-16.96+12.36)/5=19.408
This results in Return on Equity % of 19.408% for the last 5 years.
b. Shareholders’ Equity
From Balance Sheet, the shareholders’ equity in the latest quarter (Q2 2020 at the time of this writing) is: 2.24 billion.
c. Dividend Rate
No devidend.
Dividend Payout Ratio: 0.00%
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CIEN/key-statistics?p=CIEN
Also accoding to Nasdaq, “Dividend History information is presently unavailable for this company.” (Source: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cien/dividend-history)
Other inputs:
a. Shares Outstanding 153.64M
b. Expected growth rate: Next 5 Years (per annum)    8.90%
This is the rate CIEN is expected to grow its profit in the next 5 years.
However, as we pointed out in a related blog post using PE Multiple Method, forecast is skeptical, especially Wall Street tends to provide higher estimate than in reality. So let’s apply some discount such as 25% as our margin of safety.
so 8.90%*(1-0.25)=0.06675
so let’s give it 6.67%, being conservative.
c. Discount rate: 9%, used to calculate NPV or intrinsic value.
Now let’s calculate is intrinsic value based on ROE model.
Shareholder equity per share: 2.24 billion/153.64 Million=$14.579536579
Let it grow at a conservative growth rate 6.67% (with margin of safety 25%).
In Year 1, CIEN has Shareholder equity per share $14.579536579.
In Year 10, it will be 14.579536579*(1+6.67%)^9=$26.0690002156.
Year 10 net income is the income per share which the shareholder equity in Year 10 can generate: 26.0690002156*19.408%=$5.05947156184
The required value is the amount of shareholders’ equity that is required if company just earns the average  historical stock market return of 9%: 5.05947156184/9%=$56.2163506871.
This is the shareholders’ equity in Year 10. To calculate its worth today, we will apply discount rate 9% as NPV:
56.2163506871/((1+9%)^10)=$23.7463940545
If CIEN has dividends, we would have added to it the sum of the 10 years of discounted dividends.
This gives us an intrinsic value estimate for CIEN: $23.7463940545.
The current share price $44.28 of CIEN as of Friday 9/5/2020 is very much overvalued, in my opinion.
By the way, Ciena price target lowered to $37 from $53 at Barclays. Reiterate Underweight.
Barclay’s analyst Tim Long lowered the firms price target on Ciena to $37 from $53 and keeps an Underweight weight rating on the shares. The company’s fiscal Q3 beat on sales, margin, and earnings; but guidance surprised to the downside.

How to evaluate a stock? The PE multiple method, CIENA as example

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Disclaimer: I am just sharing my information, not suggesting you to buy any stocks or investments. Use the info here at your own risk. Please make your own judgements when making investment decisions.

In my last blog post on how to evaluate a stock, I listed three methods when valuing a stock:

  1. P/E Multiple method
  2. DCF model
  3. Return on equity valuation method

Today I am going to deep dive into the first method: The PE multiple method.

We use Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) as an example. We’ll answer this question, is CIEN current price $44.28 over valued? Can I buy CIEN at this price?

P/E Multiple method

You determine stock’s five-year price target based on P/E valuation.
Those are all the inputs:
a. EPS (ttm): Earnings per share for the trailing twelve months is usually included in the stock information of a given stock in most financial websites such as morningstar.
CIEN trailing twelve month P/E:
EPS (TTM) 2.41
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CIEN?p=CIEN&.tsrc=fin-srch
b. the median historical price-earning multiple. We look at the past five years.
54.85
Source: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/cien/valuation

Per YChats, it is 54.37  (Average, Past 5 Years; https://ycharts.com/companies/CIEN/pe_ratio)

It’s PE as of Friday Sept. 4, 2020 is 18.37.
c. Expected growth rate
Next 5 Years (per annum)    8.90%
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CIEN/analysis?p=CIEN
This is the rate CIEN is expected to grow its profit in the next 5 years.
However, forecast is skeptical, especially Wall Street tends to provide higher estimate than in reality. So let’s apply some discount such as 25% as our margin of safety.
so 8.90%*(1-0.25)=0.06675
so let’s give it 6.67%, being conservative.
Next, we put all those together to get the price target for the next 5 years:
EPS*avg hist P/E ratio*growth rate^5, that is:
2.41*54.85*(1+6.67%)^5=182.559799432
This is the price target in 5 years for this stock.
However, we are most interested in the intrinsic value of this stock now so assuming stock market returns 9% annually, here we calculate the intrinsic value of the stock (or we call it Net Present Value, NPV):
5-year price target / (1+9%)^5, that is:
182.559799432/(1+9%)^5=118.651343527
You can replace it with other numbers instead of 9% if you want to achieve say 20% per year for the next 5 years.
As you can see, if you feel avg hist P/E ratio (for the last 5 years) 54.85 is comfortable, CIEN is a great bargain, as at the time of this writing as it is trading at 44.28 at the close of 9/4 Friday, after two consecutive drops of the broad stock market last week.
Somehow I don’t feel this PE for the last 5 years for CIEN is good to estimate for the next 5 years, as its value was spiked because of some sudden PE changes in 2015 such as this peak PE:
Maximum 281.11 Nov 27 2015
So if I use current PE 18.37 (as of 9/4/2020 Friday market close) I have the following target price for this stock:
2.41*18.37*(1+6.67%)^5=61.1417231643
NPV for current:
61.1417231643/(1+9%)^5=39.7379248968
If I believe my intrinsic value of CIEN, I will consider buying it below $39.73 per share. That’s close to its price 39.34 on Mar 27, 2020
Before the broad stock market drop last week, CIEN was traded at 60.07 when market closed on Wednesday 9/2.
Yahoo site says this stock price now is Near Fair Value.
According to GuruFocus,  Ciena Intrinsic Value: Projected FCF : USD 33.40 (As of Today).
https://trendshare.org/stocks/CIEN/view:
CIEN Price
(Ciena Corporation stock price per share)		 $59.93
[?] CIEN Fair Price
(based on intrinsic value)		 $25.84
[?] CIEN Safety Price (based on a variable margin of safety) $15.50

How to evaluate a stock?

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When you walk in super markets, you’ll see the retail values keep changing on different days across different stores. But you kind of know the value of those things you buy every day, though their prices fluctuate depends on time and location. In other words, you know the intrinsic values of those things in super markets.

The same goes with stock market, with a market of stocks. How do you know the intrinsic values of each stock?

  1. P/E Multiple method
  2. DCF model
  3. Return on equity valuation method
Let’s briefly talk abour each of those evaluation methods. I will provide more details in future blog posts so stay tuned.
  1. P/E Multiple method
You determine stock’s five-year price target based on P/E valuation.
a. EPS (ttm): Earnings per share for the trailing twelve months is usually included in the stock information of a given stock in most financial websites such as morningstar.
b. the median historical price-earning multiple. We look at the past five years.
c. Expected growth rate
This is the rate a stock is expected to grow its profit in the next 5 years.
Next, we put all those together to get the price target for the next 5 years:
EPS*avg hist P/E ratio*growth rate
This is the price target in 5 years for this stock.
However, we are most interested in the intrinsic value of this stock so assuming stock market returns 9% annually, here we calculate the intrinsic value of the stock (or we call it Net Present Value, NPV):
5-year price target / (1+9%)^5
You can replace it with other numbers instead of 9% if you want to achieve say 20% per year for the next 5 years.
2. DCF model
We take the trailing twelve months FCF, project it 1o years into the future by multiplying it with an expected growth rate. It then takes the NPV of these cash flows and adds them up.
We assume the company will be sold after 10 years from now. – so we have the Year 10 FCF * factor (12, a number b/w 10-15)
    a. Free cash flow, FCF: the trailing twelve month FCF, shown in Cash Flow statement.
    b. Cash and cash equivalents: shown in the company’s latest quarterly Balance Sheet report.
    c. Total liabilities: all debts
    d. Growth rates: as we used in Method 1, but we may apply 25% discount for the margin of safety.
    Just as in Method 1, we may use 9% as our discount rate.
    e. Shares outstanding: We need to know the intrinsic values per share.
    The total NPV PCF is the sum of all the cash flows.
    Year 10 FCF value: Year 10 FCF multiplier (12) * NPV of FCF in Year 10
    3. Return on equity (ROE) valuation method
    Warren Buffet’s favorate metric of profitability ROE.
    Net income / shareholder’s equity.
    15% ROE or higher is good.
    All inputs:
    a. Return on equity
    b. Shareholders’ Equity
    c. Dividend Rate