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In recent weeks we have written several blogs (S&P 500 sector stock watch, Attractive stocks under $35, with potential investment opportunities, Solid S&P Value Companies, Cheapest Stocks In the S&P 500), discussing investment opportunities within the S&P 500. These stocks ideas all had favorable scores under The Applied Finance Group's (AFG’s) investment criteria, which includes economic performance, valuation, earnings quality and management’s ability to create shareholder wealth, among other criteria.

Another way that AFG identifies potentially attractive investments is through the use of its Value Expectations interface, which helps investors get a better understanding of the expectations embedded into stock prices. This interface allows us to understand the Sales Growth, EBITDA Margin, and Asset Turnover a company has to deliver in the future to justify its current trading price. In theory and in normal circumstances, if the imbedded future performance is very conservative relative to the company’s historical performance, the stock is regarded as undervalued. The table below displays the implied future Sales Growth (“Priced-in Sales Growth) of the companies we have recently recommended in our recent blogs, assuming their EBITDA Margins and Asset Turnovers stay at 5-year median levels.

For those Valueexpectations.com readers who consider themselves value oriented investors, we have provided a good starting list of solid value companies that look attractive as potential investment opportunities for the long term. This list is a good place to start when looking for potential companies to add to your portfolio. The Applied Finance Group (AFG) considers companies with a Market Value/Invested Capital (MV/IC) in the bottom half of the universe as value companies.

To come to our list of attractive potential value plays, We ran those companies in the bottom half of MV/IC through AFG’s buy criteria that includes Economic Margin (How profitable they are), Valuation, Management Quality (how well management is running the business) as well as other quality checks to ensure that these companies are the most likely value companies to outperform. All 10 of these companies ranked above their sector peers in expected improvement of Economic Margins and in valuation attractiveness which has proven to be a good starting point when looking to identify companies likely to outperform their benchmark.

AFG's Valuation Metric – Measures the percent to target (deviation between a stock’s current trading price and its AFG current default target price). To derive the intrinsic value of a firm, AFG uses its proprietary Valuation Model (modified discounted cash flow model).

Economic Margin - A corporate performance measurement that addresses the gaps in GAAP, eliminating distortions caused by accounting policies to measure what a company is truly earning above or below their cost of capital.

Management Quality – Assesses management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.

Now that the nearly $800 billion Stimulus Package is signed into a law, the question is how its provisions would affect the different industries, which companies would present attractive investment opportunities and which ones we should avoid. After discussing the possible effects on the Solar Industry, we now turn our look to the Defense Industry.

Defense companies have enjoyed an abundance of government funding over the last several years. The estimated Defense Military outlays for 2009 are approximately 650 Billion, more than double the amount of the last budget before 9/11. As a result companies involved with defense, homeland security and aerospace have outperformed the broader markets, with the SPADE® Defense Index (AMEX: DXS) beating the S&P500 Index by 80.3% cumulatively for the 9/10/01 – 2/23/09 period.

However, this process may be coming to an end. Although historically defense spending has not been much correlated with trends in the overall economy, increase in government deficits related to recent federal bailouts and reduced tax revenue may lead to downward pressure on defense budgets. Tom Shanker of The New York Times expects U.S. Defense department to scale back on spending, as President Obama will need to identify at least some budget cuts after signing the new stimulus bill. Weapons programs that have suffered significant cost overruns are amongst the most likely to be affected, according to Mr.Shanker.

Although supplemental funding for weapons procurement and R&D is expected to decrease going forward, there is normally a lag between defense funding and the actual delivery of the purchased equipment. The Aerospace Industries Association estimates that since new procurement spending is basically committed for fiscal year 2009, and the new administration will have limited impact on fiscal year 2010, aerospace companies should see defense sales growth continue on-pace through calendar year 2012.

Whether the expected negative impact for the overall industry would come sooner or later, the key would be to identify which companies within it are relatively overvalued and most likely to suffer a severe price correction, and which have low market expectations embedded in their current stock price, thus being under lower pressure for meeting and beating analysts performance benchmarks.

Listed below are the companies from the Defense Industry according to AFG sector industry classification. Accompanying each stock, are its respective market cap, P/B, forward P/E, and sales growth expectations priced into the stock utilizing AFG’s Value Expectation application (assuming their 5-yr median EBITDA margins and asset turnover levels remain constant in the next 5 years).

 

Defense Companies and Their Implied Sales Growth Expectations:

*data date 2/18/09

With a new administration ready to take office in the U.S., many big decisions will need to be made regarding homeland defense and the defense budget. These decisions will have a great effect on defense stocks. Some believe Obama will cut the defense budget by 10-25% which may be detrimental to the sector. Another take is that the Military will become more evolved with better technology greatly benefitting a firm like Aerovironment who build high tech unmanned aircrafts that have sophisticated cameras to help give the military an advantage without putting any human lives at risk and to be more reliant on technology rather than recruiting. If you have a bullish outlook on defense spending increasing due to conflicts going on in the Middle East, Russia, Israel etc. you may want to go on the offensive with defense stocks.  Here is a list of defense stocks that are favored by Zachary Scheidt on SeekingAlpha.com and others that believe defense spending will increase, and our outlook on these firms. Companies listed are ranked by valuation attractiveness.

Defense Stocks and their Sales Expectations & Valuation Attractiveness

*denotes less than 5 years historical sales numbers available

VE Sales Growth calculated for these firms on 1-11-09