RISING YIELDS CHALLENGE VALUATIONS
Struggle to value corporate profits with price-to-earnings estimate may lead to more stock market volatility
THERE is little doubt on Wall Street that United States corporate profits are on track to rise at a healthy rate this year, with an overall estimate for growth of almost 20 per cent.
Less certain, however, is how investors should value those profits with price-to-earnings (PE) estimates. The struggle to do so could lead to more stock market volatility.
The valuations issue has gained fresh prominence for market strategists amid a rise in interest rates and bond yields, along with concerns about inflation increasing.
Those factors, including a yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note that is approaching three per cent, has prompted investors to rethink how to price stocks, which have become more expensive as the nearly nine-year bull market has aged.
Indeed, some investors are weighing whether equities deserve lower valuations.
“It’s a topic that’s got to be in the front of a lot of asset managers’ minds right now: What level is this market a really good buy again?,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at The Leuthold Group in Minneapolis.
“We are going to get good earnings coming through,” said Paulsen. “The problem is we are going to lose the value on those earnings.”
A test for equity valuations could come with this Friday’s US employment report for February. Last month’s report revealed surprising wage gains that sparked concerns of inflation, in turn setting off a jump in yields and a drop in stocks.
Stocks are commonly valued by comparing their price to their estimated profits over the next year, known as the PE ratio.
“Interest rates set the discount for what you want to value companies at and in general with higher interest rates you are going to see lower PE ratios as fair value,” said Rick Meckler, president of LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.
“You are going to be less willing to pay higher multiples on stocks where your discount rate continues to go up.”
The PE ratio on the benchmark S&P 500 index had climbed to 18.6 times by the end of January, the highest level in about 15 years, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream, as stocks climbed to all-time peaks.
That was just before the market plunged at the start of February, dropping 10 per cent and confirming a correction, and in turn lowering the PE ratio to 17 times earnings estimates.
Valuations hovered around that level at the end of a turbulent week. The S&P 500 rose 0.5 per cent on Friday, recovering some losses from Thursday, when US President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on steel and aluminium, raising concern about higher prices and a trade war.
“A lot of the volatility that has occurred and a bit of the repricing of financial assets, stocks in particular, is a result of there (being) a little bit of uncertainty as to what we should use as that discount rate,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors in Boston.
Half of the S&P 500’s returns last year stemmed from the PE going up — investors willing to pay more for future earnings — helped by optimism about the global economy, said Arone, but people’s willingness to “pay even more for those earnings is probably beginning to fade.”
The good news for stock investors is that S&P 500 earnings are expected to jump 19.2 per cent in 2018, the biggest increase since a 40.3 per cent rise in 2010, as the US emerged from the financial crisis, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
An examination of the six other years in which S&P 500 earnings growth topped 15 per cent, along with increasing 10-year Treasury yields and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, found that PE multiples shrank in all but one year, but the index still managed gains, said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist with SunTrust Advisory Services in Atlanta.
Lerner expects the stock market will be able to maintain a forward PE of around 16 times. .That is cheaper than current levels, but above the S&P 500’s longterm average of 15 times, according to Datastream.
According to a Reuters poll of market strategists this week, stocks will rack up a gain of more than eight per cent for the year, despite the recent correction.
“We are not relying on multiple expansion. In fact, if rates continue to rise like this, we are looking at probably a little bit more of a contraction scenario,” said Mona Mahajan, US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors.
But Paulsen said he believed stocks may be overpriced and that Leuthold recently reduced US equity exposure in its main funds. Among his concerns was whether inflation is about to rise more sharply.