“Front-Running Buffett” with Ian Wyatt

by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | May 10, 2011 11:47 am

This note is very different from what I would write were it entitled, “Front-Running Buffett with David Sokol” — but since he has ended up in the SEC’s crosshairs, and been thrown under the bus by Warren since he made the ridiculously foolish choice to buy shares in a stock he was scouting out as an acquisition for Berkshire, well, maybe we’ll do better “front-running” Wyatt’s way, no?

The pitch is for what Ian Wyatt[1] calls the “Warren Buffett[2] Retirement Plan” — which sounds awful on the face of it, since I aspire to retire far, far earlier than Warren Buffett, who will be working until he loses his marbles or says his last goodbyes. But he teases a few stocks that he seems to think would fit Buffett’s criteria, and we could probably do worse than that (even ignoring, for the moment, that Buffett and his family already have a retirement[3] plan, and it’s called “Berkshire Hathaway Shares”). So what are they?

Well, Wyatt will tell you if you shell out a hundred bucks for his Top Stock Insights[4] newsletter — but you know me, I prefer something a little more freelicious, so it’s time to dig into the clues.

We’ll find at least the first one for you today, with the Thinkolator on standby to chew on the others — Wyatt calls it “The company Buffett CAN’T Buy” … here’s the tease:

“Five years ago, Warren Buffett bought a European pharmaceutical and healthcare[5] products company called Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY).

“Since then, the stock has gone pretty much nowhere.

“But as you know, Buffett’s favorite holding period is forever. It’s not like he has much time left – but that’s not why he owns Sanofi-Aventis.

“You see, over the last five years, while the stock traded sideways, Buffett’s been collecting bigger and bigger dividends[6]. In the first year, he collected $8.9 million in dividends – which admittedly isn’t that much for Buffett.

“But what’s truly impressive is the dividend growth.

“Because last year Buffett’s holding company collected over $13.7 million in dividends.”

And as you can imagine, this stock that Wyatt’s teasing today is compared to Sanofi …

“That’s exactly why I’m adding a similar dividend paying pharmaceutical company to my Warren Buffett Retirement plan.

“It’s even raised its dividend in the same exact way…”

That’s where we get a nice little chart, showing how the dividend went from 25.46 cents in 2006 to 66.95 cents last year. Which means it must be a foreign stock and we’re getting some very precise currency translation, because otherwise a company would be asinine to plan a dividend that has to go out four decimal places.

We’re told that this stock is cash-rich, and then a couple more tidbits to point us in the right direction:

“… this company is a spitting image of Sanofi-Aventis.

“It’s in a tiny domestic market, but that’s not its target. It has strong global sales to take advantage of growing overseas economies–particularly North America and Europe–just like Sanofi Aventis.

“And like Sanofi-Aventis, it’s a simple business with very clear profit centers. You could buy this company and fall asleep for ten years and not have to worry about it–it’s what Buffett calls a Rip Van Winkle business.

“The company was founded in the early part of the 20th century, and they haven’t changed much since then (other than make more and more money every year)–they make many of the same products and reward their shareholders with steady profits.

“If that’s not enough, this company also pays nearly a $1 dividend.”

So who is it? Let’s toss all that info into the mighty, mighty Thinkolator … let it spin for a few minutes … and we find that this must be …

Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA)[7]

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The main reason we can be confident about this is that the chart Wyatt uses to display the consistently rising dividend is lifted (without attribution) from Morningstar[8] — though different sites calculate the dividend differently. Yahoo[9] Finance, for example, says that Teva paid a total of 74.8 cents in 2010, Morningstar says they paid 66.95 cents. I expect the difference has to do with currency translation or taxes, but I don’t really know.

Teva is the biggest producer of generic drugs in the world, by far — its sales are close to that of all the other big, public generic drug companies in the world put together (that would be folks like Sandoz, which is a division of Novartis (NVS)[10], Dr. Reddy’s in India[11] (RDY), Mylan (MYL)[12], Watson Pharma (WPI) and Impax (IPXL)). It’s also the largest company in Israel[13], which must be what Wyatt means when he refers to its “tiny domestic market,” Israel is still their home but it provides less than 5% of Teva’s revenue. The company sells and manufactures drugs all around the world, with it’s biggest market by far being, as you would expect, the United States.

And no, there isn’t any particular reason why Buffett couldn’t buy Teva if he wanted to, so maybe you could be “front running” him as Wyatt says, though there’s no particular indication that Buffett will buy these shares — despite the recent Lubrizol and Burlington Northern Santa Fe buyouts, his stated preference is to buy companies in their entirety, and Teva’s a little big for that.

So he might not be able to buy the whole company even if he wanted to, but he couldn’t (or didn’t) buy all of Sanofi-Aventis, either. Berkshire Hathaway could certainly buy shares of Teva for their publicly traded stock portfolio if they wished — and I suppose it’s possible that they might own some shares now, Buffett reports Berkshire’s large holdings in their annual reports and quarterly filings, but the smaller holdings aren’t all named, and if Berkshire bought shares in Israel they wouldn’t have to be reported in the same clear way as US stocks unless they reached a pretty large holding percentage (that’s why you haven’t see much from the SEC about Berkshire’s holdings in Posco or Tesco, Berkshire holds those shares in Seoul and London, not the ADRs).

But that’s really an academic exercise — unless you’re David Sokol, the chances of picking Buffett’s next purchase and buying it before he gets there are extremely slim. The real question is, do you want to buy Teva for your own reasons?

Well, if you’re like me, your first glance at Teva will make you drool — it’s growing like crazy, it’s cheap as all get out, and it’s in a sector that’s dramatically increasing in size (both generic and branded pharmaceuticals). The second glance, when you start to look at the competition, the patent expirations, and the legal and regulatory challenges … well, that might slow the drooling down a little bit and make you realize that there’s a reason that it’s cheap.

But still, it’s really cheap. Teva shares are trading for about 12X trailing earnings, and at about 9X 2011 estimated earnings, with earnings growth expected to keep growing at double-digit rates (OK, barely double digit — 10%) for the next several years. That’s not the same kind of dramatic growth that they had as a much smaller company 10 or 20 years ago, but it’s still really good growth for a company with a market cap of nearly $50 billion, and it gives them a Price/Earnings/Growth (PEG) ratio of just below 1, which some folks consider bargain territory.

The forward PE ratio of 8 or 9 will look familiar to pharma investors — that’s what you’ll pay for someone like Pfizer (PFE)[14] or Merck (MRK)[15] or, indeed, Sanofi-Aventis (SNY), and all of those firms pay out substantially higher dividends than Teva … but all of them are also expected, thanks to patent expirations for the most part, to grow far less slowly, or even to shrink (the big pharma stocks generally have PEG ratios in the neighborhood of 3 or so). Teva’s dividend has been growing nicely and consistently for many years, but at a bit less than 2% it’s not quite enough to entice the income-focused investors who are attracted to some other pharmaceutical stocks.

And that’s part of what’s keeping Teva down, too — for although the vast majority of their sales are in generic drugs, where they are the clear industry leader, they are also branching into branded pharmaceuticals with drugs that they’ve developed themselves (or acquired) … and the branded pharmaceuticals, particularly their blockbuster MS drug Copaxone, sell at much higher margins, so they contribute substantially to Teva’s bottom line — Copaxone itself has generated almost half of Teva’s profits in recent quarters, though that’s modeled to decline as the portfolio becomes more diverse before the patent expiration. Copaxone goes off patent in 2014, so analysts are looking at that as a problem … but before that, it may also face stiff competition from newer MS drugs in development that can be delivered orally (Copaxone is injectable), and recent news about Teva’s own possible oral Copaxone replacement, laquinimod, hasn’t been as encouraging as the good results from competitors with similar drugs like Biogen Idec (BIIB)[16]. (Teva would probably remind you that we can’t know much until the drugs are compared head-to-head, which won’t happen in the near future.)

So that’s one problem — Copaxone is going off patent, and they had high hopes for another drug that hasn’t (yet, at least) shot out the lights in the clinic. Another problem is that they’re investing still more in branded pharma by buying Cephalon in a fairly high-premium deal where they had to outbid another company, largely to get access to Cephalon’s pipeline of new drugs. And acquiring companies almost always see their share price drop, so that’s helped to keep a lid on Teva as well (Teva thinks the deal will be accretive to earnings by next year, and will generate half a billion dollars in “synergies” — meaning they can fire some redundant folks and close facilities).

And a third problem? They missed last quarter, revenues and earnings were both a little bit light, and some analysts were concerned about light numbers in their core business, US generic drugs — with the fear being, I guess, that they face either more competition, or that folks are simply spending less on drugs overall with a weaker economy. Management indicated that numbers would be slightly lower than analysts had projected for 2011, too, so we may see some more movement tomorrow when Teva releases earnings — if they miss again, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the shares dip, but if they’re able to hit or beat the mark I imagine investors will be very tempted by this inexpensive market leader. It’s hard to see a world where I wouldn’t be champing at the bit to buy the stock if it comes down another 10%, but, of course, that always depends on why it’s gone down.

The risks are real, but Teva has huge advantages — their global manufacturing footprint and low-cost expertise helps them to fight off competitors, it’s hard and expensive to develop generic drugs in some cases (particularly in the expected next wave of generics, the “biosimilars” that will be generic equivalents to blockbuster biologic drugs), and there probably isn’t anyone out there who can easily beat Teva by outspending them or outmanufacturing them, they’re just too big, and they are a competitor to take the generic lead for nearly every single drug that emerges from patent protection (it’s important to be first — in part because the first generic drug often gets a small but lucrative window of “first developer” approval before other competitors come in).

And though the increased reliance on branded drugs like Copaxone has made some investors nervous, Teva also has a huge pipeline — thanks to acquisitions as well as its own R&D. They should have dozens of drugs eligible for FDA[17] approval in the next couple years, so though I don’t know if any or many of them will be billion-dollar blockbusters, there is at least the potential to generate some earnings to help buttress potential losses from Copaxone. And they are leveraging their global manufacturing ability to make other deals, too — they have a new partnership with Procter and Gamble to sell branded over the counter drugs, and P&G’s marketing folks can convince people to buy almost anything.

Sounds like I’m talking myself into buying shares, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t own them now, and Teva has looked cheap for much of the past year, ever since it fell sharply from the March 2010 peak of near $65… and I’ve been tempted to buy a few times.

Is $47 cheap enough to buy shares? Well, that’s your call — it is, after all, your money… AllianceBernstein upgrade the stock this week[18] because it’s due for a rebound after the bad news, but that probably won’t mean much in the short term if Teva’s management says pessimistic things in the call tomorrow. The earnings press release should come out before the market opens tomorrow morning (that’s Wednesday, May 11 if you’re reading this at some other time), and the conference call starts at 8:30am[19] EST, so 24 hours from now we should have a fairly good idea of whether that possible “rebound” is underway.

And as for the other “Warren Buffett Front-Running?” Wyatt is also teasing a “boring” stock and one that he says is among the cheapest on the whole stock market … I’m looking for ’em now, and will share tomorrow if I find something interesting.

Full disclosure: the author owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway, but not any other stock mentioned above. He will not trade in any stocks mentioned for at least three days.

Endnotes:
  1. Ian Wyatt: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/ian-wyatt/
  2. Warren Buffett: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/warren-buffett/
  3. retirement: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/retirement/
  4. Top Stock Insights: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/top-stock-insights/
  5. healthcare: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/healthcare/
  6. dividends: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/dividends/
  7. Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/teva/
  8. Morningstar: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/morningstar/
  9. Yahoo: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/yahoo/
  10. Novartis (NVS): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/nvs/
  11. India: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/india/
  12. Mylan (MYL): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/myl/
  13. Israel: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/israel/
  14. Pfizer (PFE): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/pfe/
  15. Merck (MRK): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/mrk/
  16. Biogen Idec (BIIB): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/biib/
  17. FDA: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/fda/
  18. AllianceBernstein upgrade the stock this week: http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2011/05/09/teva-due-for-a-rebound-says-alliance-bernstein/?mod=yahoobarrons
  19. conference call starts at 8:30am: http://www.vcall.com/CustomEvent/EU005995/index.asp?ID=162947

Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/top-stock-insights/front-running-buffett-with-ian-wyatt/


12 responses to ““Front-Running Buffett” with Ian Wyatt”

  1. Stuart says:

    Cephalon recently bought into Mesoblast out of Australia (Mesoblast I believe was mentioned by Gumshoe when it sold for a dollar and is now up to over $9) which has an incredible pipeline of new therapies coming out based upon their patented stem cell process. This bodes well for future products from Teva.

  2. john sloan says:

    HI Travis and all
    wonder of wonders – I just sold TEVA last week after holding it several years and took a loss. Maybe buy TEVA again after the summer coming general correction
    best wishes
    john

  3. Chuck says:

    I've wanted to own TEVA for years, but it always seemed a little to pricey for me. finally i recently sold some out-of-the-money puts on it. If it drops low enough, I'll gladly buy it. If not, I'll at least keep the option premium.

  4. BPolus says:

    Travis: You did not mention that TEVA will be the generic maker of Cubicin in the near future. They are now working with Cubist (CBST ticker.) CBST is on a up-roll in the past 2 months.

  5. Ian says:

    Hi all,

    I'm surprised, as a European, that you make no mention, Travis, of the 'country risk' involved in a company based in Israel……or do you think the country won't be affected by the turmoil around it at soem point ?

  6. Noah says:

    This stock has also been listed for a long time on magicformulainvesting.com. It recently fell off of the top 50 after teva's disappointing previous quarterly earnings. I'm sure it will be back in the top 50 tomorrow and have already gone into a long position.

  7. I have a web site where I give investment advise on penny stocks and stocks under five dollars. If theirs anyone thats interested in these type of stocks just click my name to check out my website. I would like to comment about warren buffet. One of the reasons that warren buffet has been so successful over the years is because he does not worry about what the price of one off his stocks does over a few months time or even over a few years time. Generally speaking when warren buys a stock he has tremendous confidence in the prospects for the company he invests in. So why worry about the short term movement of the price of stock .

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