CenturyTel Stock Review

CenturyTel, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, is an integrated communications company engaged primarily in providing an array of communications services, including local and long distance voice, Internet access and broadband services. The Company operates in 25 states located within the continental United States.

Why We Are Reviewing

• is currently sporting an 8% dividend.
• CenturyLink is a dividend aristocrat.
• is soon to be a member of the fortune 500.

What I like about their story

CTL is a telco, most investors tune out at that point as the overwhelming consensus is that VOIP has, or will kill, the traditional phone. Centurylink appears aware of this reality and has taken a few steps to remain a healthy business:
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Abbott Labratories Review

I make it a fairly regular habit of having a look at companies that care about their dividend. The dividend aristocrat list has always been a good starting place for me as these stocks have a proven track record of tailoring themselves to the dividend investor. Abbott Labs appears in the 2009 version of this list.

To put a full review of Abbott would make for a long post, and not a particularly interesting one, so I’ll instead restrict myself to looking at a few key elements from the company’s fundementals. Perhaps this will help to add to the research you have already performed on Abbott or suggest some alternative ways that you can look at other companies.
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Yahoo Are You Kidding Me

I usually get very excited when I see a stock that is incorrectly priced, this usually indicates a good buying opportunity.  Every once in a while a stock comes along that is incorrectly priced the wrong way- namely massively overpriced. So overpriced are these stocks that I am at a complete loss to explain why any investor would buy them. Yahoo in its current state falls firmly in this bucket. In reviewing some of the company’s key stats I was shocked to see the poor condition of the business.  Lets look at a few key statistics:
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Boring Companies Part 2

In the previous article we started a discussion on boring companies. I argued that the reason so many elite investors like boring companies is due to the consistent and sustained profits these businesses often have. I then went on to detail how boring companies have deep moats that keep competition at bay, produce limited time use products that force the customer to be repeat customers, and always produce staple products that are consistently required by consumers regardless of any current economic conditions.
To remind us again of the definition provided from our first article on boring companies:
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Boring Companies Part 1

Both value and  long term investors talk about how much they like boring businesses. We like these businesses so much because, if run correctly, they are able to reliably generate a consistent source of long term revenue. Consistency and reliability are the key terms here as these businesses can be trusted to year in and year out be steady bedrock stocks to hold.

Boring companies are described by professional investors as being “unsexy” but often no further definition is provided; let me present my own definition in the hopes of leading you to sustainable long term returns in your portfolio.
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Dividend Cuts – New Management

In our continuing series on dividend cuts, why they happen and how to learn to see them coming before they hit your portfolio today we are going to look at the curse of new management.

New Management

Bringing in new management is a regular occurrence in any large business. Management can be cycled in as a result of retirement or simply as the result of the board seeing the need for a changing of the guard. New management can come from one of two places, internal promotion and external hiring. The condition I will describe here comes as the result of both these types of hirings, but is a far more frequent occurrence with external hiring.
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Dividend Rate Cuts – Stale Dividends

Dividend rate cuts are painful and can send your portfolio into a tailspin. Why do they happen and can we see them coming? In our continuing series on dividend rate cuts we are going to look at stale dividends with these questions in mind.

Stale dividend rates/ earnings

Dividend rates are set by companies with an expectation around the future growth of the company. As the company’s profits increase so too should the dividend rate. When you find a company where the dividend has remained fix for an extended period what you have is a stale dividend.
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Fad Investing

This article originally appeared on The DIV-Net

About two years ago I was speaking to a friend who was very excited about an investment opportunity. “This company is a sure thing, my kids all have these and I see Oprah was wearing a pair of them last week so they are going to have a huge quarter.” He was right and saw his money double, and then a year later fall 20% below what he had paid for it.
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Competitive Paralysis

This article originally appeared on The DIV-Net

August 4th, 1954 two world record holding sprinters Bannister and Landry squared off in a one mile race at Commonwealth Stadium. The two men had a close race with Landry leading coming into the final few lengths. Knowing that Bannister was sure to be close, Landry looked over his inside shoulder to check his position. Bannister, following closely behind, saw the move and used Landry’s shoulder check as an opportunity to pass on the outside and ultimately win the race.
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Dashboard Tool for Fundamental Analysis

I have been rather displeased with the tools that are out there on the web for analyzing stocks. Their is no limit to the tools that can be found for technical analysis, but when it comes to fundamental analysis I seem to always find myself staring at raw numbers on a balance sheet. All I was looking for were some simple graphs and a dashboard that would let me look at a company’s overall fundamental condition- so I started building one.
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Munger on EBITDA

This article originally appeared on The DIV-Net May 9 2009.

Charlie Munger though a pioneer in value investing and the four filters is a fairly raw character and has a way of getting to the point in a sometimes abrupt manner. Charlie did just this when he referred to EBITDA as “bullsh*t earnings” at the Berkshire Hathaway meetings in 2003.

EBITDA = Earnings before interest taxes depreciation, and amortisation.

What is the Problem with EBITDA?

Well let me give an example:
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• Company A earns $1M and pays $.75M in interest, taxes, & depreciation.

Buffett on Able and Trustworthy Managers

For part 3 of our series on Buffett’s investment filters it is time to look at “able and trustworthy managers”.  There are two components to able and trustworthy managers, lets examine each individually.

Trustworthy Managers

Managers of public companies come in all sorts, unfortunately they also come with an equally diverse set of ideas as to their job’s purpose.  Some understand that they work for the shareholders, others though think that investors are nothing but an inconvenience.
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Buffett and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Continuing our series on the four filters of Warren Buffett today’s topic is Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

Buffet often talks about finding sustainable competitive advantage (S.C.A.) in businesses. What is it, and why is it so important?

A competitive advantage  is a trait or feature of a business that gives it an advantage in dealing with its competition.  If it is sustainable then that advantage is likely to continue into the future.
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Buffett and Understandable Businesses

In a previous post we discussed the Four filters of Invention of Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger by Bud Labitan. I felt that some of the material needed a more thorough description than I could provide in my overview so I would like to look exclusively at the first of the four filters, namely finding understandable companies and contribute some of my own thoughts.
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When to Sell Stock

Read any investment book, blog, or magazines and you will see a multitude of recommendations related to buying stocks. Unfortunately, little is written about selling the stocks that you already own.

I use three key principals in deciding when to sell a stock:
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1. Principal 1: Don’t be greedy.
2. Principal 2: Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong.
3. Principal 3: Don’t let your carriage turn into a pumpkin.

Value Investing Four Filters

I am always looking for good high quality companies that are trading at a discount. Finding these companies is both challenging and time consuming. Finding cheap companies isn’t hard- finding cheap good ones is. A professional investor will spend the entire day researching company after company trying to find something the market has overlooked. As an amateur investor I don’t have that kind of time so I needed a method to reduce the number of companies I examine every week to a small handful that merit my further investigations.
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A Better Canadian Stock Screener

As readers of my blog know I have been looking for some time for a good Canadian screener, specifically a screener that allows for Graham style analysis. After finding one earlier this year that ran as an application I set my sights on trying to find one that runs as a web application. Well little did I realize but there was one right under my nose.

Zacks has been around for a while and has recently released a new beta of there free stock screener.
I am pleased to report that Zacks has the ability to create screeners that you can point at TSX.
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The Right Investment Tools For the Job

Give us the tools and we will finish the job. Winston Churchill

The evaluation of companies was once a very laborious exercise. Information about historic earnings and historic pricing information involved significant research and compilation. Today that effort is significantly reduced, thankfully there are numerous sources one can access to retrieve sets of desired information. Choosing just one source in all these options is often difficult though. Today we are going to have a look at some of the tools I use in analyzing companies I would love to hear so of your feedback and suggestions on other tools you use.
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Building a Simplified Graham Value Stock Screener

I did a search and could not for the life of me find a link to a prebuilt Google screener for Graham’s value investing system. So lets quickly build one:

Through the Graham series we said we would only consider companies that:
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1. Had a P/E of less than or equal to 15.
2. A book value of greater than or equal to 0.01.
3. A price to book value of less than or equal to 1.5.
4. A current ratio of more than or equal to 2.
5. Earnings Per Share Growth rate on average of greater than or equal to 33% over 10 years.

Buy a Company with a Future (Based on its past) (Session 6)

The ratios we have looked at so far tend to be a snapshot of the current condition of the company and don’t really explore a company’s history. Graham didn’t believe in investing in the next hot company, he was about buying companies with history and tangible revenues; companies where the paint on the sign out front is dry- basically boring companies. Graham also wanted a company that had proved that it understood its business and was on a path to continued success.
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