Emma Wall: Hello, and welcome to Morningstar. I'm Emma Wall and I'm joined today by Blake Crawford, Portfolio Manager for the JP Morgan Europe Dynamic Ex-UK Fund.
Hi, Blake.
Blake Crawford: Hi, Emma.
Wall: So, you're here today to give your three stock picks. What is the first stock?
Crawford: So, the first stock I'd like to talk about is Pandora (PNDORA). Pandora is a company that manufacturers, designs and markets affordable jewelry and it's a company that has been doing fantastically well since IPO a number of years ago and there's been three main drivers for that.
The first one is its U.S. store rollout growth has been faster than analysts expected. The second reason is due to the cheaper raw material prices. So, raw materials make over 80% of the cost of goods sold for this company. And the third reason and this is something that I really want to focus on because I think it's what's going to drive the story going forward is one of rebranding and increasing the brand awareness and recognition of the company. So, they focused on moving from a part in a larger store to actually Pandora-designated stores. And what we've seen actually in the luxury space in general, whether it would be watches, perfumes or leather goods is branded sales dominate the total sales.
So, what we're seeing at the moment within jewelry is only 20% of sales is branded sales. So, what we think is this is going to be a huge growth area going forward. And at the moment, we have Pandora, a company that is really well-positioned in terms of its brand awareness and recognition. It's up there with names such as Tiffany, such as Cartier and such as Swarovski. So, we think it's really well-placed for future growth. It's a company that is delivering 25% earnings CAGR over the next three years. It's trading on a 16, 17 times price to earnings multiple and it's one that we think has got lots of levers to pull for future growth.
Wall: So, it's not that expensive then because you would think considering how much share price appreciation there has been that this maybe might not be a great entry point to have the kind of growth that we already experienced?
Crawford: Yeah. So, what we've seen though is the earnings really keep pace with the prices that we've seen, the appreciation that we've seen. And what we tend to find with stocks like this is these behavioral biases start to take effect. As people become too conservative, they fail to incorporate all the good news that's out there and we think that presents an opportunity going forward.
Wall: What's the second stock today?
Crawford: The second stock I'd like to talk about is Vestas (VWS). So, Vestas is a wind turbine manufacturer. They are the global leader with about a 20% market share. And this is a company that has a strong top three position in all the key major markets, so whether it'd be Europe, China or the U.S.
Now, if we think back a few years back to 2012, the company was facing quite a challenging environment. But through cutting costs and through doing lots of restructuring, it's cut cost capacity and CapEx and that's really helped in terms of a move to a new leaner structure. And what we're seeing now is as the demand picks up, we're seeing this operational leverage effect and that's really powerful for earnings.
In addition to that what we've seen is the technology evolution in the industry. So, if we think back a few years ago wind wasn't really a viable option. It had to be subsidized heavily by the government and now we're in a place where it's actually cheaper than coal, than solar, than natural gas and it's also got the added benefit that governments are under big pressure to reduce their regulatory emissions and this is an area that they see is great growth and as an energy source going forward.
Finally, if we think about the company, what it's done so far year-to-date, it's had a very strong order momentum backlog and it's really generating a lots of orders in 2016 so far and we think that's something that gives us a huge amount of visibility going forward in terms of their revenue base for the next two years and so we feel very comfortable with where we are positioned at the moment in that stock.
Wall: And then the third stock, quite a different type of company, although the other two have been different from one another as well. What's the third company you'd like to highlight?
Crawford: The third company I want to talk about is SalMar (SALM). So, SalMar is Norwegian salmon farmer. And heading into the year we thought the industry dynamics for the sector were very positive, especially for the pricing outlook. So, you had was demand outpacing supply and that made us feel very confident about where prices were heading.
If we think about what happened in the market that in February or March of this year there was a big outbreak of toxic algae in Chile and that had a huge global supply shock and that led to a huge tightening in the market and that's led to salmon prices soaring significantly and actually, the highest level they have been in the last 15 years. Now, the reason for that is between Chile and Norway they account for over 80% of the global farmed salmon. So, it's obviously a very big shock that we're seeing here. And so, we feel positive going forward for a number of reasons.
Firstly, supply looks like it's still going to be constrained by biological constraints or by regulatory constraints. And then secondly, we also feel very positive about what we're seeing in terms of prices. So, although the salmon prices, the spot prices soared quite a lot, the company actually hasn't been able to benefit from that completely because they were obviously contracted into pre-agreed contracts at the start of the year. So, we still think there's further to run on this story. It offers, again, very strong earnings growth, 20% plus. It's offering a dividend yield and it looks like a stock that is cheaply valued.
Wall: Blake, thank you very much.
Crawford: Thank you very much.
Wall: This is Emma Wall for Morningstar. Thank you for watching.
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