The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Manpowergroup, General Electric, Honeywell, 3M and MarketAxess Holdings
CHICAGO, June 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include the Manpowergroup (NYSE:MAN-Free Report), General Electric (NYSE:GE-Free Report), Honeywell (NYSE:HON-Free Report), 3M (NYSE:MMM-Free Report) and MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq:MKTX-Free Report).
Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.
Here are highlights from Thursday's Analyst Blog:
How's the Landmark ECB Decision Affecting Your Stocks?
Today, the European Central Bank announced that they were reducing interest rates, and adding several other banking measures designed to increase bank lending, in order to better assist the euro zone's economic recovery.
The ECB decreased their lending rate from 0.25% (introduced in November 2013) to 0.15%, but more importantly, the ECB also decreased their rate on overnight bank deposits with the central bank to -0.1%. Finally, the rate cuts also included a reduction in emergency overnight loans as well.
The negative overnight bank deposits change is essentially charging commercial banks to keep their money with the ECB, a very unusual move by the central bank. Moreover, the ECB President, Mario Draghi, stated that the "new interest rates would remain low for a considerable period of time, and possibly for longer than previously seen."
Goal of the ECB
These new measures are designed to spur bank lending, and to battle low inflation levels within the European Union. The plan is that banks will begin to lend some of their excess cash to other banks as loans (instead of being penalized by the -0.1% bank deposit fee), which the ECB hopes will then flow into the euro-zone economy. The EU utilizes this lending to fund investments and overall hiring. This negative deposit rate has been attempted before, by the likes of Denmark and Sweden, but the end results have been mixed.
One of the major issues caused by this decreasing inflation is that consumers see falling prices, and then put off making big purchases due to the fact they believe prices are going to continue to drop, therefore exasperating the overall issue by weakening growth levels even more.
Therefore, this change by the ECB, is designed to decease the value of the Euro, which would increase exports (read cheaper items for the international market coming from the EU), and increase inflation which causes imported goods to cost more. Essentially, the ECB is importing inflation to their Union member countries.
How the ECB Move is Viewed
Previous attempts to curb the very low inflation, have been criticized as not being enough, or have not been successful in curbing the decreasing inflation numbers. Moreover, analysts believe that it will take several months, if not a year, for the change of interest rates to trickle through the economy.
After this change today, Mr. Draghi stated that he and his team were prepared to increase the measures to increase inflation, if this most recent measure was not enough. He went on to say, that the ECB would consider implementing a large scale asset purchase, similarly done by the US Federal Reserve.
Potential Impacts
If this most recent move is proven to be successful, it will be a boon for companies that both import items to the EU, and companies that export items from the EU. This would be great news for American based companies with a strong presence in Europe, like, Manpowergroup (NYSE:MAN-Free Report), General Electric (NYSE:GE-Free Report), Honeywell (NYSE:HON-Free Report), and 3M (NYSE:MMM-Free Report) to name a few.
On the negative, the decreased rates might not impact bank's bottom lines enough to take the risk of the -0.1%, verse the underlying loans; thereby the banks would not spur lending, but rather continue to hold onto the cash. This would cause the ECB to further attempt to curb declining inflation by decreasing their interest rates even further (not that there is much more room to go), and or implementing a Quantitative Easing program. This will face a headwind from Germany, who is staunchly against any form of QE.
Another outcome is that the FX value of the Euro does not decline as expected (what the market is currently witnessing today) causing the opposite intended effect. If the value of the Euro continues to increase, it will make exported items more expensive, and imported items less expense, essentially exporting more inflation and importing deflation to the EU. This would force the ECB into more drastic measures (read QE). Moreover, it would negatively impact American companies with a large presence in Europe.
Bottom Line
Even with these drastic measures, stopping the declining inflation might not be a certainty, and it will take many months to decipher any measureable impact by the new rules. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see the ECB make more aggressive steps in curbing the decline, and monitoring the situation as a whole. Moreover, the ECB has not yet run out of economic tools to further implement their anti-inflation programs. We are all now at a wait and see moment in time.
MarketAxess: Strong Sell
On Jun 5, 2014, Zacks Investment Research downgraded MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq:MKTX-Free Report) by a notch to a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).
Why the Downgrade?
MarketAxess has been witnessing downward estimate revisions due to a sluggish growth outlook, given the lack of any significant growth catalyst and intense competition. This escalates operational and financial risks. Volumes for May 2014 also sapped within the U.S. high-grade fixed-rate securities, which accounts for more than half of the total volumes.
Additionally, this fixed-income securities exchange underperformed the one-year Nasdaq index, which posed growth of 23% against 19.6% clocked by the company. Furthermore, the company failed to deliver any positive earnings surprise in 2 of the last 4 quarters.
On Apr 23, MarketAxess reported first-quarter 2014 operating earnings per share of 46 cents, which was in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate but higher than the prior-year figure by 12.3%.
While the top line grew 18.1%, total expenses rose 23.1%, both on a year-over-year basis. As a result, operating margin deteriorated to 43.7% from 46% in the year-ago quarter. Reduction was also witnessed in credit spreads and yields during the quarter. Moreover, average variable transaction fee per million was lower than the comparable period. A weakened cash and balance sheet position were other headwinds.
Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2014 and 2015 declined 3.1% and 4.1% to $1.87 and $2.36 a share, respectively, in the last 30 days. No upward revision in estimates was witnessed for both these years, which further reflects a slow growth momentum.
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