Q4 2022 Enerpac Tool Group Corp Earnings Call BUTLER Sep 30, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Enerpac Tool Group Corp earnings conference call or presentation Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:00:00pm GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Anthony P. Colucci Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Executive VP & CFO * Bobbi Belstner Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Senior Director of IR & Strategy * Paul E. Sternlieb Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director ================================================================================ Conference Call Participants ================================================================================ * Jeffrey David Hammond KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division - MD & Equity Research Analyst ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Enerpac Tool Group's Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) It's now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Bobbi Belstner, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Strategy. Please go ahead, Ms. Belstner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobbi Belstner, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Senior Director of IR & Strategy [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Enerpac Tool Group's Fourth Quarter Fiscal '22 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today to present the company's results are Paul Sternlieb, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tony Colucci, Chief Financial Officer. Also with us is Barb Bolens, Chief Strategy Officer; and Bryan Johnson, VP of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer. Our earnings release and slide presentation for today's call are available on our website at enerpactoolgroup.com in the Investors section. We are also recording this call and will archive it on our website. During today's call, we will reference non-GAAP measures such as adjusted profit margins and adjusted earnings. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures in the schedules to this morning's release. We also would like to remind you that we will be making statements in today's call and presentation that are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. We are making those statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Please see our SEC filings for the risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forecasts, anticipated results or other forward-looking statements. Now I will turn the call over to Paul. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Bobbi, and Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q4 earnings call. I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter results with you and provide an update on the progress of our ASCEND Transformation Program. Before we get started, I want to first welcome Markus Limberger to Enerpac Tool Group. Markus joined us as Executive Vice President of Operations on September 1, and we are very excited to have him as a member of our leadership team. His background includes a strong focus on operational excellence and proven success in developing and executing operation strategies to achieve sustained improvements in performance with extensive experience in lean and Continuous improvement. Markus will be instrumental as we execute on our global operational excellence initiatives here at Enerpac. Now to touch on the quarter, as we wrapped up the fiscal year, we experienced nice momentum heading into the last several weeks of the quarter. I'm very pleased with our results, which were driven by continued solid demand in both our product and service businesses in 2 regions, and we achieved a quarterly adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.1%, which is a record high following the EC&S divestiture in 2019. Tony will provide additional commentary on the fourth quarter financial results in a moment. But before I move on, I want to thank our global team for the solid execution throughout the fiscal year and their dedication to serving our customers. Overall, with the exception of the additional receivable reserve in the third quarter, it was a strong fiscal year, which we will continue to build on here in fiscal 2023. Now moving on to Slide 3. As we announced on our Q2 earnings call, we launched our ASCEND Transformation Program focused on driving organic growth, operational excellence improvement and greater efficiency and productivity in SG&A to enhance shareholder value. In the fourth quarter, we moved from the design stage to the implementation phase of the program, and we continue to work diligently on hundreds of individual initiatives across the company to position the business to achieve its full potential. I sincerely appreciate the extra efforts from all levels of the organization to make this transformation a success. Without our dedicated and driven team members, none of this progress would be possible. The work done to date continues to support our view that we expect ASCEND will deliver between $40 million to $50 million of incremental adjusted EBITDA, which will be in our run rate as we exit fiscal 2024. We anticipate the investment to achieve the incremental EBITDA will be between $60 million and $65 million, and we recorded $9.8 million of ASCEND-related expenses in Q4 with the first benefits of the transformation program to be realized in fiscal 2023. Turning to Slide 4. I want to take a minute to give a brief update regarding the progress we have made on just a few of our ASCEND initiatives. On the commercial side, we have started to implement strategic pricing adjustments based on our analysis of our price position in our key product categories. In addition, through continued implementation of 80/20 frameworks, we have been focused on SKU rationalization to simplify our product offering and reduce complexity in our business. We have also reviewed our sales coverage model, and as a result, we have increased territory management support in key territories where we believe we are underpenetrated. On the operational side, we are implementing warehouse digital scheduling and capacity planning tools, along with optimization initiatives to improve picking accuracy and receiving throughput. These are just a sample of some of the exciting initiatives within ASCEND, which demonstrates the broad reach of the program and the level of engagement across and throughout the organization. As it relates to our expectations on the impact of ASCEND for fiscal 2023, we currently anticipate that we will see $12 million to $18 million of EBITDA benefit, which is included in the guidance that we will cover at the end of today's call. Again, I want to reiterate that ASCEND is much more than a restructuring program. There is a high degree of focus and discipline associated not only with our cost structure, but also organic growth and operational efficiency and productivity. We very much view ASCEND as a transformation program, not a restructuring program, and we will provide further details on the ASCEND Transformation Program at our Investor Day, which I'm excited to announce will be held on November 16 in New York City. We will be sending out details and registration information in early October, so please watch for that, and we hope to see you there. Now moving on to Slide 5. An important aspect of our balanced capital allocation strategy includes returning capital to shareholders through opportunistic share repurchases. As we announced on our Q2 earnings call, the Board of Directors approved a new share repurchase program of up to 10 million shares of the company's common stock. In the fourth quarter, we repurchased an additional 2 million shares for a total of $39 million. So combined with our activity in the third quarter, this amounts to a total share repurchase under the new authorization of $75 million since March 2022. This share repurchase program reflects the confidence our board has in our strategy and in our ability to create shareholder value. Turning to Slide 6, I'll provide a market update based on what we experienced across our business in the quarter. I'm pleased that we continued to see strong core growth in 2 of our 4 regions with another strong quarter in the Americas and a nice recovery in our MENAC or Middle East region. While some pricing and availability has started to stabilize, supply chain challenges remain throughout the quarter, which Tony will cover in more detail. Our global supply chain and operations team members continue to work tirelessly to manage these day-to-day challenges. And while our past due backlog did increase slightly, I am encouraged that we were able to ship some of our past due backlog from the third quarter and keep inventory levels flat quarter-over-quarter, excluding the impact of foreign currency, thanks to their hard work. We also took additional pricing actions to cover increasing costs and preserve margins, and I'm glad to say that COVID-related challenges had less of an impact on our business in the quarter. While Enerpac Tool Group does not have a material top line exposure in Russia or Ukraine, the conflict there has had ancillary impacts to our business that we continue to manage in the fourth quarter, including supply chain challenges, foreign currency impacts and delayed maintenance as refineries continue to run to reduce dependency on Russian oil, particularly in Europe. Moving on to the regions. The Americas experienced solid core sales growth in the mid-teens percent in the fourth quarter. This was driven by both product and service with service having strong year-over-year improvement. Overall, the improvement in the quarter was broad-based with rail being positive due to investments and maintenance activities. We continue to see solid performance from our OEM and national accounts, reflecting steady underlying industrial growth and demand and inquiries for our heavy lift business or HLT, was also strong in the quarter. In South America, mining continues to be favorable, driven by copper and iron ore. The ongoing recovery within the service business was driven by strong demand for field machining work related to shipbuilding and power gen decommissioning work, offset by delays as many refineries stayed online to support national and global demand for petroleum and chemical products. While demand was steady within the channel, distributor sentiment was cautious, driven by inflationary pressures. Moving on to Europe. This region experienced a slight core decline year-over-year, primarily driven by a large service project that did not repeat and a decrease in service due to delayed maintenance work as pipelines continue to operate due to high oil prices and to reduce dependency in oil and gas coming from Russia. From a vertical market perspective, the region experienced strong demand within power generation and particularly wind, driven by the need to become independent from Russian oil and gas. And while oil and gas exploration activities increased due to high oil and gas prices, big shutdowns are being postponed, impacting our service business. Infrastructure was flat in the quarter after growth in the first half of 2022 due to inflation, labor shortages and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In general, manufacturing industries in Europe have been impacted by a combination of supply chain issues, high energy prices, labor shortages and inflation while there are increasing concerns about a recession in some countries in the region. Overall, distributor sentiment is cautious due to the current macroeconomic environment. Moving on to Asia Pacific. The region was flat from a core growth perspective year-over-year, while the region continues to experience some code related lockdowns and closures, COVID had much less of an impact on the business in the fourth quarter. From a vertical perspective, mining continued to be favorable in the fourth quarter, driven by demand across the region for raw materials. Shipbuilding and infrastructure were also positive with infrastructure primarily driven by government spending on capital projects, particularly in Australia. And turning to the MENAC or Middle East region, MENAC delivered solid year-over-year core growth in the mid-30s percent. As we've seen in the last few quarters, overall spending on oil and gas activity in the region continued to ramp up. Energy producers are making large investments into downstream activity. However, maintenance work on some facilities continues to be pushed out a few months to leverage the high oil prices. Travel restrictions related to COVID have been lifted. And while each country has its own COVID protocol, it did not limit our work scopes in the fourth quarter. From a vertical market perspective, oil and gas continues to be favorable, and the region continues to make investments in new projects related to power generation, including renewable energy and infrastructure. Now moving on to Cortland. Our Cortland business experienced core growth of 14% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. On the medical side of the business, demand continues to improve for commercial products above historical levels in diagnostics, robotic surgery and orthopedics. We transferred another orthopedic product from development to production and also produced several new design and development samples for potential new orthopedic and cardiovascular products in the quarter. Moving on to the industrial side of the Cortland business, oil and gas, aerospace and defense and industrial were favorable in the fourth quarter, while Marine was challenged due to the high fuel prices and operating costs. Lead times and supply chain challenges improved sequentially in the fourth quarter. I'll now turn it over to Tony to walk us through the Q4 financial results as well as an update on supply chain and operations. Tony? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony P. Colucci, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Executive VP & CFO [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Paul, and Good morning, everyone. Now turning to Slide 9, let's review the adjusted fourth quarter results. Net sales were $152 million, which is a 10% increase in core sales when compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. Tool product core sales were up 12%. Service quarter sales were up 3% and Cortland core sales were up 14%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 21% in the quarter, representing a post EC&S divestiture high and reflected currency-neutral incremental profitability of 67%, well above our previously communicated range of 35% to 45%. The tax rate for the quarter was 17% compared to 36% in the prior year. This resulted in an adjusted EPS of $0.37, up from $0.19 in the prior year. Turning to Slide 10 for details on our sales performance. Reported year-over-year net sales were up 4%, including the FX headwind of $7.5 million, driven by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, primarily related to the euro and GBP. Product core sales increased 12% with approximately 9% of the increase from our tools products and the remainder to Cortland. All regions experienced year-over-year double-digit product core sales growth, except APAC, which was in the high single digits, which reflects continued strong demand for our products. Service growth continued in the Americas and MENAC with MENAC driven by strong oil and gas opportunities, but was partially offset by declines in APAC and Europe, where the latter is largely due to the nonrepeat of a significant North Sea service project in the prior year. Lastly, pricing actions contributed roughly $9 million to the top line. While we do expect our ASCEND Transformation Program to contribute to our sales growth, given that we are still in the early stages of implementation, there was minimal impact to the top line in the quarter. Turning to Slide 11, reflecting a consistent trend with the third quarter, IT&S product net sales exceeded the peak range of the 5 years prior to COVID driven by strong demand and new product launches. Transitioning to Slide 12. I'd like to spend some time discussing the year-over-year change in adjusted EBITDA. Just like sales, the stronger U.S. dollar had an unfavorable impact to profitability, reducing EBITDA by $1.4 million versus the prior year. Higher product sales volumes contributed roughly $2 million of growth to EBITDA. Pricing actions resulted in net price cost realization in the quarter, increasing margin by $5.5 million, along with the mix of Cortland medical sales and improved industrial profitability, which contributed an additional $2 million of EBITDA improvement in the quarter. Excluding the favorable impact to largely European costs resulting from the stronger U.S. dollar, SG&A was up approximately $2 million when compared to the prior year. The increase was primarily driven from higher short-term incentive compensation, incremental travel and entertainment, which was linked primarily to our commercial leadership teams and increased advertising costs. This was partially offset by lower salary and rate wages resulting from benefits tied to restructuring actions taken earlier in the year and selective reorganization and SG&A functions to capture early productivity and efficiency improvements. While we did incur approximately $3 million in restructuring charges in the quarter associated with our ASCEND Transformation Program, the associated savings from those actions will largely be recognized throughout fiscal 2023. More to come on the anticipated impact of ASCEND for fiscal 2023 shortly. Moving now to operations. As mentioned during our third quarter call, we started to see some easing of the high freight and commodity costs coming out of the COVID pandemic, specifically in China. That easing continued into the fourth quarter, and we now see freight rates down roughly 50% from the April rates. Additionally, commodity softening resulted in some price reductions from some of our Chinese suppliers. Also sticking with the freight side of things, the port strike concerns on the U.S. West Coast did not come to fruition in the fourth quarter, which was great news for the execution in the quarter. An agreement has not been reached yet, so we continue to maintain a watchful eye on the potential risk this could have on our future results. Port strikes in Europe were announced for September, which will put pressure on the other European ports and could have a slight impact on our operations. Finally, there continues to be roughly $2 million of our inventory waiting at the Shanghai ports to be shipped, which we had anticipated alleviating during our fourth quarter after the COVID shutdowns in Shanghai, but that has not yet occurred. We expect that borrowing any additional COVID shutdowns, this inventory hang up will subside in our fiscal first quarter. We have seen some easing in commodity pricing during the quarter, albeit at a slower pace, which is promising news and we will continue to monitor. Our biggest concern, like many other companies, is the steep increase in energy prices that are taking effective Europe, where we've seen electricity increase 500% and natural gas prices increase over 1,100%. We estimate that barring any other mitigating factors, these increases would result in an annual cost increase of roughly $700,000 in our Europe utility costs, not including potential energy surcharges from our direct material suppliers. Our supply chain and operations teams are working collectively to identify opportunities to mitigate this anticipated impact. Shifting to U.S. supply, availability of labor is improving and steel prices are stable. Lead times, however, in the U.S. continue to remain very long, especially for castings, forgings and electrical components. Electrical componentry is probably the biggest challenge for us with some lead times as high as 80 weeks to receive supply and ultimately being the primary driver behind our higher-than-typical pass due backlog. Shifting to backlog. We see continued -- we saw continued strong demand for our products, which resulted in order rates greater than pre-COVID levels and monthly shipments continue to set high watermarks versus the previous 5 years, consistent with our third quarter. The combination of strong orders and the continuation of global supply chain challenges continues to add pressure on our past due backlog, which increased slightly from the end of our third quarter to be roughly $10 million to $11 million at the end of Q4. Despite the aforementioned softening of certain commodity and freight costs, the headwinds tied to substantially higher energy costs, particularly in Europe, leads us to believe that this inflationary environment is not over and will continue through at least the remainder of the calendar year, albeit at perhaps a slower pace than earlier in the calendar year. As a result, and as discussed during our last earnings call, we implemented additional pricing actions in response to the continued inflationary environment. As anticipated, we saw the impact of the incremental pricing outpaced the cost increases. We will continue to monitor inflationary pressures going forward and react with the additional pricing actions as necessary. So I will wrap it up with liquidity on Slide 14. We generated $43 million of free cash flow during the quarter versus $27 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. Excluding the impact from foreign currency translation, working capital decreased by $16 million in the fourth quarter, primarily on $7 million of lower receivables due to strong collections performance and $8 million of incremental payables. Inventory remained flat sequentially. Capital expenditures were approximately $1.5 million in the quarter. Our leverage ratio is at 0.9x, remaining well below our target range of 1.5 to 2.5x as was the case for the entire fiscal year. As Paul mentioned earlier, during the quarter, we purchased roughly 2 million shares of approximately $39 million. In fiscal 2022, we acquired roughly 3.8 million shares for a total of $75 million. Finally, I am pleased that we were able to execute the refinancing of our credit facility agreement, which was completed on September 9. The agreement provides for a $400 million revolving credit facility and a $200 million term loan. The proceeds from the term loan were used to pay down the outstanding borrowing that we had under our previous credit agreement. Additional details on the new credit agreement are available in the Form 8-K filed with the SEC on September 15. Our current liquidity as of Q4, in addition to future cash flow generation positions us well to support our balanced capital allocation priorities, which includes our ASCEND Transformation Program, along with other internal investments, returns to shareholders and select M&A growth. We will remain disciplined stewards of our capital to ensure we create long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call back to Paul. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Tony. In the first 4 weeks of the fiscal first quarter, demand remained strong, and we have not seen a change in order trends from the fourth quarter. However, we are cautiously optimistic as it relates to fiscal 2023. Due to the uncertain macroeconomic environment, and particularly the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar, we are setting our full year fiscal 2023 net sales range of $565 million to $585 million, which based on current foreign exchange rates is approximately a 3.5% headwind from fiscal 2022 and assumes that there is not a global recession. The guidance range represents organic growth of approximately 3% to 6%. And while we continue to have potential tailwinds that could help support growth, we remain cautious. We anticipate our normal seasonality trends where our second half is stronger than the first half of our fiscal year. We expect an adjusted EBITDA range of $113 million to $123 million, which includes an ASCEND EBITDA benefit of between $12 million to $18 million, with improvement in our typical adjusted EBITDA incremental margins as ASCEND progresses. Before we open the line for questions, I want to share that while we are cautious as we enter fiscal 2023, I am extremely proud of the work that we have accomplished as an organization over the past 12 months. We are well on our way to transforming the business, and we look forward to sharing more details regarding our strategic plan, ASCEND and capital allocation strategy with you at our Investor Day in November. Our strong balance sheet and the work we have done with ASCEND thus far has us well positioned to unlock the full potential of this business. As always, I would like to thank our Enerpac Tool Group employees around the world for their hard work and dedication to serving our customers and for their efforts in driving our ASCEND transformation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobbi Belstner, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Senior Director of IR & Strategy [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator, that concludes today's prepared remarks. Please open the line for questions. ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) Our first question today is coming from Jeff Hammond from KeyBanc Capital Markets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey David Hammond, KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division - MD & Equity Research Analyst [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So just on the 3% to 6% organic growth, can you just -- I guess, one, talk about the price component within that carryover additional actions. And then 2, just any drag anticipated from any 80/20 actions, product line simplification, et cetera. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I'll let Tony address first on the kind of thinking behind the framework, and then we can talk a little bit on 80/20 as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony P. Colucci, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Executive VP & CFO [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I mean the 3% to 6% is going to be more heavily weighted towards pricing than growth as we're -- than volume that as we're being cautious here with our -- with the low one here in particular. But it is a mix is what I would say. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. And I would add to that. I mean, there certainly is a fair amount of pricing carryover that we've kind of built into that top line guidance, Jeff. And we do have some additional pricing actions that we're anticipating in the fiscal and of course, will react as necessary further for inflation, but we also talked about some of the strategic pricing actions that we took towards the tail end of fiscal 2022, which will have certainly a carryover effect in fiscal '23. I think with regards to the 80/20 work, which is progressing well, we don't anticipate any significant drag on revenue from that, just in the sense that we do have a fairly extensive product catalog. So we believe that we have ample substitute products available that we can point customers to, if not the exact one that they would be requesting. But I think the top line does reflect just a bit of cautious outlook and particularly with regards to the European region, where obviously, the macro environment is more challenging. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey David Hammond, KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division - MD & Equity Research Analyst [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Great. And then just on, I guess, the $10 million of spend this quarter, kind of where are the big buckets? And then just on the savings, what kind of what are the big factors that swing kind of towards the lower to the higher end of that 12% to 18% range? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. On the spend here in the quarter, again, a mix of restructuring and mainly service fees that went into the program here as well. That's the primary amount that we see here in the quarter. And then sorry, the second question. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey David Hammond, KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division - MD & Equity Research Analyst [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just the band is pretty big, $12 million to $18 million. Just what kind of pushes you to the higher the lower end? And maybe just speak to some of the bigger opportunities. I know you mentioned strategic pricing, but within kind of the early stage, some of the big buckets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony P. Colucci, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - Executive VP & CFO [9] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I would say some of that is volume dependent within the range here as well. But the 12% to 18% really does cover all 3 categories of our ASCEND program that we have. Again, I would say, lower on the low end, taking down some of the volume on the low end, but it really does cover all 3 of the categories that we have and looking to gain traction on all 3. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [10] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. And I would just echo that and say if you remember on our 3 serve ASCEND pillars, there are organic growth elements that are more near term. There are operational efficiency improvements we're making. We've referenced some of those in warehousing, for example. And the third bucket around SG&A. I think we feel very confident around particularly cost-related actions and our ability to execute those in the fiscal. As Tony said on the first bucket, there are some that are the growth-related pieces that are somewhat volume-dependent. So we're just staying a bit cautious on that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [11] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) We've reach the end of our Question-and-Answer Session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul E. Sternlieb, Enerpac Tool Group Corp. - CEO, President & Director [12] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Well, thank you all for joining our Q4 earnings call. Have a great day, and we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day in New York City on November 16. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [13] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

Here is how AVEO Pharmaceuticals (AVEO) and Trevi Therapeutics, Inc. (TRVI) have performed compared to their sector so far this year.

David Trainer, the CEO of the investment research firm New Constructs, believes there are now roughly 300 publicly-traded zombie companies.

The bear market in software stocks has already lasted far longer than the typical decline, according to MoffettNathanson,

Inflation, interest rates, and recession – these are the bogeymen of investing, and they’ve been watching over our shoulders for the past several months. We all know the story by now, the rate of inflation is running at generational highs, the Federal Reserve is hiking rates in an attempt to push back against high prices, and that’s likely to tip the economy into recession. At a time like this, investors are showing a growing interest in finding strong defensive portfolio moves. It’s a mindset t

September more than lives up to its reputation as an ugly month for stocks. Here's what the data says about October performance.

Leaving these accounts open could tarnish your golden years.

Semiconductor stocks have tumbled in recent months amid flagging demand, with the S&P Semiconductors Select Industry Index dropping 36% year to date. Bank of America analysts recently discussed their favorite choices in the sector.

Stock market investors loathe rising interest rates, but they have upsides — bonds are generating returns again and financial instruments like fixed annuities, with their returns tied to bonds, are up massively. How much? Lifetime fixed-income annuity payouts are up 29% to 30% from a year ago, depending on your gender. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly...

The bears are running rampant on Wall Street. Of the 43 analysts surveyed by Refinitiv that cover Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), 38 of them rate the tech stock as a buy or strong buy. It's not surprising, therefore, that Wall Street's consensus 12-month price target reflects a 47% upside potential.

This has not been a good time for Ford (NYSE: F) stock; its price is down nearly 44% year to date as bad feelings have taken hold among analysts. Ford expects its third-quarter inflation-related supplier costs to run $1 billion higher than expected as a number of high-margin trucks and SUVs, with missing components due to supply shortages. Menawhile, Ford president Jim Farley has reorganized his executive lineup once again.

The Dow is at bear market lows. Tesla showed off a limited Optimus robot at AI Day. China EV makers reported sales with Tesla on tap.

These two energy stocks largely avoid the ups and downs of oil prices, while this other one is tied directly to those gyrations.

Yahoo Finance Live examines Carnival Cruise's stock after its latest earnings miss signifies a much longer path to profitability than expected.

Shares of Annaly Capital Management (NYSE: NLY) were among the losers this week as rising mortgage rates threatened to squeeze the mortgage REIT, and one analyst expressed caution on the stock. The company also executed a reverse stock split at the beginning of the week. Since the rate hike, which came with hawkish commentary from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, investors seem to believe the risk of a recession has grown, as well as the likelihood of a sustained high-interest-rate environment.

AT&T Inc. said Friday it was keeping its quarterly dividend at 27.75 cents a share, payable Nov. 1 to shareholders of record on Oct. 10. With the telecommunications and media company's stock down 0.8% in afternoon trading, the annual dividend rate implies a dividend yield of 7.21%, which compares with the yield for the SPDR Communication Services Select Sector ETF of 1.17% and the implied yield for the S&P 500 of 1.83%, and the yield of the 10-year Treasury note of 3.742%. AT&T's stock was the n

These top-tier companies are begging to be bought following a 34% peak decline in the Nasdaq Composite.

It should be obvious that billionaires don’t accumulate wealth by accident. Their success is predicated on observation and savvy investment, and a privileged background helps. Billionaires like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates likely saw an opportunity for land investment to return tenfold, by way of food shortages, well ahead of time. So it should be no surprise that the real estate investing platform Arrived Homes, backed by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos is taking off. He had the for

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller sees a “hard landing” by the end of 2023 as the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening will tip the U.S. economy into recession.

The recent bear market has considerably reduced the appeal of most stocks. With many growth stocks down 75% or more from their highs, investors have increasingly looked to other investment vehicles. Three discounted tech stocks that would make great permanent additions to your portfolio are Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AXON), and Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ: ZM).