The 58.805902 Return on Capital For Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) is Getting Attention

Taking a look into the returns for Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC), we see the stock has a current MF Rank of 554. Developed by hedge fund manager Joel Greenblatt, the intention of the formula is to spot high quality companies that are trading at an attractive price. The formula uses ROIC and earnings yield ratios to find quality, undervalued stocks. In general, companies with the lowest combined rank may be the higher quality picks.

Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) has a current ERP5 Rank of 277. The ERP5 Rank may assist investors with spotting companies that are undervalued. This ranking uses four ratios. These ratios are Earnings Yield, ROIC, Price to Book, and 5 year average ROIC. When looking at the ERP5 ranking, it is generally considered the lower the value, the better.

Investors who are able to wipe the slate clean and take a fresh look at a certain stock may be able to make more informed decisions that will hopefully lead to increased profits in the long-term. Figuring out when to sell an underperforming stock may end up being just as important as figuring out which stocks to buy. As the stock market continues to trade near record levels, investors will be closely following trading action heading into the latter half of the year. With many stocks reaching new highs, investors may need to make sure that they aren’t getting too overconfident with trades. When a few winning trades are strung together, investors may feel like they have the Midas touch and they can do no wrong. Nobody knows for sure how long stocks will stay in favor with investors. Keeping track of the portfolio’s contents can help when quick decisions need to be made. There may come a time when the tide turns and making a winning trade may seem impossible. Investors might want to have a plan in place in case of a sudden major market downturn. Keeping the portfolio stable during periods of market uncertainty may help prepare for unforeseen events in the future. Although there are many market enthusiasts that think the bull run may be on its last legs, there are just as many who believe that the best is yet to come, and there is much mor  e room for stocks to climb. 

Total Asset Growth

In their 2008 paper, professors Cooper, Gulen and Schill provided evidence that a firm’s assets growth rates are strong predictors of future abnormal returns.

“The findings suggest that corporate events associated with asset expansion (i.e., acquisitions, public equity offerings, public debt offerings, and bank loan initiations) tend to be followed by periods of abnormally low returns, whereas events associated with asset contraction (i.e., spin-offs, share repurchases, debt prepayments, and dividend initiations) tend to be followed by periods of abnormally high returns.” – Cooper, Gulen & Shill in Asset Growth and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns. In a study on US data during the period 1967-2007, they find that:

– A hedge portfolio rebalanced annually that is long (short) the stocks of companies with the lowest (highest) percentage growth in total assets over the previous 12 months generates an average annual return of 22%.
– This asset growth effect is stronger for small capitalization stocks, but is still substantial for large capitalization stocks.
– The effect is strongest in the month of January.
– Asset growth rate retains large explanatory power for future stock returns after accounting for firm size, book-to-market ratio and momentum. In fact the asset growth effect is at least as powerful in explaining returns as these other widely used factors.

We calculate asset growth as follows:

Total Asset Growth = (Total AssetsTotal Assets y-1) − 1. Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) has a total asset growth number of 0.175544.

FCF on Debt
Another ratio S&P Analyst Richard Tortoriello recommends to use is ‘Free Cash Flow to debt’. (‘Quantitative Strategies for Achieving Alpha’) This ratio shows how long it would take a company to pay back its debt using its current level of free cash flow. In his study, Tortoriello found that investing in the top 20% companies with the highest FCF/debt ratio generated substantially higher returns compared to the market.

Formula:

FCF on Debt = (Cash Flow from Operations−Capital Expenditure) / Total Debt

The FCF on debt number for Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) stands at -0.258818.

Net Debt to Market Cap

This ratio gives a sense of how much debt a company has relative to its market value. Companies with high debt levels compared to their peers can be volatile. We calculate it as follows:

Net Debt to Market Cap = (Total Debt−Cash and ST Investments) / Market Cap

Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) has a net debt to market cap ratio of -0.258818.

EBITDA/EV

EBITDA/EV stands at 0.068209.
This multiple is similar to Earnings Yield, but here we use Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) as Nominator). By doing this, we can compare companies with a different capital structure and capital expenditures. This way it gives a much better idea of the value of a company compared to the popular P/E ratio. As O’Shaughnessy explaines:

” Stocks that have very high debt levels often have low PE ratios, but this does not necessarily mean that they are cheap in relation to other securities. Stocks that are highly leveraged tend to have far more volatile PE ratios than those that are not. A stock’s PE ratio is greatly affected by debt levels and tax rates, whereas EBITDA/EV is not. To compare valuations on a level playing field, you need to account for how a company is financing itself and then compare how relatively cheap or expensive it is after accounting for all balance sheet items.” – James P. O’Shaugnessy in What works on Wall Street

You can think of it as the taking all the revenue and subtracting the costs that solely go into running the business. The downside of EBITDA is that it can be abused by companies declaring as “one-off” costs things that should really be considered normal costs. We use the EBITDA of the last 12 months.

VC3

Value Composite Three (VC3) is another adaptation of O’Shaughnessy’s value composite but here he combines the factors used in VC1 with buyback yield. This factor is interesting for investors who’re looking for stocks with the best value characteristics, but are indifferent to whether these companies pay a dividend.

VC3 is the combination of the following factors:

Price-to-Book
Price-to-Earnings
Price-to-Sales
EBITDA/EV
Price-to-Cash flow
Buyback Yield

As with the VC1 and VC2, companies are put into groups from 1 to 100 for each ratio and the individual scores are summed up. This total score is then put into groups again from 1 to 100. 1 is cheap, 100 is expensive.

The scorecard also displays variants of the VC3 where the score is calculated for the selected company compared to peer companies in the same industry, industry group or sector.

Please note that we use Book-to-Market instead of P/B since it allows a more accurate sorting compared to P/B. Stocks with a high B/M show up at the top of the list, stocks with negative B/M are at the bottom of the list. For the same reason we use Earnings-to-Price instead of Price-to-Earnings and Cash flow-to-price instead instead of Price-to-cash flow.

Also important is that we always make sure that companies with the same score get added to the same percentile. For stock universes where the number of stocks is less than 100, we make sure that the stocks are still allocated to percentiles from 0 to 100 instead of 0 to the total number of stocks. This is particularly relevant for the industry, industry group or sector variants where if additional filters are used, the number of stocks often drops below 100.

Hercules Capital, Inc. (HTGC) has a VC3 of 49.

There are various ways that the individual investor can approach stock picking. Starting from the top-down, investors may study overall market trends. This may include examining different sectors looking for the ones that are poised to prosper in the future. Once potential industries or sectors are identified, the investor can then start to sift through individual stocks within those groups. Investors starting from the bottom up may do just the opposite. They may choose to study individual companies that have been displaying strong performance, regardless of which sector they belong to.