Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS - Signature Wealth Management Group

Southern Company Update, 1st Quarter 2024

Southern Company stock, along with many other utilities, has had a rare, strong rally over the last couple of weeks. Heavy buying in the utilities sector can often be a harbinger for market volatility especially if it comes at the expense of the riskier sectors like consumer discretionary stocks (clothing, vehicles, restaurants, etc.). And that’s pretty much what we’ve seen with the rally beginning April 16. Stocks like LuluLemon, Nike, and Starbucks have sold off while utilities rally in conjunction. Ultimately, this is all short-term noise for Southern shareholders though. [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-08-27T10:55:32-04:00May 13, 2024|Economic Insights, Insights, Investments, Southern Company|

Market Update: April 2024

Welcome to the Monthly Market Update from Signature Wealth Management. I’m Brian Ransom, Research Director from Signature Wealth and here’s what happened in the market this month. https://youtu.be/gyKiKtFbeRI Now I know it’s not 2022 and inflation was supposed to recede by now but here we are in April 2024 and we can’t have nice things. Inflation was expected to continue to fall and level off around 2%. We did not get that. Instead, it leveled off around 3-3.5%. As mentioned in previous videos, it didn’t look like inflation [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-05-01T10:58:23-04:00April 30, 2024|Videos|

Southern Company Update, 4th Quarter 2023

Southern Company had a respectable end of the year for 2023 regarding the growth of its business. Usually with electric utilities, no news is good news. Since there was not a significant event in the earnings call, the utility business should continue as expected with steady earnings growth based on Southern Company forecasts. In this case, 2023 earnings per share (EPS) results hit the top end of full year guidance from management. That’s about a 2% growth rate over 2022 results. Management also guided 2024 EPS at a 10% growth [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-03-22T13:21:29-04:00March 14, 2024|Southern Company|

Delta Market update 2023 – 4th Quarter

Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) had a decent year in 2023, increasing net income by about $3.3b year/year. This seemed like it was the first full year of true “normalcy” following the Covid Pandemic. This included the reinstatement of the quarterly dividend at $.20/share, giving DAL stock a yield just shy of 1% as of February 23, 2024. Delta Airlines still has a ways to go to fully restore the pre-Covid dividend of $.3775/share as well as deleveraging the balance sheet back to 2019 levels. In fact, the pandemic really demonstrated [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-03-07T10:57:51-05:00March 7, 2024|Delta|

Market Update: February 2024

The market cap- and equal-weighted S&P 500 indices had a nice rally to end 2023. Much of this optimism was fueled by the expectation of multiple Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in 2024.

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-03-08T14:15:05-05:00February 22, 2024|Videos|

NextEra Energy Update; February 2024

NextEra Energy was once the clean and innovative center of the Southeast’s utility grid. And they still are. But over the last year, the stock market has repriced the value of NextEra Energy stock (NYSE: NEE). Prior to 2023, NextEra stock typically fetched a valuation premium over similar utilities because of a perceived higher growth rate on earnings as well as stability of earnings generation. Thus, as depicted below, throughout most of 2018-2022, NextEra stock had a higher price-to-book-value valuation that the other major utilities in the area. Source: [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-02-20T11:19:23-05:00February 16, 2024|NextEra Energy|

Market Update: November 2023

The market (S&P 500) peaked in January 2022, then fell 25.3% over the next 10 months. But then it retraced those losses to the tune of 28.2%. The 10-year Treasury may be the catalyst.

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-03-08T14:09:34-05:00November 15, 2023|Videos|

The Debt Maturity Wall

The market movement over the last couple of months can really be summarized by one graph. In my humble opinion, this is the most important graph in all of finance right now and the market is just now starting to digest its implications. This is graph of the 10-year treasury bond yield that broke its multi-decade downward trading pattern back in 2022 and continues to rise here in 2023. Stocks and bonds, farms and businesses, homeowners and renters, credit card owners and issuers, student borrowers and universities, Congressmen and their [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-01-30T18:33:29-05:00October 30, 2023|Investments|

Big Bifurcation: 10-year Treasury vs. Equal Weight Consumer Staples

Big bifurcation in momentum between the 10-year treasury yield (purple) and equal weight consumer staples (blue)! Staples are typically low volatility stocks with predictable earnings. But the rapid increase in the 10-year yield has forced a sell-off on both an absolute (top graph) and relative-to-S&P500 basis (bottom graph). Source: FactSet Research Systems. (n.d.). Equal weight consumer staples vs 10-year treasury yield benchmark (Interactive Charts). Retrieved October 12, 2023, from FactSet Database. This material is for informational or educational purposes only. Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-01-30T18:34:57-05:00October 13, 2023|Investments|

NextEra Energy Update; September, 2023

NextEra Energy is selling off today, September 27th with a couple of news items in the headlines. Source: Factset Database, September 27, 2023 First, NextEra plans to sell Florida City Gas to Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK) for $923 million in cash. NextEra will realize a gain on sale that should be immediately accretive to earnings and reduces debt loads by $145 million. Florida City Gas was an asset included in the Florida Gulf Power deal from Southern Company back in 2019. from This deal is expected to close over the [...]

By Brian Ransom, CFA®, MBA, MS|2024-02-16T14:56:34-05:00September 29, 2023|NextEra Energy|

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