As we enter the bumpy summer months, large-cap US domestic stocks and health-care names are on Louis Navellier's list, and he shares several to watch.
I'm talking with Louis Navellier and he's kind enough to share some great recommendations with us today. Thanks Louis for coming along.
It's great to be here.
So you've got several newsletters now. Are you buying anything in the emerging growth arena?
Well, Emerging Growth is our most powerful letter. You can't be in that letter unless you have at least 25% sales growth and 50% earnings growth...and that was our top letter in 2012. This year we're already up over 20%, so we're having a lot of fun...a lot of little biotechs, little pharmas, homebuilders, title insurance companies, even some mortgage REITs.
We've done very, very well with that letter but those are more small cap stocks and they've been more melting up. Right now I'm more comfortable with large cap because we're in the bumpy summer months. We've got lots of good stocks there. If somebody has a germ phobia, we'd recommend Clorox (CLX). They make the wipes...
Mr. Clean? No, that's not Mr. Clean.
Or Kimberly-Clark (KMB), which makes all the hand sanitizers. Those are two examples.
The one thing we have to do in both of our letters there is we have to be more domestic and less international, because the strong dollar is crushing the profits of big multinationals. And 40% of the S&P sales are beyond our border, so that means we've got to be more Home Depot (HD), more Costco (COST), more Walmart (WMT). We've just got to be more domestic.
What are you looking for? I mean, what's the first thing you look for? Sales and earnings growth, is that at the top of your priority list?
Sales and earnings are obviously one of the first screens, but profit margin expansion has always been one of the biggest tricks of my trade, because when the operating margins are expanding, earnings grow faster than sales.
Now, something like Apple (AAPL) we sold a couple of quarters ago because their margins were under compression. Their sales were good at that time, but they weren't getting the margins they used to because the iPads and the iPhones didn't trade at the premium they once did. Ironically, they're now a dividend stock.
I know, who would believe it?
It helps to borrow in the bond market but pay out big dividends.
Steve Jobs is rolling.
Well, it was a good case study, because they can't repatriate that money, because they've already paid taxes all over the world. And if they bring their overseas cash back, they get to pay taxes again. That's dumb...so what they do is they borrow on the bond market, and they keep the money overseas. Apparently you can borrow cheap when you've got a bunch of cash on the books.
So it was really a good case study, but corporate America is just going nuts on the buybacks. But going back to blue chip growth, we have a lot of pharma we like. Amgen (AMGN) is there, I have Biogen (BIIB) under management. There are a lot of very, very good biotech companies.
Do you have to go into the small biotechs at all in your letters?
Yeah, we do that in Emerging Growth. Santarus (SNTS) is one. We've been in and out of Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) for some time. That's near new highs.
A lot of it is health care-driven. It's cheaper to take the pill than a procedure. I mean that's just the bottom line. Now, we do have one company that does procedures, which is DaVita (DVA). That's the dialysis company, because there's apparently no pill for kidney failure. That's another one of our stocks.
Related Reading:
4 Ways to Summer-Proof Your Portfolio
