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all right guys in this video I'm going to analyze the SNP 400 mid cap stock that I came across very recently so basically legendary value investor Terry Smith he recently purchased 100 million dollars worth of this stock in his portfolio and that got me very interested and the stock is exponent Inc ticker symbol Expo it's engineering and scientific Consulting Services business and they've been doing this business for more than 50 years currently the stock is trading at 87.89 with a market cap of 4.5 billion dollars and year to date down almost 11 percent and from its peak last year it's done almost 30 percent so full disclosure uh this is not a financial advice this is just my personal research on the company and their business fundamentals and I hold a very small position uh less than 0.5 percent in my account so I might be biased in my analysis with that being said let's start by looking at the revenue numbers over the last five years so basically they increase their revenues from 417 million dollars in 2019 to 535 million dollars in the trailing 12 months so that's a compounded 6.5 annual growth over that time nothing remarkable uh rather a modest Revenue growth in terms of net income that grew at a similar Pace six percent compounded growth so basically in 2019 they had about 82 million dollars of net income and in the trailing 12 months that was 102 million dollars so basically you know a modest growth in net income as well free cash flow numbers look consistent to me but growth looks flat only about you know point six percent kagger in free cash flow and this is primarily due to some of the adjustments that they did in their cash flow statements like accounts payable and receivables and then accrued payroll benefits and liabilities therefore revenues Etc and because of this um they are you know cash flow dropped from its peak in 2021.
and they also had some capex expenses for example in 2022 they had higher Capac expenses than previous years so as a result of these accounting measures their cash flows slightly dropped in recent years and the growth overall looks flat so moving on to their revenue segmentation you'll notice that 83 percent of their revenues come from engineering and scientific consulting services and 17 come from environmental and health sector Consulting so you can see a detailed breakdown here under engineering and scientific Consulting you have segments like civil engineering constructions mechanical engineering data science biomechanics Etc and under environmental and Health Sciences Consulting you have segments like Health Sciences environmental and art Sciences chemical regulations and food safety Etc so basically although they report their revenues in two major segments it seems like their revenue streams are fairly Diversified which is good to see now looking at their margins and ryc which often tell you the competitive nature of the business starting with their operating margin we see a very strong 20 plus operating margins for a very long period of time so when a business can maintain such a good margin for such a long period of time that typically means they have some sort of competitive Advantage right so since 2015 they maintained this kind of operating margins that really good to see in terms of net profit margin that looks very healthy as well almost 20 percent consistent net margin for the last six years or so now looking at the return on invested capital or roic that's it's a very healthy 20 plus range consistently since 2017.
so looking at the margins and ryc this looks like a great business to me you have strong operating margins net margins and ryc for such a long period of time and that indicates a strong competitive advantage or company position for the business balance sheet looks pretty healthy to me as well no interest bearing that and according to their last quarterly report they have about 145 million dollars of cash sitting on their balance sheet so basically it's a very clean balance sheet and I don't see any risk of bankruptcy or anything of that nature in my opinion all right now coming to their dividends excellent dividend paying history as you can see here they've been growing their dividends at 16.5 percent kagger over the last nine years so that's basically a dream stock for any dividend growth investor however the yield is low currently paying one dollar per share meaning the yield is slightly above one percent uh very good dividend coverage as you can see here Dividends are pretty well covered by their free cash flows over the last five years or so I would expect them to continue growing their dividends moving forward because you know dividend coverage ratio looks pretty solid to me you know I actually love this kind of dividend growth stocks with very strong business fundamentals I have a very long investment time Horizon for for example like 20 years so this sort of stocks are perfect for compounding my Capital year after year the only thing I have to do is buy it at a reasonable price and hold for the long run okay now looking at the share BuyBacks again looks pretty solid to me they reduced 6.6 percent shares outstanding over the last nine years that's not too remarkable but it's good to see that the consistency of the management uh in terms of dividend growth and share BuyBacks looks pretty solid over the long run that creates significant shareholder value in my opinion right let's now look at the most critical part the valuation so basically the way I'm going to do this I'm going to Value exponent it's pretty simple so taking last five years average free cash flow and then dividing it by their Enterprise Value and by doing that I get a free cash flow yield of 2.18 that's substantially lower than the 10-year treasure yield so basically that means this stock is pretty expensive at this price in terms of valuation there are definitely some downside risk at this price that's the summary from the valuations now comparing their valuations with other similar Consulting businesses in the mid cap sector for example Tetra track and AECOM you can see that exponent currently giving you the lowest free cash flow yield at about 2.2 percent tattoo track has about 2.85 free cash flow yield and Acom has 3.75 free cash flow now one way I can explain this is looking at the operating margins and then comparing right so if you look at the operating margins for example exponent has the highest margin at 23 percent uh tattoo track has eight percent operating margin and Acom has about 4.5 margins right so you can clearly see why exponent is trading at such a high valuations uh because in terms of quality it seems like it's a much better quality business compared to other similar businesses like turtle Tech or acorn all right so the next question to ask is you know what are the growth potentials for this business if you're going to pay such a high multiple um that's definitely something you need to ask right so I'm going to share some statistics regarding that that I found online but before that please consider liking this video and subscribing to my channel it's a small YouTube channel that has started a couple of years back and I'm still struggling to grow so if you could simply like the video and maybe consider subscribing I would really appreciate that okay so moving on to the growth prospects for exponent I found this research article on the potential kegger of Engineering Services Outsourcing market and exponent is basically one of the players in this market and according to this research article the market for Engineering Services will grow at a compounded 33 kagger from 2021 to 2030 which is extraordinary right now exponent will definitely benefit from this growth if true however I'm not saying that they'll be growing at 33 percent rate uh because depending on what segment of this Market they operate their growth might be much slower than 33 however it's reassuring to see that there is a potential secular Trend coming up for exponent in the coming years which is good to see all right so let's summarize the video I think the revenue and net income growth look modest uh you know there will be potentially benefiting from the 33 percent kagger projections going forward but as of now their revenue and income growth looks okay to me excellent margins almost 20 plus consistent operating and net margins that indicates the sign of a strong business roic uh looks pretty solid a strong competitive position they don't have any debt which is very good as well growing dividends they are growing their dividends at 16 kagger and they're covered by free cash flow so I'm expecting there will be you know continue growing their dividends going forward uh the stock looks pretty expensive at this price so there are some downside risk in terms of valuations in my opinion so basically that's my take on exponent I think the fundamentals look strong the only thing I'll be asking going forward is a slightly better Revenue growth right so maybe 10 to 11 growth instead of that six to seven percent growth and the other thing is since the valuation is expensive you have to be cautious in terms of when you want to start building a position if you'd like to right so personally for me I have less than 0.5 percent allocation and that's also at around 86 dollars per share and I don't have any plan to increase my position unless the price dropped substantially all right so thank you guys for watching the video and again consider liking and subscribing the video if you got some value out of this and I will see you guys on the next video good luck with the investing
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