Research

Level Set – Our Highest Conviction Investment Ideas

While there is ample uncertainty about the overall market direction, with a laundry list of concerns, including geopolitical risk, dysfunction in Washington, higher bond yields, and mixed earnings results, we contend there are ample opportunities to generate alpha on both the long & short side. As we wrote in early October, in our ‘What Happened

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Level Set – Opportunities Where Stocks Are Near COVID Lows

In searching for stock ideas, we have noticed stocks in several industries have not generated substantial shareholder value when compared to stock market lows of March of 2020. Rate sensitivity, GLP-1s (Ozempic), shrink and other trends have certainly emerged over the last 3.5 years pressuring some stocks and industries disproportionately, but we thought we’d scour

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Consumer – A Level Set of Trivariate’s Views

The State of the US Consumer Recently generalist investors have been asking us about the state of the US consumer. A strong retail sales figure has some investors questioning whether “good news on the economy is bad for stocks” because it alters their expected Fed path. Others are more generally curious about revenue potential for

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Level Set – Small Caps Are Not That Cheap

The consensus view is that mega / large cap stocks are expensive relative to small caps, and many investors we speak to argue that small cap valuation is compelling. The cap-weighted price-to-forward earnings of the Top 500 US equities by market capitalization is near a 20-year high vs. the equally weighted price-to-forward earnings (see below),

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Spin-Offs: Probably Not A Panacea

While the historical results of spin-offs are mixed, and there are many different nuances and strategies related to these corporate actions, there is no doubt that management teams are increasingly being advised about the potential to unlock or create value through spins.  Conglomerates, businesses in multiple end-markets and sectors, and those valued on a sum-of-the-parts

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Level Set – The Effects of Tighter Financial Conditions

The sell-off of heavily indebted companies as financial conditions have tightened has been among the key subjects of our conversations with investors in NY and London over the last ten days. Coinciding with tighter financial conditions (see below), the market has more sharply sold off. Source: Bloomberg, Trivariate Research, LP Heavily indebted companies have also

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Consumer – A Level Set of Trivariate’s Views

Using LP work to pick up on negative trends for retailers. Our language processing (LP) work on the earnings transcripts and webcast presentations of 130 US retailers has been influencing our cautious view of that industry. There are three main themes. Firstly, there is shrink and its impact on same-store “comps.” The number of mentions

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