Hits and misses aplenty in first half 2020 - Part 2

Glenn Freeman: Peter, in terms of fair value upgrades, the top three that we saw were Breville, which was up 43%, Charter Hall up 20% and WorleyParsons was up 19%.

Peter Warnes: Those three companies are a bit diverse. Breville again, I would suspect that that was a company who had an IMR of nearly 27%. In other words, the initial market reaction was a positive 27%. I think that there's probably – one, it was a very, very good result, very strong result basically driven by offshore America and their penetration into Europe now. But it hasn't got a wide coverage in the investment community. And therefore, without the wide coverage, you can get bumps along the road, positively or negatively. But this is a very, very well managed company. There's no doubt we're off the pace on stock. I think we've got it about right now.

But the thing is, with Breville, Solly Lew is the major shareholder there or the most significant shareholder there. He knows retail backwards. He knows what products sell, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Worley surprised us in terms of – they're putting together that big acquisition that they made, and the synergy benefits coming out of that, again, will be a little bit higher than we anticipated. And they're still getting very, very significant new work in the energy space, which is quite interesting. The other stock…

Freeman: We got Charter Hall.

Warnes: Charter Hall, in the REIT space, it has made major inroads in terms of its funds management operation. It's a bit a second division, if you like, from Goodman. Goodman is the class act in this space about it. But it's in a different space. It's in industrial. Charter Hall is office – A1 office space, a little bit of industrial but the funds management business, it exploded basically in terms of assets under management and that was one of the reasons why it performed well and we increased our fair value because of the annuity style income stream that's going to there, very sticky.

Freeman: How did the healthcare sector perform given it's regarded as a more defensive sector?

Warnes: Overall, again, pretty well, and you would expect that. It's defensive and what have you. But the big three global players, CSL, Cochlear warned on coronavirus early and said it would impact their second half results, and the shock came back a little bit on that. But generally speaking, the results were okay. And ResMed was fine as well. So, the big three performed, you know, strongly in terms of reporting good solid results from their global operations Ramsay Health Care surprised us a little in terms of a fair bit of margin pressure in their Australian operations which shouldn't surprise and we trim them the fair value on Ramsay. Elsewhere, Ansell was a good result. Sonic Healthcare was a good result. Invacare was a very strong result and surprised on the upside.

Freeman: And just finally, just turning to some of the downgrades in our fair value, what are some of the biggest falls there?

Warnes: Well, the two that stood out and they're only smaller companies, they were bigger companies a year ago, was Seven West Media and main pharma. We know what's happening in the media space. Advertising is on the slide. Seven West are probably exposed more than others with their operations. They've got print and they've got magazines and they've got obviously Seven TV and it's been a very, very difficult road. On the other hand, Nine Entertainment who was a very, very solid result and it was one of the positive, if you like, IMRs. In terms of market reaction. So, in all sectors, it seems that there's one standout and other one you know just drops off a bit. Now, I guess in that in that television space, the big market shares, they do move around a little bit. Mayne Pharma they've been under the whip for quite a while. Their generic drug business in the U.S. is very competitive and they've just been, if you like, smacked on margin.

Freeman: All right. Well, then – our subscribers can view the full earning season insights on morningstar.com.au. Thanks very much for your time today, Peter.

Warnes: Pleasure, Glenn.

Freeman: Pleasure, Glenn. We will be back again directly.