Weitere Gründe, die gegen die Tech-Aktien sprechen
Heute Morgen hatten wir nochmals die FANGs. Mittlerweile sind es auch die großen Namen der Investmentindustrie, die sich kritisch zu den Aussichten äußern. Interessanterweise kommt der zunehmenden Regulierung dabei eine große Bedeutung zu. Zero Hedge fasst Berichte von Goldman und der Citibank zusammen:
- “In the US, Information Technology is the sector most associated with growth. The sector is currently forecast to have among the fastest annual growth in sales and earnings during the next two years. Consensus forecasts sales growth of 15% and 7% for 2018 and 2019 vs. 6% and 5% for the balance of the S&P 500 ex. Energy. Consensus bottom-up EPS growth is also strong: 17% and 9% for Tech vs. 17% and 8% for S&P 500.” – bto: und “Growth” schlägt schon seit langem “Value”, was aber auch daran liegt, dass “Value” von Banken dominiert wird. Und da ist doch kein “Value”!
- “‚(…) two important forces are disrupting how investors view the Information Technology sector: Regulation and re-classification.‘ These are also the two core reasons investors should consider as they decide whether to sell their info-tech sector holdings. First…Regulation: (…) The Zuckerberg hearing revealed to many government officials the scale of personal data that FB users had agreed to allow the firm to gather, raising regulatory risks.“ – bto: In der Tat dürfte von hier die größte Gefahr drohen, selbst in den USA.
- “Goldman’s equity research analysts hosted discussions with policy experts regarding Technology regulations. Their conclusion: while comprehensive data privacy legislation in the US is viewed as unlikely this year, investors should expect regulation through other channels, such as State Attorneys General or self-regulation.” – bto: vor allem wird es populär.
- “(…) look no further than Europe, where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect on May 25. The GDPR is a new privacy legislation designed to provide more protection and control for EU citizens regarding their personal data, and to govern the collection and use of that data by companies. The scope of GDPR covers all companies who provide services targeted to people within the EU, regardless of where the firms are domiciled. FB has announced that controls and settings implemented in Europe will be made available to users globally.” – bto: vermutlich aber mit einem “Switch-off”-Schalter versehen …
- “FaceBook could potentially see revenue fall by up to 7%, although the impact could be negated if it obtains user consent for processing personal data. GOOGL’s net ad sales could witness a -2% to 0% impact from GDPR given the view that Search is largely protected as it relies less on user data to generate advertisements.” – bto: Das sind deutliche Auswirkungen.
- “Goldman’s second key reason to sell tech stocks, namely (…) Industry Reclassification:“
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
- “(…) in September, the major index providers MSCI and Standard & Poor’s will re-categorize components of the global equity markets. Using the S&P 500 index as an example, five current constituents (GOOGL, FB, EA, ATVI, TTWO) comprising nearly 20% of the existing Information Technology sector will be re-classified into Communication Services. Following the reclassification, the Information Technology sector weight in the S&P 500 will decline to 20% from 25%.” – bto: Folge: Die Indexfonds müssen sich anpassen.
- “The future ‚legacy‘ Tech (i.e., firms remaining in the sector) will have much slower expected sales and earnings growth and lower margins than both the current Tech sector and the new Communication Services sector, which will also include Telecom and select Consumer Discretionary stocks (DIS, NFLX, and others).” – bto: Und der Wegfall der Zugpferde ändert die Wahrnehmung des ganzen Sektors.
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
- “Despite low regulatory risk, many of these ‚legacy‘ Tech firms have underperformed alongside FB as stock correlations have spiked. Our report this week identified Technology stocks that have experienced the largest increase in correlation with FB and have underperformed both the market and their sector, in part due to investor use of macro products such as ETFs and futures. Examples include firms with little regulatory risk such as Buy-rated CSCO, NVDA, and GPN.” – bto: Außerdem sind diese Werte tiefer bewertet und wachsen weniger stark.
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
- “The bottom line: once Facebook and Google break away from the legacy positions as sector leaders in the current InfoTech and enter the brand new Communication Services group, what is left over in Information Technology will be a far less glowing example of rapidly growing stocks, which in turn will prompt an unknown number of investors to dump the sector.” – bto: Was in der Tat passieren könnte, zeigt aber die Irrationalität in den Märkten!
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
“And now that we know Goldman’s two main reasons to sell the stocks, here again are Bank of America’s ‚10 reasons why global investors should reduce tech allocations in 2018‘“:
- 1. Excess returns & fancy valuations: US tech is best performing sector in QE era, up annualized 20%; ex tech the S&P500 would be 2000 not 2600 today
- 2. Bubbly prices: US internet commerce stocks (DJECOM) soared 624% in 7 years at their peak, 3rd largest bubble of past 40 years (see chart above)
- 3. Fat market caps: US tech market cap ($6.4tn) exceeds that of Eurozone ($5.0tn); FAAMG+BAT market cap of $4.9tn exceeds Emerging Markets ($4.6tn).
- 4. Earnings hubris: tech & eCom companies currently account for almost 1/4 of US EPS (Chart 6); this level that is rarely exceeded, and often associated with bubble peaks; note there are currently just 5 “sells” out of 250 FAAMG recommendations
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
- 5. Politics: privacy becoming policy issue as equivalent to entire global population searches Google every 2 days; last year 1579 “data breaches” exposed 179 million records of personal names plus financial or medical data; pending US & EU regulation threaten 4% of tech revenue.
- 6. Wage disruption: IMF says 50% of the decline in labor’s share of income is attributable to technology (25% due to globalization); number of global industrial robots by 2020 will be 3.1 million (was 1 million in 2010)
- 7. Tech is cash-rich, tax-light: sector has $740bn of cash overseas (larger than all other sectors put together ($510bn); effective rate of tax on US tech companies is 16.9%, lower than the 19.3% paid across the S&P500
- 8. Tech most lightly regulated sector: just 27K regulations (Chart 7) for tech; by comparison manufacturing regulated by 215K rules, financial sector by 128K.
Quelle: Goldman, Zero Hedge
- 9. Tech & trade: US tech has highest foreign sales exposure (58%) of all US sectors
- 10. Occupy Silicon Valley: tobacco (1992), financial (2010), biotech (2015) industries illustrate how waves of regulation can lead to investment underperformance.