The U.S. and Europe show two divergent ways of deleveraging after a credit crunch. As Bridgewater Capital’s Ray Dalio notes in his excellent paper on past episodes of deleveraging, nominal GDP growth simply has to exceed government bond yields for public debt levels to fall. Carefully balanced fiscal and monetary policies can manage this. Extremes such as 1930s Depression-era America or 1920s Weimar Germany’s hyper-inflation clearly show how not to do it. So it’s too bad that Europe’s uncoordinated policies are making such a hash of deleveraging. But there is still much going on in the world that investors can profit from, regardless of what happens in peripheral Europe.
We still favour the TMT (technology, media & telecoms) theme for robust demand growth and attractive free cash flow. Apple is a superb example, though there are many layers to the story. A recent report from New York-based ACT II, a TMT-focused hedge fund, highlights the broadband and related media opportunity. Conversion from 3G to more efficient and faster 4G services will add to already-high demand for bandwidth. Smartphones, laptops and tablet computers use over 25 times the bandwidth of traditional mobile phones as households, government and business increasingly rely on connectivity. But while carriers are under intense price competition, it’s the tower companies that have often been best positioned to profit.
Less obvious perhaps is the demand for media created by new and used car sales. ACT II’s Dennis Leibowitz notes that pent-up demand for new cars, now mostly equipped with satellite radio, as well as used car buyers, who are actively marketed to, are driving demand for services and content. On current trends this is a three-fold increase in the coming decade, despite the U.S. car fleet actually shrinking as scrappage exceeds new sales. Investors profit from growing cash flows and decent valuations combined with industry consolidation.
TMT is ideal for active money management, especially hedged strategies. The recent failure of LightSquared to win FCC approval, and consequent windfall for competitor Clearwire, highlight an industry characterised by winners and losers. For investors, this is an opportunity for good security selection. But when these sectors sell-off because of poor policy decisions somewhere else in the world, it’s also a chance to buy high quality assets on the cheap.
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