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Value Renaissance
ETF Securities Equity Research – Value Renaissance
Highlights
- The rebound of value stocks suggests the style shift is pricing a moderate recovery in earnings.
- Sector selection and sentiment has driven the shift in style bias in favour of growth stocks over the past decade.
- Widest historical Price to Book (P/B) spread confirms Value is trading at a steep discount to Growth.
- Global macro factors support the case for a return to value investing but there are risks on the horizon.
Value investors are anticipating a change in the cycle
The key to long term investment gains is ingrained in retaining a disciplined strategy. The main but contrasting investment approaches are value and growth investing. Value investing involves buying stocks at a discount to market price and such discounts can be identified by using multiples (of earnings, cash flow and book value). Growth investing involves buying companies undergoing above average growth in earnings and are identified by high profitability margins and return on equity. Owing to its inherently higher operating leverage, historically Value outperforms Growth ahead of a turn in the profit cycle (with a lead of about 2 years). As the global macro environment improves, we are seeing emerging signs of value stocks being bid up by investors as they try to capitalise on the recovery in global economic activity. ´
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There has been a bias towards growth investing over the past decade, leading some to question if value investing is dead.
Sector selection held value back
Value oriented indices currently have a higher weighting to finance and energy sectors than growth oriented indices. Technology and consumer discretionary stocks account for the highest weights in growth oriented indices.
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Falling oil prices, and difficulties in the banking sector since the global financial crisis, led to a period of earnings deceleration among the value oriented finance and energy sectors. On the other hand, technology and consumer discretionary stocks posted stronger earnings tilting investor preferences towards growth stocks since 2008. Consequently, sector selection was largely responsible for the recent style bias in favour of growth stocks. We don’t think that there has been a breakdown in the fundamentals of value investing but the style has been unpopular due to sector-specific reasons. During the dot com mania of the late 90’s, value investors suffered greatly as they missed out on the rally of technology stocks whose weighting was nearly 50% of the MSCI World growth index. However, as the bubble deflated, the weight of the technology sector reduced to around 20% and Value came back in favour.
Sentiment has had a part to play in the style shift since 2008, as investors have been exposed to the dominance of central bank policy, negative interest rates, lower commodity prices and weaker expectations of economic growth. In this scenario investors have resorted to investing in growth stocks and capturing yield via bond proxies within a mix of both value (utilities, telecom, real estate) and growth (consumer staples, and healthcare) equity sectors.
Value at a bargain but not for long
Value stocks are trading at their steepest discount in history to Growth. On analysing the P/B ratios of stocks across US, Europe and Japan, we found that the gap between the cheapest part of the global equity market and the most expensive is currently at its widest level since 1986. This suggests value stocks are trading at an unprecedented discount relative to its expensive peers. The last occasions we witnessed spreads come anywhere close were during the technology bubble of the late 90’s and prior to the global financial crisis in 2008.
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Value will benefit from higher rates
Strong US economic data, coupled with Trump’s pro-growth mandate have raised expectations for higher global growth rates accompanied by increasing inflation. The imminent US rate hike in December has become a near certainty and a higher inflation outlook has fuelled the prospects of additional rate hikes by the Fed next year. We expect value to benefit as the rate tightening cycle continues in the US. History shows that, in the 6 to 12-month period following the start of the US rate tightening cycle, Value has outperformed Growth.
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We are currently seeing early signs of Value outpacing Growth as the rhetoric for additional rate hikes in 2017 sets in, similar to 1986, 1999 and 2004.
Macro factors support Value’s reversion to the mean
The trajectory of bonds yields in the US and Europe have a strong relationship with the relative valuation spread of Value versus Growth, based on Price to Earnings (P/E). The recent rise in bond yields sparked by the risk-on environment, subsequent to Trump’s presidential victory, has been closely tracked by the rising performance of value versus growth stocks. We expect this trend to continue to benefit value stocks as they displace the defensive bond-proxy trades towards more cyclically oriented value stocks. In addition, we expect the steepening of the yield curve to benefit financial stocks that are known to represent a large part of the value style.
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Fundamentals intact but risks linger
Despite the prolonged underperformance of value investing since the global financial crisis, we believe the fundamentals remain intact. The historical rotation of investing style bias is reflective of the performance of the main underlying sectors within each style. While Growth and Value are not trading at a significant discount to each other, Value is clearly trading at an unprecedented discount to its historical spread. Investors are picking up on the trend, evident from the sharp reversal in the performance of Value in 2016. Over time we have observed a shift towards value investing to serve as a timely indicator of an initial acceleration in global earnings. We feel the current shift in style is a precursor of a continued recovery.
While improving global macro data is a catalyst for Value, we acknowledge the risk to the scenario remains that the market could be overpricing the rate rising cycle and the recovery in earnings momentum. We also remain extremely cautious of the euphoria surrounding Trump’s victory and remain uncertain of his ability to implement all his pro-growth policies that are subject to raising the US debt ceiling. Also, the reversal of the bond proxy trades skewed towards value sectors such as utilities, telecom and real estate could negatively impact Value’s upside performance. Despite the looming risks, we maintain our stance that growth stocks have run ahead of its course and Value offers an attractive entry point with the potential for a meaningful recovery to the upside.
Important Information
General
This communication has been issued and approved for the purpose of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 by ETF Securities (UK) Limited (“ETFS UK”) which is authorised and regulated by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”).
Every month, our research team will present the cryptoassets of the month that increased or dropped in value by more than 15%. With a data-driven approach, we highlight the most important developments and events causing price movements.
Figure 1 – 30-Day Performance: Cryptoassets of the Month vs. Traditional Asset Classes
Data Source: 21Shares, CoinGecko, and Yahoo Finance, from 30-Apr-2023 to 31-May-2023 (Close Price)
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum traded down 0.57% over the past month. On May 15, Lido V2 went live, enabling users to withdraw their stETH (staked Ether). As of May 31, Lido has processed over 460k stETH withdrawals without voluntarily exiting a single validator. The protocol achieved this by implementing a buffer that accumulates ETH via daily deposits, partial withdrawals, and rewards. On the scaling front, Aztec revealed its “hybrid zk-rollup,” which will enable private smart contract execution, allowing users to protect their data and on-chain activity with programmable anonymity. Finally, Ethereum’s beacon chain suffered a technical issue that caused the network to stop finalizing blocks briefly.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin traded down 7.21% over the past month. On May 17, Tether announced it would use 15% of its monthly net operating profits (i.e., the realized gains from T-bills and similar investments) to buy Bitcoin. The move aims to diversify Tether’s reserve surplus. In addition, it could have a considerable effect on BTC’s structural supply and demand dynamics, as it can offset a significant portion of the selling pressure we can expect from the 41k BTC that the U.S. government intends to sell this year. On another front, transaction fees on the Bitcoin network rose five-fold from $23.5 million in April to $124 million in May, primarily driven by Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.
Decentraland (MANA)
Decentraland (MANA) traded down 15.08% over the past month as activity in the decentralized virtual world waned significantly. About 2,740 unique wallet addresses interacted with Decentraland throughout May, down ~26% from April. In other news, on May 18, Decentraland DAO introduced “Decentraland Studios,” a platform to connect creators who want to build experiences on the platform but lack the technical skills to do it. This move is part of a broader trend in crypto attempting to lower the barrier of entry for new developers and creators.
Stacks (STX)
Stack’s native token STX traded down 16.47% over the past month. On May 23, ALEX – the most prominent decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Stacks network – introduced permissionless listings for BRC-20 tokens. Despite the combined market cap of BRC-20 tokens reaching close to $500 million, they mainly consist of “meme coins” because Bitcoin does not natively support smart contracts, nor is it designed for fast performance. Thus, Bitcoin needs Layer 2s like Stacks to be usable at scale and open the segway for new use cases. Regarding ecosystem traction, the Stacks networks reached 65,000 deployed smart contracts on May 25.
Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche’s native token AVAX traded down 17.85% over the past month despite exciting ecosystem developments. On May 24, Ava Labs announced AvaCloud, a launchpad that allows businesses to deploy custom, fully managed blockchains using an intuitive no-code portal. In addition, the AvaCloud product suite includes managed validators with automated installation for enhanced security, comprehensive data tools, and chain interoperability between all blockchains on the Avalanche network. If successful, the release could mark a paradigm shift in enterprise adoption by removing the complexity of building a public or private blockchain.
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand’s native token ALGO traded down 18.34% over the past month, underperforming the broader market. The Algorand Foundation recently released AlgoKit, an application that handles the developer environment setup, project generation, and deployment. AlgoKit aims to lower the barrier of entry for developers entering the ecosystem. In this regard, attracting new talent is an area Algorand has struggled with – the blockchain had only 38 full-time developers as of April 2023, according to Electric Capital. The network’s inability to attract new talent may be worrisome as developer engagement is an early and leading indicator of value creation.
Fantom (FTM)
Fantom’s native token FTM traded down 26.28% over the past month. On May 8, the Fantom Hackathon Q2 2023 opened for submissions with a prize pool of over $300k for innovative dApps built on the blockchain. On May 17, the Fantom Foundation released Fantom Academy, a series of lessons for developers, including Solidity basics, token standards, and more. Finally, regarding ecosystem traction, Fantom became available on The Graph, allowing developers to leverage subgraphs to load data on the Fantom blockchain securely and reliably into their dApps.
Strategies of the Month: March 2023
Every month, our research team will also present the best-performing strategies of the month in our product suite. With a data-driven approach, we highlight the most important developments and events causing price movements.
Figure 2: 30-Day Performance: Strategies of the Month vs. Traditional Asset Classes Data
Source: 21Shares Index Management Console and Yahoo Finance, from 28-Apr-2023 to 31-May-2023 (Close Price)
SBTC
The 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) rose 5.72% over the past month. SBTC seeks to provide a -1x return to the performance of Bitcoin for a single day. Despite its strong fundamentals, BTC’s implied annual volatility has consistently been above 70% and has experienced drawdowns from its all-time high of more than 80%. By comparison, the annual volatility of the S&P 500 sits around 20%. As a result, sophisticated investors with stringent risk-management practices may benefit from tactical short-term inverse exposure to BTC.
Research Newsletter
Each week the 21Shares Research team will publish our data-driven insights into the crypto asset world through this newsletter. Please direct any comments, questions, and words of feedback to research@21shares.com
Disclaimer
The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties and that actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and users are cautioned to base investment decisions or other decisions solely on the content hereof.
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