Raymond James Insights Into How This Crisis Alters Business Trends
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INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY STRATEGY | PUBLISHED BY RAYMOND JAMES & ASSOCIATES Tavis C. McCourt, CFA | (615) 645-6811 | [email protected] JUNE 26, 2020 | 3:00 AM EDT Ed Mills | (202) 872-5933 | [email protected] Chris Meekins | (703) 351-5294 | [email protected] Leslie Vandegrift, CFA, Associate Strategist | (615) 645-6812 | [email protected] Alex Anderson, Sr. Res. Assoc. | (202) 872-5936 | [email protected] Raymond James Insights Into How This Crisis Alters Business Trends Across Every Sector Of The Economy In this report, we highlight a number of changes in macro trends related to the COVID crisis and shutdowns that we believe will be long-lasting. We asked each Raymond James equity analyst to outline how the crisis has altered the way business is conducted in their covered industries, and what long-term changes are likely as a result of this experience. As you will read, each industry is undergoing meaningful changes in the near term, and long-term changes are still uncertain, but responses from each analyst around likely long-term changes led us to conclude that there are broadly two distinct types of macro themes from the COVID Crisis: 1) Reversal of certain long-term trends around the way people live/work, a new focus on business resiliency rather than ROIC maximization, and a recognition of the importance of government relationships in a world where government influence is likely increased; and 2) acceleration of certain long-term trends that had already been in place for some time, largely around bringing business value chains online, or what we call the "e-Commerce-ization" of everything. Reversal Of Certain Long-Term Trends A number of trends that have been a decade+ in the making, we suspect, will reverse, somewhat permanently due to the realization of the potential of a global pandemic, and the shutdowns this likely requires to control the spread. These trends include... ● The reversal of the urbanization trend as Work-From-Home (WFH)/anywhere becomes more mainstream; ● The reversal of open office densification to more shared office environments/WFH; ● The reversal of just-in-time (JIT) inventory strategy - supply chain maximization of ROIC replaced with maximization of resiliency; ● The end of the outsourcing/centralization of global manufacturing/supply - ROIC maximization replaced by global resiliency; and ● The beginning of viewing government relationships as a key determinant of success for every industry - if governments are going to massively intervene in markets every 10 years, companies are incentivized to make sure governments and citizens understand their societal value. Acceleration Of "E-Commerce-ization" - As The Online Disruption Of Value Chains Accelerates In Every Industry The transition of value chains to more streamlined, online methods of distribution has been a macro trend for at least 20 years, driven by customer demand and lower costs. This was likely to last another 20 years or more as industries gradually shifted consistent with the comfort of consumers utilizing online engagement. This crisis has meaningfully accelerated consumer adoption of online products and services, and because of that, the transition across multiple industries will now likely be more exaggerated and take less time than previously expected, resulting in higher growth rates and increased investment. Although consumer e-Commerce is the area understood by most to likely see accelerated adoption, we note that this trend is evident in all kinds of industries such as healthcare, insurance, education, banking, and even in the recognition by all companies of the productivity of Work-From-Home (WFH). Please read domestic and foreign disclosure/risk information beginning on page 51 and Analyst Certification on page 51. GLOBAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY STRATEGY TABLE OF CONTENTS . PAGE 2 OF 58 GLOBAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY STRATEGY A LOT OF INVESTMENT NEEDS TO OCCUR IN A STOCK MARKET THAT HAS REWARDED "ASSET-LIGHT" MODELS FOR 10+ YEARS What Are The Investments/Enabling Assets Needed To Transition The Economy? In order for the economy to successfully transition to serve the new and/or accelerated desires of consumers and businesses, a tremendous amount of investment needs to be done across multiple domains. Some of these include the following, but we suspect the list will ultimately be much larger and take several years to determine: ● Substantial building of residential and commercial real estate in suburban, rural markets, and broadly in Sunbelt states, in order to support likely consumer preference and WFH "new normal"; ● Meaningful technology hardware, software, and services to enable WFH, support increased network capacity demands, and support online capabilities; ● Meaningful industrial space/warehousing to support e-Commerce growth across every vertical market imaginable; ● More manufacturing capacity as firms diversify supply chains; and ● Substantial increases in local/home delivery capability. The Investment Outcome? This substantial need for investment is meeting an economy and stock market that has rewarded "asset-light" models for at least a decade. If we were to put successful macro investment themes into a one-sentence summary... 2010-2020 was "invest less capital into your business, outsource more, build assets that don't require capital investment, use resulting FCF for dividends/buybacks", but 2020-? could be "invest heavily, consolidate to achieve scale, take share to achieve growth, and make sure governments understand your societal value". This is a somewhat bizarre conclusion heading into an absolute capex decline in 2020 and likely 2021 resulting from the crisis, but ultimately, these long-term trends outlined above will require historic levels of capital spending, and companies that get the assets right, as shown in the retail space today, will have equities that ultimately get rewarded. We expect substantial consolidation of market share to occur across all kinds of industries in this environment given the scale of investments needed. A Thought On ESG: Although ESG has exploded as an investment theme over the last year especially, the COVID/shutdown crisis is highlighting specifically the importance of social risks to organizations, as many have very proactively aided societies in making PPE, keeping employees on the payroll, providing sick leave, and other actions that may hurt very near-term earnings, but should ultimately pay benefits to shareholders through being able to attract/retain labor more effectively, and building more synergistic relationships with governments. Ultimately, the evidence suggests investor interest in ESG funds is increasing through this crisis, and the performance of ESG funds, in aggregate, tends to improve in market downturns. Ultimately, to outperform in recoveries as well, we believe successful ESG funds will have to rotate into smaller cap stocks and more cyclical sectors that have generally been overlooked by this investment theme in its early days. Report Structure: We spend the first few pages going over the two significant types of long-term trends that will likely result from the COVID crisis (trend reversals and trend accelerations). We will then address some of the implications for ESG investors and the increasing importance of government role in the global economy. We will then delve into 1-2 page write-ups from equity analysts at Raymond James, which describe how the COVID crisis has impacted individual industries, and which changes are likely to be short-term changes, and what the long term changes to each industry will likely be. Enjoy, and please feel free to reach out with any thoughts or questions..... PAGE 3 OF 58 GLOBAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY STRATEGY COVID HAS POTENTIALLY REVERSED A NUMBER OF MULTI-DECADE-LONG TRENDS, WITH LONG-TERM RAMIFICATIONS Although the full ramifications of the COVID crisis are not fully known, and may not be for many years, we believe long-term changes likely will fall in one of two camps. First, we believe the crisis will cause almost 180-degree pivots in a number of long-term trends prior to this crisis, which are illustrated below. Second, we believe the crisis will accelerate the "e-Commerce-ization" of just about every product and service imaginable, which we outline on page 7. PAGE 4 OF 58 GLOBAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY STRATEGY REVERSAL OF MULTI-DECADE-LONG TRENDS - WHAT ARE THEY AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS In our view, after listening to Raymond James equity analysts since the COVID pandemic began, there have been numerous macro trends that have reversed almost 180 degrees overnight, and for a number of reasons, we don't believe they will revert to their prior directions. This is perhaps best exemplified by Raymond James' CEO, Paul Reilly, who recently indicated at a recent investor conference, "I think that we’ve learned that it’s 95% of people can work from home and productivity doesn’t fall…there’s no reason why people can’t work more often from home or that some number, I don’t know what that will be, 30%+ of the sales force will be working from home, and other people can work mobile-ly as they travel". This type of rethink of business processes is happening in every industry, and will radically alter how work gets done. De-Densification Of Office Space - In at least the last 10 years -- and, in many instances, longer -- there has been a growing desire to densify office space, residences, essentially any activity possible in order to drive improved returns for businesses, and to respond to customer preferences. These preferences will now change, and with work-from-home (WFH) a potential for many jobs, this densification is simply not needed or desired for the foreseeable future. De-Urbanization Lifestyle - Again, for at least the last decade, and in many instances much longer, urbanization globally and in the U.S. has increased almost unabated, driven by obvious economies of scale, centralization of talent, and consumer lifestyle choices. We expect the fear of being stuck in lockdown in a high rise apartment/condo combined with the experienced productivity of WFH to drive de-urbanization in both the near and long term.