If you had invested with Lyrical Asset Management in 2009, you would have doubled your money by now.
And Lyrical CIO Andrew Wellington reveals the secret to his fund’s success -- he has only has 35 names in his portfolio.
“We scan through the top 1000 stocks that are in the market– and look for those stocks that the market is giving away for a great price.”
Wellington tells us his firm ‘does a lot of research and holds onto them.’ He goes on to say, when the thesis is proven right, he sells, moves on, and then finds something else to own.
Of course that begs the question - what is Lyrical holding right now?
Along with Jeff Keswin, managing partner of Lyrical, Wellington tells us the following are two of the fund's favorite names:
Aflac
These money pros like Aflac because of the company’s ability to perform. “Aflac is probably the most profitable insurance company in US,” says Wellington. “ROE is consistently around 20% - that’s significantly higher than most any other insurance company out there.”
Also he thinks the stock is cheap. “Historically the P/E ratio was near 20. I’m not saying that’s the right P/E ratio but currently its in the single digits.”
In addition, he adds, “they earn almost $4.5 billion every year in pre-tax profits. That gives them a nice cushion to absorb any future losses and makes it very remote they would have to raise dilutive equity.”
Dell
Wellington calls Dell ‘greatly misunderstood.’ “We like Dell a lot,” he says.
He thinks Dell continues to thrive, even if the table market starts to gain a foothold. “We don’t underestimate the impact of the tablet,” he says, “but the substitution effect (tablet for PC) will be greater in the consumer market than in the enterprise market.”
