Company Reports

Agco is a pure-play agricultural equipment company that has traditionally been focused on tractors. We believe it will continue to be a top-three player in the ag industry. The company has been successful in emerging markets, where customers typically look for reasonably priced equipment. In developed markets, it faces competition from industry leaders Deere and CNH, which provide customers high-quality and strong-performing products, making it difficult for Agco to gain ground. The company’s peers help customers reduce the total cost of ownership through improved fuel efficiency, limited machine downtime, and consistent parts availability.

Rayonier is the second-largest timberland real estate investment trust in North America, managing about 1.8 million acres in the southern United States, 500,000 acres in the Pacific Northwest, and over 400,000 acres in New Zealand. As a REIT, Rayonier distributes its REIT income to shareholders without having to pay corporate level incomes taxes. Cash flow is generated through timber harvesting and the sale of land that it determines has higher value than if it remained in its portfolio. Unlike some of its competitors, Rayonier is a pure-play REIT. The company generates most of its revenue from the sale of timber and does not produce wood or paper products. While some of its operations are subject to US federal and state income taxes (New Zealand business and log trading), a majority of Rayonier’s income is tax-exempt under its REIT status.

In 1994, Westinghouse Electrical sold its electrical distribution business, Westinghouse Electric Supply, or Wesco, to a private equity firm. Wesco went public in 1999. Since its separation from Westinghouse, Wesco has used most of its cumulative free cash flow on acquisitions, which have expanded its scale, diversified revenue, and fueled a meaningful portion of the company’s growth. Once squarely focused on construction end markets, Wesco now serves a much broader array of customers across industrial, construction, utility, commercial, institutional, and government markets.

Macquarie Group is a global asset manager which spent decades branching out from its Australian investment banking roots. Asset management provides more recurring revenue streams compared with transactional based investment banking, but still carries volatility as base management fees are tied to underlying asset values--primarily fixed income, equities, and infrastructure assets.

Motorola Solutions offers one of the most comprehensive solution sets for public safety, a sticky business where Motorola is a major player. We expect continued growth and margin expansion, with potential upside if the firm can complete additional accretive acquisitions.

Parker Hannifin is a well-run diversified industrial conglomerate with exposure to a wide variety of end markets. Over time, we believe the firm can achieve its goals of outpacing industrial production and margin expansion on the heels of its newest Win Strategy and large acquisitions of Clarcor, Lord, Exotic Metals, and Meggitt. We believe part of Parker’s strength lies in its broad range of motion and control technologies with a wide variety of applications, including hydraulics and pneumatics, fluid and gas handling, and sealing. Parker says about 85% of the revenue from these technologies has intellectual property protection, which we believe helps cement its competitive position, given the long product lifecycles and low reinvestment needs of this business. Parker's acquisitions brought in technologies that filled major gaps in its existing portfolio, including in filtration, engineered materials, and vibration technologies. With these acquisitions, the firm gains an even stronger foothold in the highly attractive higher-margin aftermarket and doubles down on long-cycle businesses.

Vontier’s business model is an iteration of the Danaher Business System playbook, which the firm inherited from its former parent companies, Danaher and Fortive. The Vontier Business System focuses on acquiring moatworthy companies, boosting their operating margins through continuous improvement, and reinvesting cash flows in further M&A deals.

Five9 is squarely positioned to benefit from industry tailwinds including the transition of contact center operations to the cloud, and a shift toward digital first customer engagement and automation. While we forecast Five9 will continue to take market share, the firm faces intensifying competition from contact center as a service, or CCaaS, peers, and communication industry titans competing for a slice of the massive contact center cloud transition pie. In this environment, we expect Five9 will need to continue to invest heavily in go-to-market efforts and product innovation to attract and retain new clients, weighing on profitability upside.

We believe Cummins will be the top supplier of truck engines and components, despite increasing emissions regulation. For over a century, the company has been the pre-eminent manufacturer of diesel engines, which has led to its place as one of the best heavy- and medium-duty engine brands. Cummins' strong brand is underpinned by its high-performing and extremely durable engines. Customers also value Cummins’ ability to enhance the value of their trucks, leading to product differentiation.

Canfor is one of the largest softwood lumber producers in the world, with over 6 billion board feet of production capacity in western Canada, the Southeastern United States, and Sweden. Homebuilding and remodeling are the main uses of softwood lumber in North America, although Canfor does sell significant volume in Europe and Asia, with both making up roughly 30% of sales in recent years. As price-takers, Canfor and its peers see dramatic profit variations, depending on the health of housing markets and overall economic conditions.

Dentsply Sirona is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of dental equipment and supplies. It has a strong presence in dental CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) and has long reaped the benefits as a first-mover in the space. However lucrative economics and rising appetite for cosmetic procedures has attracted a large number of competitors over the last decade and put the company on a defensive footing. To adopt and compete in an increasingly fragmented market, Dentsply Sirona has invested more into its CEREC system, the firm’s flagship chairside workflow solutions. Since 2019, it has launched a new scanner, milling machine, 3D printer, as well as a new cloud solution that integrates different parts of the workflow together. The firm also recently expanded its partnership with 3Shape, an intraoral scanner and dental CAD/CAM software manufacturer, by allowing scans from 3Shape’s Trios scanner to be integrated with Dentsply Sirona’s workflow. We appreciate this strategic move because CEREC has historically been a closed system and we believe opening up its workflow could expand Dentsply Sirona’s end markets and allow doctors who use third-party equipment to adopt the firm’s offerings more easily.

Aggregates producer Vulcan Materials is well positioned to benefit from the ongoing recovery of US construction spending. We forecast strengthening demand growth for the public sector and modest growth for the private sector. Accounting for roughly 40% of shipments, public-sector demand is generally more stable, and projects, primarily highway construction, are more aggregate-intensive per dollar of spending. Federal funding power has weakened as better vehicle mileage and inflation have diminished the buying power of the $0.18 per gallon gasoline tax, unchanged since 1993. The FAST Act, passed in December 2015, provided stability and near-term funding certainty but did not solve the still-weakening gas tax. However, long-term federal funding was passed in late 2021, totaling $1.2 trillion.

Roughly 74% of Air Canada's 2023 passenger revenue came from trips that began or ended outside of Canada, with just over 21% from flights to or from the US Air Canada capitalizes on so-called sixth freedom traffic, which connects long-haul international routes to the US via layover in a Canadian airport. While we think Air Canada came into the covid crisis in better financial shape than many of its US-based peers, its international exposure and extensive travel restrictions in the Canadian market placed it under comparably more financial stress.

Following several years of rampant oversupply, the US rig market has spent the past several quarters operating near maximum capacity utilization, supporting significantly increased day rates. Drillers generally start to command pricing power at around 80% utilization, and the current operating environment has pushed average rig rates well over $30,000 per day. Elevated demand will preserve the status quo over the near to medium term, but we expect fierce competition among drillers will prevail in the long run. Improved rig technologies have increased drilling efficiency, ultimately requiring fewer rigs to meet demand.

We believe Apple has cemented a long-term position atop the consumer electronics industry with a focus on a premium ecosystem of tightly integrated hardware, software, and services. We see the flagship iPhone as the linchpin of this ecosystem, from which Apple derives pricing power, switching costs, and a network effect. In our view, every other Apple device and service sees its greatest value from further locking in customers to this walled garden. This approach earns the firm a wide economic moat rating.

CNH Industrial provides customers with an extensive portfolio of off-highway products. We believe it will continue to be a top-two player in the agriculture industry. For generations, the company’s agriculture equipment has garnered intense brand loyalty among farmers. Customers value CNH’s high-quality and strong-performing products, in addition to its robust dealer network. In developed markets, CNH helps customers reduce the total cost of ownership through improved fuel efficiency, limited machine downtime, and consistent parts availability.

CF Industries is the largest nitrogen producer in North America, with production based in the United States and Canada. CF's plants, which benefit from low-cost North American natural gas, are connected to its main customers in the US Corn Belt by an extensive distribution network of pipelines, rail, and barge, giving the company a transportation cost advantage over foreign competition without pipeline access.

We believe Caterpillar will continue to be the leader in the global heavy machinery market with an extensive portfolio of construction, mining, energy, and transportation products. For nearly a century, the company has been a trusted manufacturer of mission-critical heavy machinery, which has led to its position as one of the world’s most valuable brands. High-quality, extremely reliable, and efficient products underpin the strong brand. Customers also value Caterpillar’s ability to lower the total cost of ownership.

Appian is a leading provider of low-code enterprise software for business process management, or BPM, specializing in process automation. We expect digitization tailwinds to fuel demand for low-code BPM software over the coming decade, as businesses seek to drive operating efficiencies and automate manual processes. However, while we’re encouraged by the firm’s ongoing investments to support top-line growth, we expect this will be at the expense of profitability for the foreseeable future.

Mosaic is a leading producer of potash and phosphate fertilizers. In 2023, potash generated around 57% of total gross profits, with phosphates around 33%. The balance is derived from the Brazilian fertilizer business. Mosaic’s U.S. phosphate rock mines and Canadian potash assets provide the company with a stable input base for its products. Over the long run, Mosaic should benefit from growing global demand for fertilizer.