3 small-cap top picks
Fidelity's James Abela nominates these three smaller businesses from the healthcare, tourism and engineering sectors as companies of interest.
James Abela: The three companies are ResMed, Corporate Travel Management and also, WorleyParsons. So, they are all different, but they are all in my top 10 at the moment.
So, ResMed is a great business. So, again, viability, sustainability, credibility for me is very important. So, ROE of ResMed is in the 20s. The great thing about ResMed and that industry is that you can fit the number of players in the palm of your hand. That's very important for me when you are dealing with high-quality businesses. So, there are only three large operators in that space that they have which is a humidification market. So, that is an environment which is again the viability is quite high and sustainability is quite high, strong cash generator, high returns, long duration management, well-established businesses in Europe and the U.S., innovative through Brightree technology. So, they are a really interesting play. And I do really like that one.
Corporate Travel Management is different. It's a software business. So, again, I like that because it's been set up by a founder which is Jamie Pherous and he is still there, owns 20 per cent of the business, a high-returning business, good viability, good sustainability, long duration, strong with their clients, think about their clients. And their job in the world is to make or help clients use their travel budget more effectively. That's cost of travel, taxies and all other travel expenses. And that is very, very smart. And credibility side, their accounting is very good, Jamie is there, so the founder is obviously very engaged and very interested as a 20 per cent stakeholder. So, those three pillars are again very strong.
Worley is a cyclical. Again, one where we bought it around $7; now it's at about $18. So, it has gone through this value, transition and then momentum category, or that journey and it is definitely in the momentum category at the moment. So, when it was in value, it had debt problems, working capital problems, the oil market was very low, oil was at $30, $40, so the number of jobs and CapEx was very low.
So, there was a lot of concern over Worley. And then from that level it got up sort of $7 where I got interested, where there was cost cutting programs in place, oil had gone back up to $40 or $50 and that's where it started to get better, viability, sustainability definitely improving. And now, you are at that point where you are at the momentum point where viability is high, earnings are going up, costs are going down, leverage is improving, the debt balance has gone down, working capital is improving and the number of CapEx, jobs that are being announced by IOCs and NOCs as well as the resources sector is all coming out as positive and upward.
So, that is a great, typical, VTM cyclical triangle journey and that has been one that I like and one that, again, has a founder involved, John Grill, has been there a very long time. And founder businesses, obviously, are much better than executive-driven businesses and these have been built over 10, 15 or 20 years and I find that – especially in mid and small-caps when you have a founder who has spent majority of their professional life on one idea, it tends to be a good one and they tend to put all of their energy into it.
So, it tends to be really – a much better outcome. And all of those businesses, ResMed, Corporate Travel and Worley, there are founders involved intrinsically right deeply inside the business.