Stock Watch - Stock Picks — AB InBev and Moody's
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Ricus Reeders from PSG Wealth Sandton chose AB InBev as his stock pick of the day and Jean Pierre Verster from Protea Capital Management chose Moody's.
Reeders said: "Anheuser-Busch is a company that took on a lot of debt and as a result it didn't actually work out for it that well and the prices dropped considerably. But with the last set of results that debt situation which they are servicing and can service might actually work in their favour and considering that they're probably at a 10%, 15%, 20% discount to similar operations globally I think there's upside to that price. It also gives me the sense of comfort you've in being pretty defensive, being in beer, in a market that is as volatile and a bit crazy as it is globally and also locally."
Verster said: "My pick is a US listed company called Moody's. A lot of people will have heard of Moody's when they think about the credit rating of South Africa. Moody's is one of the largest credit rating agencies in the world and they rate sovereigns (governments), they rate corporates (individual companies) and through these credit ratings that they issue they get quite strong revenue. There's been a lot of credit issuance over the last decade so they've issued a lot of credit ratings and made a lot of money. That seems to be continuing with low interest rates, a lot of companies are issuing debt as well as banks and governments and therefore they need great ratings and they pay Moody's. They had a bit of a wobble in 2008/2009 and people said that they were giving high credit ratings for very low quality debt instruments off the back of the US financial crisis but that is sort of got out of the system, so at the moment with a lot of debt that need a lot of ratings, my pick is Moody's
Reeders said: "Anheuser-Busch is a company that took on a lot of debt and as a result it didn't actually work out for it that well and the prices dropped considerably. But with the last set of results that debt situation which they are servicing and can service might actually work in their favour and considering that they're probably at a 10%, 15%, 20% discount to similar operations globally I think there's upside to that price. It also gives me the sense of comfort you've in being pretty defensive, being in beer, in a market that is as volatile and a bit crazy as it is globally and also locally."
Verster said: "My pick is a US listed company called Moody's. A lot of people will have heard of Moody's when they think about the credit rating of South Africa. Moody's is one of the largest credit rating agencies in the world and they rate sovereigns (governments), they rate corporates (individual companies) and through these credit ratings that they issue they get quite strong revenue. There's been a lot of credit issuance over the last decade so they've issued a lot of credit ratings and made a lot of money. That seems to be continuing with low interest rates, a lot of companies are issuing debt as well as banks and governments and therefore they need great ratings and they pay Moody's. They had a bit of a wobble in 2008/2009 and people said that they were giving high credit ratings for very low quality debt instruments off the back of the US financial crisis but that is sort of got out of the system, so at the moment with a lot of debt that need a lot of ratings, my pick is Moody's