Company name Metlife Inc
Stock ticker MET
Live stock price [stckqut]MET[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Poor
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $88.61
Target stock price (averages with growth) $72.39
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $33.39
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $88.51

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=met

MetLife, Inc. (MetLife) is a provider of life insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management. The Company’s segments include Retail; Group, Voluntary & Worksite Benefits, and Corporate Benefit Funding. Its three geographic segments are Latin America (collectively, the Americas); Asia, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In addition, MetLife’s Corporate & Other includes MetLife Home Loans LLC (MLHL), the surviving, non-bank entity of the merger of MetLife Bank, National Association (MetLife Bank) with and into MLHL, and other business activities. Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, it operates in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The Company‘s businesses in the Americas offer a range of protection products and services.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in Metlife Inc.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor. You can review the best companies that I have found (and I probably invest my own money in most of these companies) in my Watch List.

How was this analysis of Metlife Inc calculated?

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
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In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

  • Stock price at the time of the calculation: $57.37
  • Growth: 0.2
  • Current EPS (TTM): $6.16
  • P/E: 9.3
  • Future EPS Calc: $15.32
  • Future Stock Price Calc: $142.55
  • Target stock price: $88.51

[/s2If]
I hope that this makes you a Confident Investor.

Nothing in the history of money has been more diabolically efficient at getting us to spend than a smartphone. It’s an instant-gratification machine for music, games, takeout and catching a ride, anywhere, all the time.

Now, however, your phone can prevent you from burning a hole in your wallet.

A growing set of apps can help with the self-control that it takes to save money for the future. Apps like Acorns, Digit.co, Level Money and Mint track all the ways you spend to tell you in one glance how to stay on budget. Some even squirrel away extra cash before you blow it.

Apps are key to getting millennials back on financial track. The generation America most likes fretting about—adults under 35—has a savings rate of negative 1.9%, says Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. (The savings rate for everyone 50 and under is also just south of zero.)

But phones are ideal for what behavioral economists, who study the psychology of money, call a nudge: always within reach and can make a game out of guiding us to good choices.

You can read the rest of this article by goinig to the original source: These Apps Can Finally Get You to Save Money – WSJ

Company name Methode Electronics Inc.
Stock ticker MEI
Live stock price [stckqut]MEI[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Poor
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Fair
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $65.83
Target stock price (averages with growth) $65.33
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $29.46
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $55.57

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=mei

Methode Electronics, Inc. is a manufacturer of component and subsystem devices. The Company designs, manufactures and markets devices employing electrical, radio remote control, electronic, wireless and sensing technologies. The Company operates through four segments: Automotive, Interconnect, Power Products and Other. The Automotive segment supplies electronic and electro-mechanical devices and related products to automobile original equipment manufacturers. The Interconnect segment provides copper and fiber-optic interconnect and interface solutions for the aerospace, appliance, commercial, computer, construction, consumer, material handling, medical, military, mining, networking, storage, and telecommunications markets. The Power Products segment manufactures braided flexible cables, current-carrying laminated bus devices, custom power-product assemblies, high-current low voltage flexible power cabling systems and powder coated bus bars.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this time, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in Methode Electronics Inc. as long as the price is correct. Most of the fundamentals of this company are good but there are some concerns.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor. You can review the best companies that I have found (and I probably invest my own money in most of these companies) in my Watch List.

How was this analysis of Methode Electronics Inc. calculated?

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

  • Stock price at the time of the calculation: $42.65
  • Growth: 0.17
  • Current EPS (TTM): $3.14
  • P/E: 13
  • Future EPS Calc: $6.88
  • Future Stock Price Calc: $89.49
  • Target stock price: $55.56

[/s2If]
I hope that this makes you a Confident Investor.

After a flirtation with thrift after the recession, young Americans have stopped saving.

Adults under age 35—the so-called millennial generation—currently have a savings rate of negative 2%, meaning they are burning through their assets or going into debt, according to Moody’s Analytics. That compares with a positive savings rate of about 3% for those age 35 to 44, 6% for those 45 to 54, and 13% for those 55 and older.

The turnabout in savings tendencies shows how the personal finances of millennials have become increasingly precarious despite five years of economic growth and sustained job creation. A lack of savings increases the vulnerability of young workers in the postrecession economy, leaving many without a financial cushion for unexpected expenses, raising the difficulty of job transitions and leaving them further away from goals like eventual homeownership—let alone retirement.

“In the very near term it’s a plus for spending and economic growth, but in the long run these households are not saving, and that will impair their ability to spend in the future,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics who calculated the numbers with Moody’s economist Mustafa Akcay.

To be sure, Americans’ savings is still growing in the aggregate. The Commerce Department’s main figures on savings show a nationwide increase in saving since the recession as baby boomers and other older Americans have maintained the cautious savings habits developed during the recession.

You can read the complete article by going to the source: Younger Generation Faces a Savings Deficit – WSJ