Abstract
Thank You for Your Assist in 2024 As 2024 attracts to a detailed, we at Argus Analysis want you and your colleagues and households a calming, joyful, and protected vacation season. It has been our privilege to supply our insights, commentary, forecasts, protection, and portfolio recommendation to you for the previous 12 months. As all the time, we stay dedicated to delivering high-quality, well-researched, and considerate recommendation and proposals to our purchasers, and we thanks for selecting to help and companion with us. As we transfer on to 2025, could all of us stay up for a wholesome and peaceable begin to the New 12 months. Throughout 2024, because the bull market continued to progress, we at Argus Analysis skilled quite a few achievements and progress. Product Growth As all the time, we now have continued to put money into, broaden, and enhance the Argus Analysis service. A method we do that is by including new shares to our Universe of Protection, making certain that our protection checklist is dynamic, related, and contains the shares traders personal. Prior to now 12 months, we launched protection of Arcadium Lithium plc, Axon Enterprise Inc., Brown & Brown, Cava Group, Constellation Power Group, DoorDash Inc., GE Vernova, Palantir Applied sciences, Pilgrim’s Delight, Snowflake Inc., Smurfit WestRock plc, Solventum, Tremendous Micro Pc Inc., Targa Assets Inc. and Veralto Corp. Not all of those shares are on the BUY checklist, however that is a part of the benefit of being unbiased. We glance to make extra adjustments in 2025 — launching protection of recent shares from spin-offs in addition to growing protection in Monetary, Clear Power, and Data Know-how. Preserve these strategies coming! We’re regularly seeking to enhance our analysis merchandise and funding instruments so as to add new and necessary info or just make them simpler to make use of. For instance, in 2024, our Director of Financial Analysis Chris Graja, CFA, added a ‘Considering Outdoors the Field’ characteristic to the favored Viewpoint report. ‘Considering Outdoors the Field’ gave Chris a brand new discussion board to research the financial and investing implications of wide-ranging matters from unconventional sources, together with: Synthetic Intelligence, Bitcoin, and a Federal Reserve ‘rule of thumb’ cited by Ben Bernanke. In our fixed-income division, Chris has launched new indicators, together with the Federal Reserve Financial institution of San Francisco’s Proxy Funds Price, to assist us all higher perceive the financial influence of the Fed’s ahead steering on the financial system and to research the market’s anticipation of Fed actions. All the time engaged on his forecasts, Chris built-in into his fashions some new different and high-frequency indicators. These embody the Weekly Financial Index tracked by the Federal Reserve Financial institution of Dallas, to gauge adjustments in financial momentum and supply context round standard authorities indicators which can be launched with a lag and are sometimes topic to giant revisions. The sturdy new knowledge and strategy enhanced our long-term baseline forecasts for progress, employment, inflation and rates of interest, helping purchasers with long-horizon enterprise, retirement, and faculty planning. On the brand new product entrance in 2024, we now have been refining a brand new suite of institutional companies. This providing contains Analyst Entry, Company Entry, and Earnings Fashions, amongst different options. The brand new suite enhances present institutional merchandise akin to Threat Surveillance and Company Actions Screens and Surveys, Watch Lists, Hole Protection, Morning Calls, and IPO Analysis. Different new-product initiatives over the previous few years have included Choices Analysis, ETF Analysis, Scores, and Mannequin Portfolios, and in depth quant protection by way of our A6 experiences. We proceed to combine our analysis conclusions into funding methods, and are experiencing good reception (and asset progress) in portfolios constructed round themes akin to Development & Revenue, Dividend Development, Innovation, and Sustainable Influence Investing. These portfolios are licensed as Fashions, Trusts and Individually Managed Accounts, instantly and on quite a few platforms. How are they doing? Our Innovators Technique received 4 separate High Weapons awards from PSN in 2024: Q1, PSN High Weapons Two-Star Award for a top-10 efficiency through the one-year interval ending March 31; Q2, PSN High Weapons One-Star Award for a top-10 efficiency for the most-recent June quarter and a Two-Star Award for a top-10 efficiency for the one-year interval ending June 30; and Q3, PSN High Weapons Two-Star Award for a top-10 efficiency through the one-year interval ending Sept. 30. Folks We now have added to our workers over the previous two years, bringing on Tyler Jacobson as a Community IT and Cybersecurity Programmer in October 2023; Alexandra Yates as an Affiliate Analyst in September; Olivia Frey as an Editor in September 2024, and Sebastian Conrado as a Software program Programmer in October. There has additionally been progress among the many present crew. Safety Analyst Kris Ruggeri has taken over protection of the Industrial sector, and Senior Analyst Christine Dooley shall be transferring over from sector analysis to research a gaggle of high-yield shares. I’ll construct out protection of a brand new Clear Power Infrastructure universe. We additionally launched new voices and views to our standard interactive choices. Director of Financial Analysis Chris Graja, CFA, and Director of Mounted Revenue Analysis Kevin Heal have hosted month-to-month webinars, giving Director of Analysis Jim Kelleher, CFA, a break now and again. In the meantime Christine Dooley is stepping as much as tackle Q&A administration duties for our month-to-month webinars. We even have had the chance in latest weeks to have fun the lengthy and illustrious profession of Sharon Dorsey Wagoner, who’s retiring from Argus Traders Counsel Inc. on the finish of 2024. Sharon is a grand-daughter of the founding father of Argus Analysis Group, Harold B. Dorsey. She is on the books as having began her profession at Argus in 1989, however that may simply be the 12 months wherein the corporate first began paying her. She mentored me as a younger editor after I joined the agency, additionally in 1989, so she clearly already had expertise on the firm. A lawyer by coaching, within the fall of 1989 she turned an analyst at Argus, masking client and healthcare firms. She breathed analytical independence, and I feel is the one analyst at Argus — and possibly the one analyst on Wall Avenue — who ever dared to place a SELL ranking on Walt Disney Co. Argus, after all, promotes private progress, so she superior on the firm to turn into a portfolio supervisor at our RIA, Argus Traders’ Counsel Inc., and in the end Chair of the subsidiary. Sharon will stay on the Board at Argus Analysis Group. Whereas we want her properly in her retirement, we additionally is not going to be shy to supply her opinions and views on key company developments and alternatives. With Sharon’s retirement, plus the adoption of the versatile work schedules we carried out after the pandemic, we made the choice to shut down our workplace in Stamford Connecticut and transfer the cash administration group again into our company headquarters at 61 Broadway in New York Metropolis. The Connecticut-based operations for years added a worthwhile heft, perspective, and credibility to Argus Analysis Group. The Stamford places of work have been necessary to our message of independence, and thus to key relationships through the World Analyst Analysis Settlement in addition to to purchasers and companions such because the United Nations and the London Inventory Trade. Being in Connecticut allowed us to recruit and retain gifted native staff and supply high quality companies to native accounts, such because the State of Connecticut. The unique Stamford workplace for a time even served as the company headquarters, when 61 Broadway was shut down after the 9/11 assaults on the World Commerce Middle. Argus Traders’ Counsel, led by Sharon, has a sturdy historical past that we’ll leverage going ahead. We’re pleased with their work on behalf of quite a few world-class purchasers such because the United Mine Staff. We’re pleased with the spotless compliance document with the SEC and grateful for the long-time funding concentrate on monetary energy and diversification, which have been put in as core ideas within the analysis operations. With the transfer again to NYC, we stay up for increasing the operation by including extra merchandise and by advertising to extra purchasers which can be served out of the company headquarters. Plans for 2025 The analysis trade continues to vary, opening new alternatives for nimble individuals. European analysis rules, now in place for greater than 5 years, have led to a discount in analysis analysts and analysis protection, notably for small- and mid-cap shares. This threatens the power of newer entrepreneurial corporations to lift capital effectively. Argus is a part of the answer to this downside. After consulting with exchanges across the globe, Argus has created a sponsored analysis report and distribution service. The sponsored experiences differ from our Analyst Studies in look-and-feel, don’t embody a ranking, and are distributed without cost from our web site and different institutional and media channels. The providing contains press releases and earnings estimates obtainable on the foremost combination platforms. In 2024, our gross sales crew introduced in six new sponsored firms. We’re additionally benefiting from institutional analysis alternatives on alpha-capture applications, in company entry companies, and with international accounts. By the years, Argus has remained dedicated to Thought Management. From the house web page of our web site, we publish Christine Dooley’s standard Weekly Inventory Listing properly as a Weekly Financial Commentary from Director of Analysis Jim Kelleher, CFA. We publish a Each day Highlight, written by both myself or Chris Graja, and day by day Market View. We distributed whitepapers this 12 months on Innovation Investing, ESG Investing, and Dividend Development Investing. As for sharing our experience with the monetary press, our Director of Monetary Providers Analysis Steve Biggar is very dedicated to advertising the Argus model identify. In 2024, he promoted Argus by way of appearances with American Banker, Bloomberg TV, BNN Bloomberg Canada, Enterprise Insider, CNBC Asia, CNBC U.S., Dow Jones, Market Radio, Cash Speak Dwell, Reuters, Schwab Community, The Messenger, The Wall Avenue Journal, and Yahoo Finance TV, amongst others. Quite a few analysts labored with
