Equity Research - Catalyst Identification

Hello fellow monkeys,

Now I know that my question is extremely pathetic, however I'm afraid I cannot help posting it...

I know Catalysts are key elements in the process of company valuation. I also know that one can identify them through reading the financial press on a regular basis. Well, I cannot brag about my performance in this area (though I am on the way to improve it) so I am asking you this:

- Is there any shortcut to identifying catalysts?
- Are there any websites or anything that gathers up reliable catalysts (lets say they share the links towards the articles that mentions/have mentioned it in the past) on a concise & clear way?

Or should I go to google finance and read throughout all the headlines about the company form the previous year onwards trying to identify them while dying slowly...

Thanks a lot !

3 Comments
 
Best Response

Edit: FYI i don't invest and don't claim my answer to be necessarily the best... take with grain a salt..

i dont know but I was analyzing a stock and was able to find a catalyst after understanding what metrics drive the valuation.

Sometimes EBITDA is too volatile and there are better numbers to look at. THere are also events like earnings releases etc.. that drive those metrics. It's hard but try to get historical street estimates and see what kind of metric suprises can kick the multiples higher.

And perhaps the best way to figure out the catalyst is to figure out why this company is misvalued - hasn't proved its growth trajectory? general stigma against the sector? company business is confusing and requires specific expertise so is not well understood? Basically, what's your edge?

 

A catalyst should be something quantifiable (maybe an earnings release, a shareholder meeting, a product upgrade, etc.) that you believe will make the rest of the market see the stock in a new light. I wouldn't say there are any shortcuts, but if you have access to sell side research through Bloomberg or Thomson One, many of those reports list catalysts that justify their target price for a certain company.

I wouldn't recommend just going through yahoo finance and simply reading headlines, since this will be inefficient and boring. Just be able to understand what has moved the stock in the past, and after gaining a good understanding of how the business generates revenue and what really makes it tick, think about what's currently priced into today's shares. If you believe that, say, the market is under appreciating Company A's recently released product, then one catalyst supporting your investment thesis could be the company's quarterly earnings that are scheduled to be released the next month.

See my WSO blog "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." Albert Einstein
 

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