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Australian small companies outlook for 2023

Having not long finished the festive season and commenced a new year, many of us take the moments shortly after to reflect on the year that was, and also…

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Having not long finished the festive season and commenced a new year, many of us take the moments shortly after to reflect on the year that was, and also consider what we would like to see in the year ahead.

With that in mind I thought I would take a look back at 2022. Last year will likely be remembered for three key events, firstly it generally saw the world exit the pandemic cloud of COVID-19. Secondly, we saw the commencement of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Thirdly, we saw inflation return with a vengeance being quickly followed by one of the fastest tightening cycles in history by Central Banks. The official cash rate in Australia increased from 0.1 per cent in April 2022 to 3.10 per cent by the December meeting of the RBA.

This mix of events led to one of the strongest risk-off years we have seen since the Global Financial Crisis, there are few places for investors to find sanctuary with losses occurring across both growth and defensive assets alike.

Investor sentiment was broadly very negative during 2022, it is always a challenge for any growth (or risk) asset to perform well when the market doesn’t have an appetite for risk of any kind. 

 If we look specifically at the Australian small ordinaries index, its return for the calendar year of 2022 was negative 20.7 per cent. To give this context the ASX 100 declined by 3.9 per cent and the ASX 300 return was negative 6.1 per cent. It is fair to say that the risk on trade in Small Companies over the last few years moved into reverse in 2022. This was a consequence of the above macro factors, coupled with a more bearish investor and market.

What to consider for 2023?

In moving to our outlook for 2023 we need to initially consider the 3 points above and ask where we see them today and where they may evolve to over the next 12 months. With the final question being what impact this will have on equity market performance?

As a starting point it is fair to say that the impact of COVID-19 continues to pass and become more of a memory than a current issue. Even China who were the final strong hold have now moved to accept an existence with COVID-19 and they cope with re-opening and reintegrating with the rest of the world. As it stands today, we would expect the impact of COVID-19 to continue to diminish from here. One datapoint that has been interesting to follow over the pandemic has been a UBS Composite Supply Chain Indicator which is now in a strong downward trend and moving closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Supply chain stress

Source: UBS

A second example where we can see this is in spot indexes for international container freight costs which are now off roughly 80 per cent from their peak 18 months ago. This is interesting as it was one of the early contributors to the increase in inflation. As a leading cause it is positive to see this returning to more normal levels.

Next, we move to the war in Ukraine, which continues to grind along, and will no doubt continue to influence energy prices and broader speculation. Having said that, although the outcome is unknown, this is what at times in markets is called a known unknown. We are all aware of what is happening, many governments and countries are working around it. This is best seen in Europe where they continue to diversify their sources and supply of Energy, along with continued fast tracking of non-Russian dependent infrastructure. Short of a shock surprise, this event we can largely say has been priced into markets.

Finally, inflation and interest rates have been a biproduct of the above two events. These two arguably caused the most disruption to equity markets in 2022. At the time of writing the most recent inflation data for Australia was released last week and came out higher than consensus expectations with trimmed inflation (removing the most volatile items) coming in at 6.5 per cent against an expectation of 6.1 per cent.

At this point most major market commentators have the belief that we are likely to see two further interest rate increases in the first quarter of this year. Post this timeframe the speculation begins to grow; a portion believe inflation is going to be more stubborn and require further effort from Central Banks. Other market commentators believe that the remaining two expected rate increases will be sufficient to manage inflation, particularly given the delayed transmission mechanism we have here due to the nature of Fixed Rates and their term to reset.

Some also believe we may see interest rates start to fall in late 2023, which would become a tailwind for equities, in particular some of the growth names which had the toughest performance over 2022.

What can we expect from small caps?

Looking through all of this noise and to our outlook for Australian Small Companies for 2023 we think as always the starting point is important. At a market level we started 20 per cent cheaper than the same point in the prior year. Further to this we have seen some earnings downgrades in some parts of the market, where others have proven to be far more resilient than expected. Sectors like the Resource sector managed to grow their earnings over 2022. So in some pockets, we find valuations from a fundamental perspective to be very attractive.

While there is a belief that interest rates have further to go, we still see some significant risks in the more speculative parts of the market. This is mainly around companies that will have little control over their earnings power in the next 12 months, or are less mature and as a result less capable to weather the economic conditions ahead. Increasing interest rates are also not favourable for building stocks, or some consumer stocks (although some of the high-quality names will be resilient and based on valuation look interesting).  

Any companies that missed the market’s expectations on earnings were punished, if the company had to go as far as an earnings downgrade the market showed little mercy. We think this trend will likely continue into the February 2023 reporting season. These are risks we are aiming to avoid by assessing the quality of our investments and their earnings streams.

Looking further out, there is an argument that Australian Small Companies offer a significant investment opportunity for investors over 2023 if they wish to add some risk to their portfolios. They were the most sold down part of the market in 2022 so the valuation of this sleeve of the market looks attractive.

History tells us that once the economy has reached peak inflation, the peak of interest rates is usually not too much further into the future. If we do in fact only see two further rate rises from the RBA and inflation is contained then we will start to have a foundation that would be more solid and look to underpin a backdrop that would be conducive to a rally in equity markets.

As always we are not out of the woods and do expect some earnings challenges to come to the fore in February’s interim reporting season. Stock selection and active management will be critical to navigate this.

Should we see an improved outlook and also a reduction in interest rates later in the year we may start to see an improvement in investor and market sentiment. This is likely the final ingredient needed to see capital flows return more strongly to equities and in particular Small Companies.

Overall we continue to have a meaningful exposure to the Resource sector as we think that with China reopening and supply shortages still an issue for Europe in the medium term, coupled with the continued drive of decarbonisation that 2023 should be another supportive year for the sector.

We have quality exposures to structural growth companies that over a medium term investment horizon represent excellent value and are growing quality businesses. We believe we are closer to the end than the beginning of the inflation and interest rate story which over the course of 2023 we think will provide a favourable foundation for the market and the Montgomery Small Companies Fund.   

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Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Authored by Jordan Schachtel via ‘The Dossier’…

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3 hours ago

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March 21, 2023

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Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Authored by Jordan Schachtel via 'The Dossier' Substack,

Last Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.

By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim.

I was living in the Washington, D.C. Beltway at the time, and it was pretty much impossible to find a like-minded person within 50 miles who also wasn’t taking the bait. After I read about the news coming out of Wuhan in January, I spent much of the next couple weeks catching up to speed and reading about what a modern pandemic response was supposed to look like.

What surprised me most was that none of “the measures” were mentioned, and that these designated “experts” were nothing more than failed mathematicians, government doctors, and college professors who were more interested in policy via shoddy academic forecasting than observing reality.

Within days of continually hearing their yapping at White House pressers, It quickly became clear that the Deborah Birx’s and Anthony Fauci’s of the world were engaging in nothing more than a giant experiment. There was no an evidence-based approach to managing Covid whatsoever. These figures were leaning into the collective hysteria, and brandishing their credentials as Public Health Experts to demand top-down approaches to stamping out the WuFlu.

To put it bluntly, these longtime government bureaucrats had no idea what the f—k they were doing. Fauci and his cohorts were not established or reputable scientists, but authoritarians, charlatans, who had a decades-long track record of hackery and corruption. This Coronavirus Task Force did not have the collective intellect nor the wisdom to be making these broad brush decisions.

Back then, there were only literally a handful of people who attempted to raise awareness about the wave of tyranny, hysteria, and anti-science policies that were coming our way. There were so few of us back in March in 2020 that it was impossible to form any kind of significant structured resistance to the madness that was unfolding before us. These structures would later form, but not until the infrastructure for the highway to Covid hysteria hell had already been cemented.

Making matters worse was the reality that the vast majority of the population — friends, colleagues, peers and family included — agreed that dissenters were nothing more than reckless extremists, bioterrorists, Covid deniers, anti-science rabble rousers, and the like.

Yet we were right, and we had the evidence and data to prove it. There was no evidence to ever support such a heavy-handed series of government initiatives to “slow the spread.”

By March 16, 2020, data had already accumulated indicating that this contagion would be no more lethal than an influenza outbreak.

The February, 2020 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship provided a clear signal that the hysteria models provided by Bill Gates-funded and managed organizations were incredibly off base. Of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess, about 20% tested positive with Covid. The majority of those who tested positive had zero symptoms. By the time all passengers had disembarked from the vessel, there were 7 reported deaths on the ship, with the average age of this cohort being in the mid 80s, and it wasn’t even clear if these passengers died from or with Covid.

Despite the strange photos and videos coming out of Wuhan, China, there was no objective evidence of a once in a century disease approaching America’s shores, and the Diamond Princess outbreak made that clear.

Of course, it wasn’t the viral contagion that became the problem.

It was the hysteria contagion that brought out the worst qualities of much of the global ruling class, letting world leaders take off their proverbial masks in unison and reveal their true nature as power drunk madmen.

And even the more decent world leaders were swept up in the fear and mayhem, turning over the keys of government control to the supposed all-knowing Public Health Experts.

They quickly shuttered billions of lives and livelihoods, wreaking exponentially more havoc than a novel coronavirus ever could.

In the United States, 15 Days to Slow The Spread quickly became 30 Days To Slow The Spread. Somewhere along the way, the end date for “the measures” was removed from the equation entirely.

3 years later, there still isn’t an end date…

Anthony Fauci appeared on MSNBC Thursday morning and declared that Americans would need annual Covid boosters to compliment their Flu shots.

So much of the Covid hysteria era was driven by pseudoscience and outright nonsense, and yet, very few if any world leaders took it upon themselves to restore sanity in their domains. Now, unsurprisingly, so many elected officials who were complicit in this multi-billion person human tragedy won’t dare to reflect upon it.

In a 1775 letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, the American Founding Father wrote:

“Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.”

Covid hysteria and the 3 year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach.

While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/21/2023 - 18:05

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Honey, the 3D print–I mean, dessert–is ready!

New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace…

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March 21, 2023

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New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace conventional cooking appliances such as ovens, stovetops, and microwaves. But will people want to use a 3D printer–even one as beautifully designed as a high-end coffee maker–on their kitchen counters to calibrate the exact micro- and macro-nutrients they need to stay healthy? Will 3D food printing improve the ways we nourish ourselves? What sorts of hurdles will need to be overcome to commercialize such a technology? 

Credit: Jonathan Blutinger/Columbia Engineering

New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace conventional cooking appliances such as ovens, stovetops, and microwaves. But will people want to use a 3D printer–even one as beautifully designed as a high-end coffee maker–on their kitchen counters to calibrate the exact micro- and macro-nutrients they need to stay healthy? Will 3D food printing improve the ways we nourish ourselves? What sorts of hurdles will need to be overcome to commercialize such a technology? 

Columbia mechanical engineers are working to address these challenges in Professor Hod Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab. In a new Perspective article published today by npj Science of Food, lead author Jonathan Blutinger, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, explores these questions and more, discussing with Professor Christen Cooper, Pace University Nutrition and Dietetics, the benefits and drawbacks of 3D-printed food technology, how 3D-printed food compares to the “normal” food we eat, and the future landscape of our kitchens. 

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/AhVfU71tb2k 

Food printing technology has existed since Lipson’s lab first introduced it in 2005, but to date the technology has been limited to a small number of uncooked ingredients, resulting in what many perceive as less than appetizing dishes. Blutinger’s team broke away from this limitation by printing a dish comprising seven ingredients, cooked in situ using a laser. For the paper, the researchers designed a 3D-printing system that constructs cheesecake from edible food inks — including peanut butter, Nutella, and strawberry jam. The authors note that precision printing of multi-layered food items could produce more customizable foods, improve food safety, and enable users to control the nutrient content of meals more easily. 

“Because 3D food printing is still a nascent technology, it needs an ecosystem of supporting industries such as food cartridge manufacturers, downloadable recipe files, and an environment in which to create and share these recipes. Its customizability makes it particularly practical for the plant-based meat market, where texture and flavor need to be carefully formulated to mimic real meats,” Blutinger said.

To demonstrate the potential of 3D food printing, the team tested various cheesecake designs, consisting of seven key ingredients: graham cracker, peanut butter, Nutella, banana puree, strawberry jam, cherry drizzle, and frosting. They found that the most successful design used a graham cracker as the foundational ingredient for each layer of the cake. Peanut butter and Nutella proved to be best used as supporting layers that formed “pools” to hold the softer ingredients: banana and jam. Multi-ingredient designs evolved into multi-tiered structures that followed similar principles to building architectures; more structural elements were needed to support softer substrates for a successful multi-ingredient layered print.

“We have an enormous problem with the low-nutrient value of processed foods,” Cooper said. “3D food printing will still turn out processed foods, but perhaps the silver lining will be, for some people, better control and tailoring of nutrition–personalized nutrition. It may also be useful in making food more appealing to those with swallowing disorders by mimicking the shapes of real foods with the pureed texture foods that these patients–millions in the U.S. alone–require.”

Laser cooking and 3D food printing could allow chefs to localize flavors and textures on a millimeter scale to create new food experiences. People with dietary restrictions, parents of young children, nursing home dieticians, and athletes alike could find these personalized techniques very useful and convenient in planning meals. And, because the system uses high-energy targeted light for high-resolution tailored heating, cooking could become more cost-effective and more sustainable. 

“The study also highlights that printed food dishes will likely require novel ingredient compositions and structures, due to the different way by which the food is ‘assembled,’ ” said Lipson. “Much work is still needed to collect data, model, and optimize these processes.”

Blutinger added, “And, with more emphasis on food safety following the COVID-19 pandemic, food prepared with less human handling could lower the risk of foodborne illness and disease transmission. This seems like a win-win concept for all of us.”

About the Study

Journal: npj Science of Food

The paper is titled “THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE-CONTROLLED COOKING.”

Authors of the paper are: Jonathan David Blutinger 1, Christen Cupples Cooper2 , Shravan Karthik1 , Alissa Tsai 1 , Noà Samarelli1 , Erika Storvick1 , Gabriel Seymour1 , Elise Liu1 , Yorán Meijers1,3 and Hod Lipson1
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia Engineering
2 Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Pace University
3 Department of Food Technology, Wageningen University, Netherlands.

The study was supported by NSF AI Institute for Dynamical Systems, grant 2112085, and by a grant from the Redefine Meat Ltd.

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest. 

###

LINKS:

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-023-00182-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41538-023-00182-6

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/AhVfU71tb2k 

PROJECT WEBSITE: 
https://www.creativemachineslab.com/laser-cooking.html
https://www.creativemachineslab.com/digital-food.html

###

Columbia Engineering

Since 1864, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University has been a resource to the world for major advances in human progress. Today, Columbia Engineering is the top engineering school in the Ivy League and New York City. As a nexus for high-impact research, the school convenes more than 250 faculty members and more than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students from around the globe to push the frontiers of knowledge and solve humanity’s most pressing problems

###

 

Journal

npj Science of Food

DOI

10.1038/s41538-023-00182-6

Article Title

The future of software-controlled cooking

Article Publication Date

21-Mar-2023

COI Statement

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.

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“An Extraordinary Change”: Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

"An Extraordinary Change": Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

Last we heard from former Blackrock…

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8 hours ago

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March 21, 2023

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"An Extraordinary Change": Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

Last we heard from former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd and his deep-dive partners at Phinance Technologies, the rate of Serious Adverse Events reported during Covid-19 vaccine trials closely tracked a spike in disabilities reported following the vaccine's official rollout.

In their latest analysis, Dowd and crew use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistcs (BLS) to reveal a shocking spike in both employee absence and lost worktime rates, which they believe is due to vaccines - either from primary vaccine injuries, or because of weakened immune systems due to the jab, and not long covid caused by the virus itself.

Via Phinance Technologies

"It’s not a stretch to conclude from this data that the vaccines are causing death, disabilities & injuries due to a degradation of individuals' immune system," Dowd says. "The rate of change is not explained by the long Covid trope. Ask yourself where is funding for such studies?"

For those who want to dive right in to the analysis, follow the below links:

Part 1 - Overview of the Data

Part 2 - Analysis of Absence rates

Part 3 - Analysis of Lost Worktime rates

For the cliffs notes version, Dowd has dropped the following Twitter thread summarizing their analysis:

And for those who fell asleep in statistics class;

As one commenter notes, data from the UK reveals that firms are coming under increased pressure due to rising staff sickness, particularly among those over the age of 50. 

More to come next week...

Dowd explained his views how he reacted to the pandemic to Tucker Carlson. Now he, and his partners, spend their time poring through data to shine a light on harsh realities.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/21/2023 - 12:00

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