J. Jeffrey Auxier is President of Auxier Asset Management LLC and Founder of the Auxier Focus Fund. Prior to forming Auxier Asset Management in 1998, Mr. Auxier spent 16 years at Smith Barney — formerly Foster Marshall-American Express, then Shearson — where he was on the Portfolio Management Advisory Board and the Chairman’s Council, and was Senior Vice President of Investments and Senior Portfolio Management Director. In his exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Auxier details his current portfolio strategy.
“A company like Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) is very vulnerable, I think, to actually going private or restructuring, and that’s again because of the high free cash flow yield, especially when rates are starting to turn up. A lot of companies that are dependent on the credit markets, those companies become more vulnerable, and so that’s another reason we like these high-free-cash-flow, high-quality companies, especially at this stage of a recovery, if we — as we get later into a recovery, quality should start to happen. It’s not right now. I mean, right now, it’s been more of a cyclical-driven recovery.”
Some values are going to be recognized in the near term.
“…We still like Bank of New York (NYSE:BK) and CEO Charles Scharf… this is more of a processor bank, 13 times, 14 times earnings, pretty dull. It’s not a spread lender, but there’s been a lot of waste in the company, so we think just cleaning that up will lead to improved earnings. But it’s much more stable than a spread lender, and you don’t have the same kind of risk in terms of nonperformers. But Charles Scharf is very focused on technology and did a great job at Visa (NYSE:V). Obviously, Visa is a really good model. Visa has gone I think from $16, where we bought it, to $123.”
The general philosophy of the Auxier funds is to know what you own:
“…We think it’s really important, especially after good markets, you typically have top markets like the Dow in 1964 was 864, by 1981 it was 865. So that was a period where you really had to pick your companies and buy right and actually sell into euphoria. So we think investing is the craft of the specific.”
Read the entire interview with J. Jeffrey Auxier to get all the specific stocks he wants to own.
J. Jeffrey Auxier, President of Auxier Asset Management, Sees Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) as 2018 Stocks to Buy
December 28, 2017
Interview Highlights: J. Jeffrey Auxier of Auxier Asset Management on Investing Strategies
November 10, 2016
J. Jeffrey Auxier Sees a Clear Advantage in Fundamental Analysis that Shows the Difference Between Risk and Volatility
October 11, 2018
What Stocks Will Professional Money Manager Jeffrey Auxier Be Buying in 2019?
December 19, 2018
Auxier Asset Management President Assesses the Potential in the 2019 Stock Market
February 07, 2019
