Barron's Interview Sound Shore Management
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Date updated:10-11-2008

The current maelstrom provides opportunity for Sound Shore Management, which hunts when everybody else has headed indoors. As an independent fund manager with a stable management team, one strategy, a low 0.92% expense ratio and no load, Sound Shore is an increasingly rare animal. Though down in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, the Sound Shore Fund (SSHFX) has outpaced the S&P 500 over just about any period measured, no small feat in the past 12 months. It's up an annualized 11.2%, 10.4% and 6.9% for the 20, 15 and 10 years ended Sept. 30, respectively, versus 10%, 8.4% and 3.1% for the S&P. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that 60% of its clients have been with Sound Shore for 10 years or more.

symbol name last price % change open
  • +
  • CS
    Credit Suisse Gro
  • $37.37
  • -9.67%
  • $40.07

Credit Suisse should emerge as a winner from the capital-markets crisis, DeGulis maintains, because of the capacity that's been taken out of investment banking and private-wealth management businesses. And it has a strong balance sheet and a management team battle-tested by the Swiss bank's own restructuring in 2000-2002. Since the end of 2006, Credit Suisse has sold some assets and hedged others to cut exposure to toxic investments. It's positioned to take wealth-management share from wounded rival UBS (UBS), he says. Its private-banking business, DeGulis argues, "alone is worth the entire stock price of 37." DeGulis thinks it's worth over 70.

People owning CS also tend to own: ARGBHIBIIBBKCCOLCVSDECK

TheStreet.com Rating: D What is this?

  • +
  • RDSA
    Royal Dutch Shell
  • $0.00
  • 0.00%
  • $N/A

As for Royal Dutch, Clark says, it's the only major integrated oil company that probably will have meaningful reserve and production growth over the next three or four years, after having positioned itself in unconventional hydrocarbons, like liquefied natural gas -- now 15% of its business and soon to be 20%. Royal Dutch also is big in other growing plays, like the heavy oil reserves in Canada, and has a "nice shale natural-gas play" in the U.S. Royal Dutch, which sports a 6% dividend yield and a solid balance sheet, is worth about 75, using a normalized multiple of 10 times an EPS of $7.50 in 2009, says Clark.

People owning RDSA also tend to own: AMSFBASFY.PKBBVBLLCCKCFCMNN.OB

TheStreet.com Rating: No Rating What is this?

  • +
  • PFE
    Pfizer Inc
  • $16.74
  • -3.46%
  • $17.05

Another pick, Pfizer, is clearly out of favor, in part because its blockbuster anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor, goes off-patent in 2011. (Lipitor will produce about $1 of the company's $2.40 earnings per share in 2008.) But, DeGulis says, the market is valuing the rest of Pfizer, with a 7% dividend yield, at 11 times on non-Lipitor earnings, "and we think that those earnings will grow." Given what's happened in the world, cash and the value of a powerful balance sheet has just gone up immeasurably, he adds, and Pfizer has $25 billion in cash -- $10 billion net of debt. Sound Shore's target for the stock is the high 20s; it's recently been around 18.

People owning PFE also tend to own: BRMRKMSFTMWRKULUSGWU

TheStreet.com Rating: C+ What is this?

  • +
  • AOC
    Aon Corp
  • $36.75
  • -3.42%
  • $36.80

Another holding, Aon, with its arch rival, Marsh & McLennan (MMC), forms what is almost a duopoly in insurance brokering for the world's largest 1,000 corporations. Says DeGulis: "This is a business that is not capital-intensive, so returns are high." Aon trades at 13 times expected 2009 EPS, is taking market share, has a balance sheet that is a fortress, and is buying stock back. "There's cyclical risk, but at 13 times we like Aon," he says, and think it's worth about 55, versus a recent 38.

People owning AOC also tend to own: ACECSCONEWSNTOVENRHTRRD

TheStreet.com Rating: B What is this?

  • +
  • CAH
    Cardinal Health I
  • $39.05
  • -3.27%
  • $39.63

Cardinal Health is one of a handful of restructuring candidates in the fund's portfolio. Growth has slowed in its branded and generic drug-distribution business, but the industry has consolidated, with only two other major players, AmerisourceBergen (ABC) and McKesson (MCK). Cardinal has restructured the drug operations, which are improving. "We think the drug-distribution earnings are stabilizing in the next six months, and will begin to grow again. The other half of the business, medical products, has been growing and will continue" to do so at double-digits. Cardinal Health recently said it would split its drug-distribution and medical-products units. "It's undervalued, and the two parts are worth more than the whole," says DeGulis. Sound Shore has a mid-60s target price on the stock, recently near 44.

People owning CAH also tend to own: AMGNATVIBSXERTSFDGGEHLGLW

TheStreet.com Rating: C+ What is this?

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