Category: 3. Business

Reassessing Valuation After a 14% Year-to-Date Share Price Decline

Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC) has been drifting lower this year, with the stock down roughly 14% year to date despite steady revenue and earnings growth, which sets up an interesting valuation check.

See our latest analysis for Marsh & McLennan Companies.

With the latest share price around $181.82 and a 90 day share price return of about negative 11 percent, momentum has clearly cooled, even though the five year total shareholder return near 70 percent still points to a solid long term compounding story.

If MMC’s recent wobble has you rethinking where you want steady compounding, it could be worth exploring fast growing stocks with high insider ownership for other ideas with strong alignment between management and shareholders.

So with Marsh & McLennan still growing earnings while trading roughly 30 percent below some intrinsic estimates, are investors getting a quality compounder at a discount, or is the market already pricing in its future growth?

Compared to the last close at $181.82, the most widely followed narrative sees Marsh & McLennan’s fair value materially higher, framing today’s pullback as an opportunity rather than a warning.

Strategic investments in digital transformation, advanced analytics, and AI (e.g., proprietary data tools for risk modeling, agentic interfaces) are expected to enhance operational efficiency and improve product/service offerings, enabling margin expansion and net earnings growth through improved client retention and lower cost to serve.

Read the complete narrative.

Want to see what happens when steady mid single digit growth meets rising margins and a richer earnings multiple usually reserved for faster growing sectors? The narrative leans on a bold earnings trajectory, firmer profitability and a premium valuation years from now, all reverse engineered into today’s fair value. Curious how those assumptions stack up against the current softer property and casualty backdrop and slower consulting demand?

Result: Fair Value of $212.35 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, softer property and casualty pricing and weaker discretionary consulting demand could cap margins and derail the premium multiple implied in this narrative.

Find out about the key risks to this Marsh & McLennan Companies narrative.

On simple earnings maths, Marsh & McLennan looks much richer than its sector, trading on 21.6 times earnings versus 12.8 times for the US Insurance industry, and above a 14.8 times fair ratio the market could drift toward. Is that premium resilience, or valuation risk building?

See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.

NYSE:MMC PE Ratio as at Dec 2025

If you are not convinced by this view, or would rather dig into the numbers yourself, you can build a custom narrative in under three minutes: Do it your way.

A great starting point for your Marsh & McLennan Companies research is our analysis highlighting 4 key rewards and 1 important warning sign that could impact your investment decision.

Before you move on, lock in your next opportunity by using our screeners to uncover stocks that could refresh your watchlist and strengthen your portfolio.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include MMC.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

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December 6, 2025
Headwater Exploration (TSX:HWX) Valuation After 2026 Growth Plan, Dividend Commitment and Capital Discipline Update

Headwater Exploration (TSX:HWX) just laid out its initial 2026 game plan, targeting 8% production per share growth while funding a CA$0.44 dividend and still keeping exit working capital in the black.

See our latest analysis for Headwater Exploration.

The guidance has landed against a strong backdrop, with the share price now at CA$9.49 after a 30 day share price return of 26.53% and a five year total shareholder return of 383.28%. This suggests that momentum and confidence are building rather than fading.

If this kind of disciplined growth story appeals to you, it could be a good moment to look beyond energy and discover fast growing stocks with high insider ownership.

Yet with the shares already up sharply and trading only slightly below analyst targets despite an implied discount to intrinsic value, the key question now is whether Headwater is still mispriced or if the market has already priced in its next leg of growth.

On a headline basis, Headwater Exploration trades at a 13.1x price to earnings ratio, which makes the stock look reasonably valued rather than obviously cheap.

The price to earnings multiple compares the current share price to the company’s earnings per share, so it effectively captures what investors are willing to pay for each dollar of profit. For an oil and gas producer like Headwater, this is a core yardstick because earnings can swing with commodity prices, capital spending, and operating efficiency.

Against that backdrop, the picture is mixed. Headwater screens as good value versus peers and the broader Canadian oil and gas industry, with its 13.1x multiple sitting below both the industry average 15.3x and the peer average 20.6x. However, that same 13.1x looks expensive when compared with the estimated fair price to earnings ratio of 10.1x, a level the market could migrate toward if sentiment or earnings expectations cool.

Explore the SWS fair ratio for Headwater Exploration

Result: Price-to-Earnings of 13.1x (ABOUT RIGHT)

However, investors should watch for weaker earnings trends and a cooldown in oil prices, which could compress multiples and challenge the current growth narrative.

Find out about the key risks to this Headwater Exploration narrative.

While the 13.1x earnings multiple suggests Headwater is roughly fairly priced, our DCF model indicates a very different picture. It suggests fair value near CA$19.93, which is around 52% above the current CA$9.49 price. Is the market underestimating the cash flow runway here?

Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.

HWX Discounted Cash Flow as at Dec 2025

Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out Headwater Exploration for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 906 undervalued stocks based on their cash flows. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.

If you see things differently or prefer to dive into the numbers yourself, you can build a fresh perspective in just a few minutes: Do it your way.

A great starting point for your Headwater Exploration research is our analysis highlighting 1 key reward and 2 important warning signs that could impact your investment decision.

Do not stop with one opportunity; use the Simply Wall Street Screener to uncover fresh, data driven stock ideas tailored to the way you like to invest.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include HWX.TO.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

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December 6, 2025
Scaling sustainable business operations with agentic AI

Facing tomorrow’s challenges today.

To respond effectively to today’s uncertain business conditions, organizations need solutions to tackle current and future challenges, while continuing to drive innovation and competitiveness. Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) represents just such a solution. This advanced form of AI is focused on autonomous decision-making and action, promising greater benefits than traditional AI.

In our latest point of view developed in collaboration with Microsoft, we lay out how agentic AI can help organizations reduce waste, optimize processes, and embed sustainability in operations at scale.

A breakthrough in efficiency

Agentic AI can actively drive better business outcomes, thanks to its ability to process information, learn across interactions, and act autonomously to achieve objectives. When implemented across end-to-end workflows, agentic AI enables better resource allocation, automated sustainability reporting, and real-time emissions tracking.

By effectively leveraging these capabilities, organizations can promote resilience and optimize operations, while strengthening governance structures and social responsibility commitments.

New sustainability ambitions

Although organizations across sectors are eager to leverage the benefits of AI, they are concerned about its potential environmental impacts. However, agentic AI can actually strengthen organizations’ sustainability ambitions. Through better resource allocation, it can enable greater efficiency, productivity, and environmental performance. With key partnerships and a comprehensive human-AI framework, agentic AI can help organizations reimagine core operations, benefiting both business outcomes and the environment.

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December 6, 2025
Accurate Mediterranean Sea forecasting via graph-based deep learning
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Which Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Are Billionaires Buying the Most?

Several billionaires loaded up on Broadcom, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft stocks in Q3.
However, Alphabet and Nvidia were the most popular AI stocks with billionaire investors during the quarter.
Both stocks should have tremendous growth prospects over the next several years.
These 10 stocks could mint the next wave of millionaires ›

The phrase “follow the money” gained widespread attention thanks to the 1976 movie, All the President’s Men. While the quote and the movie were about the Watergate scandal, following the money has become a popular approach for many investors who track the stocks bought by billionaires.

As you might expect, quite a few billionaires have invested heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. But which AI stocks are they buying the most?

Image source: Getty Images.

To answer that question, I examined the 13F filings for the third quarter of 2025 of companies, family offices, and hedge funds run by 10 prominent billionaire investors:

Bill Ackman
Warren Buffett
Chase Coleman
Stanley Druckenmiller
Israel “Izzy” Englander
Ken Griffin
Carl Icahn
Paul Tudor Jones
George Soros
David Tepper

Each of these billionaires, except for Ackman and Icahn, bought at least one AI stock in Q3. Three AI stocks didn’t rank at the top of the list, but deserve honorable mentions: Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Jones’ Tudor Investment hedge fund initiated new positions in Broadcom and Meta in Q3. Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office also initiated a new position in Meta during the quarter.

Coleman’s Tiger Global Management increased its position in Broadcom in Q3. Englander’s Millennium Management and Griffin’s Citadel Advisors each bought additional shares of Broadcom, Meta, and Microsoft. Soros Fund Management more than tripled its position in Microsoft in Q3.

However, two other AI stocks stood out as most popular with billionaire investors. Half of the billionaires on the list bought either Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) or Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) in Q3.

Buffett surprised some observers by initiating a significant new position in Alphabet for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) during the quarter. This purchase was a long time in the making. The legendary investor revealed in an interview with CNBC in 2017 that he regretted not buying shares of Google’s parent company earlier.

Druckenmiller also opened a new position in Alphabet in Q3. Meanwhile, Englander, Griffin, and Soros added to their hedge fund’s stakes in the tech giant. Griffin’s Citadel even bought more of both of Alphabet’s share classes.

Jones appeared especially bullish about Nvidia in Q3, increasing his fund’s stake in the GPU maker by more than 7x. Englander’s Millennium Management boosted its position in Nvidia by 126%. Griffin bought 1.73 million additional shares of Nvidia in the quarter, enough to increase Citadel’s holding by 21%. Soros and Tepper were more cautious, increasing their funds’ positions in the stock by single-digit percentages.

No investor should blindly copy the trades that famous, wealthy investors make. Your investment goals and risk tolerance could differ significantly from theirs. That said, I think that both Alphabet and Nvidia are good picks for many investors.

Alphabet offers an opportunity to potentially profit from several of the most important technology trends of the next decade. AI ranks at the top of the list. The company’s Google Cloud should continue to benefit from the generative AI tailwind. Its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) could pose an increasing challenge to Nvidia’s GPUs. Google Workspace productivity apps are natural candidates for incorporating agentic AI functionality.

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car technology unit, is already the leader in the robotaxi market. Google Quantum AI is a formidable contender in quantum computing. Alphabet’s Android XR operating system could give the company an edge in developing smart glasses.

Nvidia isn’t resting on its laurels, though. The company continues to advance its AI chip technology at a rapid pace. It’s also a key player in the autonomous vehicle market and is a picks-and-shovels provider to quantum computing developers.

Following the money isn’t always a smart investing strategy. But with Alphabet and Nvidia, I think it could be.

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Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

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Keith Speights has positions in Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Which Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Are Billionaires Buying the Most? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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Evaluating Valuation After New Growth Initiatives and Automation Plans Unveiled

Recent remarks from MarketAxess Holdings (MKTX) at the Barclays Financial Services Conference put a spotlight on its next phase of growth, including deeper automation, non U.S. credit expansion and emerging markets opportunities.

See our latest analysis for MarketAxess Holdings.

Even with these growth levers, the 1 year total shareholder return of negative 29.18 percent and 3 year total shareholder return of negative 38.11 percent show longer term momentum has faded, despite a modest recent recovery in the 30 day share price return of 3.88 percent from a last close of 167.24 dollars.

If you like the MarketAxess story but want more ideas in financial technology, this could be a good moment to explore fast growing stocks with high insider ownership.

With revenues and profits still growing, but the share price languishing well below past highs and roughly 20 percent under the average analyst target, is MarketAxess now a mispriced compounder, or is the market correctly discounting its future growth?

With MarketAxess last closing at 167.24 dollars, the most followed narrative points to a materially higher fair value anchored around future earnings power.

The analysts have a consensus price target of 218.833 dollars for MarketAxess Holdings based on their expectations of its future earnings growth, profit margins and other risk factors. However, there is a degree of disagreement amongst analysts, with the most bullish reporting a price target of 274.0 dollars, and the most bearish reporting a price target of just 168.0 dollars.

Read the complete narrative.

Curious how a steady revenue glide path, rising margins and a premium earnings multiple combine into that fair value? The narrative lifts the lid on those projections, but keeps the boldest assumptions just out of view until you dive in.

Result: Fair Value of $200.90 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, that upside case could unravel if competitive pressure intensifies and high grade block trades remain stubbornly phone based, limiting electronic share gains.

Find out about the key risks to this MarketAxess Holdings narrative.

Step away from analyst targets and the picture looks quite different. On a price to earnings basis of 28.3 times versus a fair ratio of 14.9 times, and above both industry and peer averages, MarketAxess screens as expensive. Is the market overpaying for quality, or just pricing in reality?

See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.

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Vietnam’s trade turnover earns nearly 840 bln USD in first 11 months

HANOI, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — Vietnam’s total import-export turnover reached 839.75 billion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months of 2025, up 17.2 percent year on year, the National Statistics Office reported Saturday.

During the period, exports totaled 430.14 billion U.S. dollars, rising 16.1 percent, while imports climbed 18.4 percent to 409.61 billion dollars.

The Southeast Asian country posted a trade surplus of 20.53 billion U.S. dollars, the data showed. Enditem

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Hans-Jörg Rudloff, banker, 1940-2025

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Few bankers are as closely associated with a single financial product as Hans-Jörg Rudloff. The Swiss-German banker might not have invented the eurobond, but he presided over its greatest period of growth — the 1980s — and dominated the hard-charging entrepreneurial firm that most embodied its spirit: Credit Suisse First Boston.

In some ways Rudloff, who has died at the age of 85, was an enigma. Despite spending his entire career in an industry often derided as cynical and greedy, he was also a visionary, believing sincerely in the power of finance to drive growth and improve people’s lives. “Capital markets have steered capital to all corners of this world and lifted billions of people out of poverty,” he said. It was a credo first formed on Wall Street in the late 1960s when, as a young bond salesman at Kidder Peabody, he witnessed the vigour and efficiency of New York’s financial markets, which he associated with the prosperity of American life.

This was a time when the US government, amid concerns about widening deficits during the Vietnam war, had slapped restrictions on exports of dollars. One unintended consequence was to spark into life a market centred in London but outside any national regulatory or tax control that shuffled offshore dollar deposits from investors into the hands of international corporations.

Rudloff moved back to Europe, keen to participate in this development, and in 1980 was recruited to a senior role at CSFB, then a new joint venture between Credit Suisse and the US investment bank First Boston. It was a propitious moment: the market was exploding, propelled by ever faster communications and the Thatcher-Reagan era rolling-back of currency controls.

Rudloff thrived in this highly competitive environment. For much of the 1980s, CSFB topped the league tables for eurobond issues. He acquired the sobriquet “king of the Euromarkets” for the invention of the “bought deal”. Instead of surveying the appetite of prospective investors before launching an issue, the underwriter would buy it outright, hoping to resell the bonds for a profit. Rudloff’s advantage, he once said, “was that I had permission to underwrite at 10 o’clock at night, whereas every other firm had to go to ten bloody committees to get any permission to underwrite anything”. It was a freedom he freely indulged, reportedly signing contracts over champagne at Annabel’s — a London nightclub of which he was an enthusiastic patron.

The one certainty in banking is that advantages conferred by innovation get whittled away, and by the end of the 1980s CSFB lost its lead to giant Japanese banks. The firm descended into infighting, some of it blamed on Rudloff’s confrontational style (he cheerfully described himself as “a bit more ruthless than other people”). Rudloff responded by leaving Credit Suisse and reinventing himself as an emerging markets banker, setting out to bring the benefits of capital markets to the newly freed countries beyond the Berlin Wall at a time when few investment banks dared to go there.

It was an adventure that catapulted him into the cockpit of Russian business in the era of Vladimir Putin, sitting on the board of the oil company Rosneft right until the outbreak of the Ukraine war. Rudloff continued to believe that in financing the reconstruction of eastern Europe, investment banking had “proved its worth, just as it did in 19th-century America”. But by the end of his life, he was dismayed to see the liberal, open world in which he believed was strongly in retreat.

Rudloff was born in wartime Cologne in 1940 to a German industrialist father and a Swiss mother. His dual nationality made him an outsider in the conservative world of Swiss finance, and perhaps impelled him to look beyond its borders. Small, bustling and intense, he always competed to the utmost. Unable to ski until later in life, Rudloff set out to rectify the situation, engaging a “crazy but enormously talented ski coach”, according to friend Bob Loverd, and systematically acquiring the skills of a pro. “If he decided to do something, he put everything he had into it,” Loverd recalled.

Rudloff could be polarising: his manner was often abrupt — even if the barbs were delivered with a twinkle. But to those he gave his friendship he was enormously loyal, and liked nothing more than to help those in whom he saw flashes of his younger self. “While he pushed you hard, he could be very kind,” said Charles Harman, a colleague at CSFB. “He would come round the floor at 8.30 in the evening and say: ‘Who wants dinner?’ to the juniors who were there. How many City bosses do that?” Rudloff’s last wish was to throw a party for his many friends.

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December 6, 2025

Don’t get hung up on investment trust discounts

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In the first 10 months of 2025, investment trusts bought back more than £8.6bn worth of shares — 35 per cent more than in the same period last year. The aim was to close the discount between the share price of the trust and the value of the assets it contains per share. Did it work? Not very well; discounts remain stubbornly high for many trusts.

To explain why, we need to understand why there are discounts in the first place. This is a question I get asked a lot.

The big difference between an investment trust and a unit trust or “fund” comes when you want your money back. In an investment fund when lots of holders decide to sell units, the manager must dispose of underlying assets — and quickly. Fine if they’re liquid. Not so easy if those assets are something like property or a wind farm.

In a closed-ended investment trust, if you want your money back the manager doesn’t have to sell. The onus is on you to find a buyer for your shares. When the shares are less popular, buyers may offer less than the value of the underlying assets — a discounted price.

A discount, then, is the price you pay for liquidity, but it’s also an incentive for being patient. And that makes investment trusts an excellent vehicle for buying less liquid assets, like smaller companies, which can earn an illiquidity premium. This illiquidity reward is why over 25 years, for example, the smaller company equity index has outperformed the main market.

The discounts available today on income-generating assets can boost future returns significantly, too. If you buy £1 of assets for 90p you have the full £1 working to generate dividends, and that should compound over time. The closed-ended structure also allows gearing to be safely deployed, which can apply even more turbo to returns over time.

Today’s discounts — typically 14 per cent — are higher than average. We might expect them to close more than widen over the long term. But how? This year’s extraordinary level of share buybacks and windups has had little impact.

For a discount to close there needs to be a belief that the trust isn’t just a collection of assets. There needs to be a secret sauce — human expertise in managing the assets to enhance their value over time.

This has always been the case in the quoted property sector. A portfolio of properties will normally trade at a discount unless the managers can squeeze more out of the assets either by smart trading or by revitalising them.

The same was the case when the investment trust sector was used to inject capital into Lloyd’s of London. In 1992, the historic insurance market was on its knees and virtually bust. It needed a new supply of capital, which came with its plan of reconstruction and renewal.

Investment trusts were launched that pledged some of their capital to sit behind certain underwriting syndicates. The effect in the good insurance years was to boost the earnings of the investment trust, but a short-term earnings boost isn’t proof of a long-term earnings flow. The trusts went to discounts. The source of real value was the underwriting skills in some of the syndicates. And the trusts didn’t own that.

The answer in time was for the trusts — simply the providers of capital — to be folded into the managing agents that did the underwriting. Today, Lloyd’s insurer Hiscox trades at around 1.8 times its asset value, and many of the others that were originally investment trusts have been taken over at large multiples of book value. That experience is why I say it’s management skill that brings in discounts.

An area where there are currently large discounts is infrastructure and renewables. Too many managers have done little but buy assets. The dividends they generated when rates were low looked great, and the sector shot to a big premium. Rising rates have scuppered that. Those premiums are now deep discounts.

Many believe the answer is mergers and buybacks. But what is needed, in my view, is more proactive asset management. In fact, buybacks arguably only make the teams that want to be active despondent, because they have to be funded through disposals of the assets they would like to sweat.

What does this mean for the investor saving for the long term? Don’t get too hung up on discounts — they can work to your favour. Focus on the trusts that play to the structure’s strengths — that make the most of the illiquidity premium and of gearing, that give you access to assets you can’t buy easily, and where you can see the managers’ skill adding long-term value.

James Henderson is co-manager of the Lowland and Law Debenture investment trusts

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December 6, 2025

Category: 3. Business

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