Slimming Down Before Fattening Up

Even though it feels like I was just celebrating New Year’s a week ago, I’m staring down a huge turkey and my wife’s guest list for Thursday that assumes we live in a palace. With the holidays fast approaching, now’s a good time to start taking a hard look at our portfolios and clearing the decks for 2017. That process is going to be playing out over the next few weeks as I take a long, hard look at our holdings, but I’ve already found two names to part with.

Mobileye’s (NSDQ: MBLY) earnings report last week was overshadowed by all the post-election angst and some other, bigger name reports, mostly because there wasn’t any earth-shattering news there.

Despite its problems with Tesla, revenue jumped 34.4% in third quarter to $94.9 million with earnings of $0.19 per share. That beat analysts’ earnings estimate of $0.18 and was well ahead of the $89.9 million revenue consensus. CEO Ziv Aviram even struck an optimistic note on the earnings call, pointing out that semi-autonomous features are quickly becoming standard on new cars so Mobileye’s market will only be growing from here.

Despite the good news and the CEO’s glowing assessment of his market the stock has done – well, not much. In fact, it’s down almost 2%.

The biggest challenge for Mobileye is that most smart car watchers are predicting that sensors will supplant cameras as the driving force behind self-driving and semi-autonomous cars. While that trend hasn’t become overwhelming yet, and cameras aren’t likely to ever go away entirely. That’s demonstrated by the fact that Mobileye keeps striking deals with car manufacturers and even parts markets to develop fully autonomous driving systems on some tight delivery dates. A recent example is the deal inked with Delphi Automotive to develop such a system by 2019.

Those deals aside, more manufacturers are introducing features which rely on sensors rather than cameras, like a lot of the auto-braking systems that have been so prominently advertised lately. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a car ad touting the all-important “0 to 60 mph” statistic instead of how a car will keep you from crashing while you’re singing along with the radio. I’ve apparently been underestimating that risk my entire driving life, but maybe that’s just because I’m tone deaf.

Analysts have been striking one note in their reports that even I can’t miss; more and more analysts are talking about Mobileye as a potential takeover target. Not that it’s a good, growing business, but that it would be a good fit for another company. I can’t argue against that since it does make a lot of sense, but that’s not why we added it to our portfolio. Throw in the fact that Covisint (NSDQ: COVS), our other play in the smart car sector, is also in the sensor business and I can’t justify holding on the Mobileye.

Sell Mobileye.

I’m also selling KEYW Corp (NSDQ: KEYW).

I cut it to a hold in last week’s issue of Breakthrough Tech Weekly since it was approaching our target price of $13 and, since then, it’s broken above it several times. While I think it’s a great business which clearly serves our national interest, with a better than 30% gain since I added it to the portfolio back in July I think it’s valuation is getting a bit high. Sure, Republican presidents are generally good news for defense stocks but, short of an actual war breaking out, I can’t justify bumping its target higher with just one profitable quarter behind it.

Sell KEYW Corp.

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