July 22, 2011

Chart of the Day: Manufacturing Back on Top

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This chart, inspired by Larry Summers, comes from Felix Salmon. Roughly speaking, it shows the relative valuation of tech companies vs. industrial companies. For the first time in two decades (and possibly the first time ever), the PE ratio of tech companies is lower than the PE ratio of industrial companies. In other words, given a choice between a tech company with earnings of $1 billion and an industrial company with earnings of $1 billion, investors today would pay a higher price for the industrial company. Generally speaking, this means that investors think the industrial company has better long-term growth prospects than the tech company.

So why has this happened? I can take a few guesses:

  • The ratio was fairly flat from 2004 until 2009 and then nosedived. For some reason, the recession had a bigger impact on tech companies than industrial companies.
  • Older tech companies, like Microsoft, aren’t high flyers anymore, and new tech companies haven’t gone public in big numbers. If tech companies like Facebook and Twitter were holding IPOs in normal numbers, average tech valuation would be higher.
  • Investors are still nervous about the dotcom bust and are afraid it could happen again.
  • Most of the manufacturing sectors that were in danger of losing their business to overseas competitors have already been decimated. The ones that are left are pretty healthy and unlikely to fall prey to competition from China or Malaysia.

I suspect the real answer is something else, but I don’t know what it is. In any case, I’d like to see this chart decomposed so it’s more obvious why these relative valuations have changed. Has it mostly been because tech PEs have gone down or because industrial PEs have gone up?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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