Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 25, 2016

Article Excerpt

When a company carries out a spinoff, it sets up one of its subsidiaries as a separate firm, then hands out shares in the new company to its own shareholders. I can still say without reservation that spinoffs are the closest thing you can find to a sure thing in the world of investing. Study after study has shown that after an initial adjustment period of months—not years—spinoffs tend to outperform groups of comparable stocks. (For that matter, the parent companies also tend to outperform comparable firms for several years afterwards.) There are a couple of reasons for that. First, company managers naturally prefer to acquire or expand their assets, not get rid of them. Getting rid of businesses reduces a company’s total potential profit. The management of a parent company will only hand out a subsidiary to its own investors if it’s nearly certain that the subsidiary, and the parent, will be better off after the spinoff. Second, spinoffs involve a lot…