Insperity: Best Pro Services Near-Term Capital-Gain Buy Prospect (NYSE:NSP)

Investment Thesis

Knowing when and which stocks to own, actively and selectively, provides a continuing series of net capital gain opportunities delivering wealth accumulation or spendable income at rates which are multiples of what market-index ETFs offer.

You can know what winning institutions know about capital-building stock situations by listening to what the markets tell as capital is being invested. Because today’s markets pay active investors for being in the right places at the right times. They feed off the indolence of passive-strategy investing buy&holders who frequently pass-up timely points of profitable position liquidation.

Increased information technology, communication capabilities, and rapidly evolving competitive practices make this century’s investing markets far more opportune with pricing activity than the 20^th century offered.

But an active investment strategy requires reasonably-accurate forecasts of what to expect. Fortunately the conditions creating the “hazards” feared by the buy&holders are what provide the needed forecasts. The markets themselves, in their interactions, define what the best-informed professional practitioners see as coming-price limits. In both directions.

Instead of forecasts by analysts of what may be hoped for as price/earnings targets to be sought, the markets define ranges within which prices are reasonably being expected. Ranges warning of currently unmaintainable excesses, and of price depressions unlikely to present buying bargains for long.

This article is not about fundamentals and long-term prospects of related companies. It is about the near-term (3-5 months, rather than 3-5 years) and the price-range expectations built by institutional investors, the now acute and best-informed portfolio managers.

Risk and Reward Balances Among Business Support Pros

Let’s look at an “Opportunity Set” of comparable companies ranging from most to least attractive to consider in several areas of work today – Business Support activities. Our best-buy bet is Insperity, Inc.’s (NYSE:NSP). Here in Figure 1 is how the markets currently appraise their Reward ~ Risk trade-offs in terms of likely coming near-term stock price ranges.

Figure 1

Upside price rewards are from the behavioral analysis (of what systems require to be done, not of emotional investor errors) by Market-Makers [MMs] as they protect their at-risk capital from possible damaging future price moves. Their potential reward forecasts are measured by the green horizontal scale.

The risk dimension is of actual price drawdowns at their most extreme point while being held in previous pursuit of upside rewards similar to the ones currently being seen. They are measured on the red vertical scale.

Both scales are of percent change from zero to 25%. Any stock or ETF whose present risk exposure exceeds its reward prospect will be above the dotted diagonal line. Capital-gain attractive to-buy issues are in the directions down and to the right.

Our principal interest is in NSP at location [2]. A “market index” norm of reward~risk tradeoffs is offered by SPY at [11] immediately below NSP. Most appealing by this Figure 1 view is KBR, but considerations of Figure 2 may instead suggest NSP.

Description of Subject Company

“Insperity, Inc. provides human resources and business solutions to improve business performance for small and medium-sized businesses. The company offers its HR services through its Workforce Optimization and Workforce Synchronization solutions that include a range of human resources functions.. It also provides Insperity Premier, a cloud-based human capital management platform that offers professional employer organization HR outsourcing solutions to its clients; personnel record management services and payroll services solution; time and attendance; performance management; organizational planning; recruiting; employment screening; retirement; and insurance services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through 85 sales offices in the United States. The company was formerly known as Administaff, Inc. and changed its name to Insperity, Inc. in March 2011. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Kingwood, Texas…”

Source: Yahoo Finance

These growth estimates have been made by and are collected from Wall Street analysts to suggest what conventional methodology currently produces. The typical variations across forecast horizons of different time periods illustrate the difficulty of making value comparisons when the forecast horizon is not clearly defined.

The Figure 1 map provides a good visual comparison of the two most important aspects of every equity investment in the short term. There are other aspects of comparison which this map sometimes does not communicate well, particularly when general market perspectives like those of SPY are involved. Where questions of “how likely’ are present other comparative tables, like Figure 2, may be useful.

Figure 2

Why do all this math?

Figure 2’s purpose is to attempt universally comparable answers, stock by stock, of a) How BIG the prospective price gain payoff may be, b) how LIKELY the payoff will be a profitable experience, c) how SOON it may happen, and d) what price drawdown RISK may be encountered during its holding period.

Readers familiar with our analysis methods after quick examination of Figure 2 may wish to skip to the next section viewing price range forecast trends for NSP.

Column headers for Figure 2 define investment-choice preference elements for each row stock whose symbol appears at the left in column [A]. The elements are derived or calculated separately for each stock, based on the specifics of its situation and current-day MM price-range forecasts. Data in red numerals are negative, usually undesirable to “long” holding positions. Table cells with yellow fills are of data for the stocks of principal interest and of all issues at the ranking column, [R]. Cells with pink highlights contain values inadequate or undesirable for capital gain prospects.

The price-range forecast limits of columns [B] and [C] get defined by MM hedging actions to protect firm capital required to be put at risk of price changes from volume trade orders placed by big-$ “institutional” clients.

[E] measures potential upside risks for MM short positions created to fill such orders, and reward potentials for the buy-side positions so created. Prior forecasts like the present provide a history of relevant price draw-down risks for buyers. The most severe ones actually encountered are in [F], during holding periods in effort to reach [E] gains. Those are where buyers are emotionally most likely to accept losses.

The Range Index [G] tells where today’s price lies relative to the MM community’s forecast of upper and lower limits of coming prices. Its numeric is the percentage proportion of the full low to high forecast seen below the current market price.

[H] tells what proportion of the [L] sample of prior like-balance forecasts have earned gains by either having price reach its [B] target or be above its [D] entry cost at the end of a 3-month max-patience holding period limit. [ I ] gives the net gains-losses of those [L] experiences.

What makes NSP most attractive in the group at this point in time is its ability to produce earnings most consistently at its present operating balance between share price risk and reward, the Range Index [G]. Credibility of the [E] upside prospect as evidenced in the [I] payoff is shown in [N].

Further Reward~Risk tradeoffs involve using the [H] odds for gains with the 100 – H loss odds as weights for N-conditioned [E] and for [F], for a combined-return score [Q]. The typical position holding period [J] on [Q] provides a figure of merit [fom] ranking measure [R] useful in portfolio position preferencing. Figure 2 is row-ranked on [R] among alternative candidate securities, in top rank.

Along with the candidate-specific stocks these selection considerations are provided for the averages of some 3300 stocks for which MM price-range forecasts are available today, and 20 of the best-ranked (by fom) of those forecasts, as well as the forecast for S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY) as an equity-market proxy. The current market overall still remains unattractive, and the ETF market-index SPY invokes an inadequate reward for its presumed diversification, when compared with the best-past-performer candidates.

As shown in column [T] of figure 2, those reward-risk-ratio levels vary significantly between stocks. What matters is the net gain between investment gains and losses actually achieved following the forecasts, shown in column [I]. The Win Odds of [H] tells what proportion of the Sample RIs of each stock were profitable. Odds below 80% often have proven to lack reliability.

Recent Forecast Trends of Primary Subject

Figure 3

Many investors confuse any picture of time-repeating stock prices with typical “technical analysis charts” of past stock price history. Instead, Figure 3’s vertical lines are a daily-updated visual forecast record of price range limits expected in the coming few weeks and months. The heavy dot in each vertical is the stock’s closing price on the day the forecast was made.

That market price point makes an explicit definition of the price reward and risk exposure expectations which were held by market participants at the time, with a visual display of the vertical balance between risk and reward.

The measure of that balance is the Range Index [RI]. Here, only 28% of the full forecast range of $106.22 to $120.22 lies between the current price of $109.33 and $106.22. With today’s RI only three of 9 prior RI -28s in the past 5 years has failed to be profitable in the next 3 months. And their average net gain has been +13.5% on a 57 market day (12 weeks) capital commitment.

Today’s Figure 2 prospect for SPY of 3.0% in 58 days illustrates how strong NSP compares with the current market index ETF, as well as with other Business Support investment alternatives.

Conclusion

Based on direct comparisons with other Professional Support industry investment alternatives, there are several clear reasons to prefer a capital-gain seeking buy in Insperity, Inc.