BlackRock’s Letter Leaves Little Accountability

Video Length: 00:03:26

Turns out Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock (BLK – Analyst Report), sent a letter to the chief executives of every other S&P 500 company, asking them to do away with short-term guidance.

Among several gems in the letter were quotes like “Today’s culture of quarterly earnings hysteria is totally contrary to the long-term approach we need.” I bet you wish you came up with that line while you were in high school. “Mom, we need to take a long-term approach here. Pay no attention to that D in English.”

Then a jab at Congress “In Washington, long-term is often defined as simply the next election cycle, an attitude that is eroding the economic foundations of our country.” That’s even better. Forget about a quarterly report card and plan for the next quarter, kick that can down the road. So apparently two years at the helm with zero accountability isn’t long enough. Or six years if we’re talking the Senate. How long do these CEOs want to steer the ship before pulling the ripcord on that golden parachute? Can you imagine what GoPro’s (GPRO – Analyst Report) yearly outlook would have looked like with shares at $90?

He’s out here fighting the good fight against what he calls “short-termism.” Sounds like that deadly market malady I talked about a few days ago, oil tumbling-too-low-sis. My favorite part comes when Mr. Fink talks about activists. BlackRock does support activist plans when those activists focus on long-term value creation, and have voted with activists 39% of the time. So you’re telling me that just 61% of the companies you’re investing in are doing things right? I guess when you have nearly $5 trillion dollars you can’t be as selective. Bet Wilt Chamberlain agrees.

Look, I get it. If companies took a long term view then investors would follow suit and there would be less volatility which would be good for investors. But that’s just not how the world works. And here at Zacks, we figured out this short-termism years ago. Take BlackRock for example. You’re a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). No short-termism there. Just a stock in an Industry in the bottom 8% of our Zacks Industry Rank. In the spirit of short term, I’m looking at NVIDIA (NVDA – Analyst Report) shares. It’s a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and they report February 17th after the market close. Not only are their GPUs light years ahead of the competition but they’re becoming a big player in the autonomous car market through their partnership with Volvo.