Background
PriceTarget Research (PTR) is a publisher of independent equity research combining fundamental and technical research to rate almost 6,000 companies and 100 market sectors on a weekly basis. PriceTarget Research was developed by principals of Lafferty & Lahey Partners LLC who are former institutional investors with combined experience of over fifty years in investment research and portfolio management.
PTR has been distributed through FirstCall, Multex/Reuters, Factset, Investext, Schaeffer’s Investment Research, Yahoo Finance, CBS MarketWatch, Capital IQ, and Recognia. PTR became a leading provider of research under the Independent Research settlement fund established by the SEC in 2004 to provide “independent research” as a complement to research provided by investment banking firms, PTR served five investment banking clients: UBS, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank.
At the heart of PTR’s research is a proprietary company database focused on historical and projected fundamental and investment performance of all North American exchange, publicly traded securities with greater than U.S. $10 million in market value updated weekly. The assessment of a stock’s overall attractiveness starts with detailed 5-year earnings models updated weekly with changes in consensus forecasts, actual quarterly and annual operating results. These models are used to derive free cash flow forecasts that are developed into Price Targets using discounted cash flow analysis (CFROI-based).
PriceTarget Research objectives include:
• Blending deep fundamentals with market signals.
• Rating all companies and market sectors.
• Successfully discriminating between winners and losers.
• Providing ratings that are well-ordered (A’s beat B’s, B’s beat C’s, etc.)
• Achieving consistent performance from year to year — minimizing volatility.
• Producing persistence of ratings over long enough periods to make the ratings usable in actually managing investment portfolios.
Biographies – Principals
John M. Lafferty, CFA (email: jml@pricetargetresearch.com). John began his career as an investment analyst at Stein Roe & Farnham in Chicago. During his 22 years with the firm, he managed institutional portfolios and mutual funds, served as Director of Research and Information Services, where he led the firm’s investment research, database development, and computer support activities, and was a member of the Executive and Management Committees.
In May 1991 Mr. Lafferty founded J.M. Lafferty Associates to provide support to corporations and institutional investors, facilitating decisions consistent with the key factors driving increases in shareholder value. In 2004, John formed PriceTarget Research that quickly became a leading provider of equity research on thousands of companies to large institutional investors.
After JM Lafferty’s investor relations and capital markets businesses were acquired by Thomson Financial and The Corporate Executive Board in 2004 and 2010, respectively, Mr. Lafferty co-founded Lafferty & Lahey Partners LLC and has focused on continuing development of the valuation and stock rating methodologies used in PriceTarget Research ratings and analysis.
Mr. Lafferty is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He holds undergraduate and MBA degrees from Northwestern University.
Mark K. Lahey (email: mlahey@pricetargetresearch.com). Mark started his career in the Bond Department of the First National Bank of Chicago in 1973, where he traded agency mortgage backed securities with the advent of the GNMA program. In 1979 he left the bank to become a floor trader in the new Financial Futures markets at the Chicago Board of Trade. He became a member of the CBOT New Products Committee and, later, was Vice Chairman of the Financial Instruments Committee. He was also a founding member of the Midwest Stock Exchange’s Mortgage Backed Securities Clearing Corporation.
In 1985 Mr. Lahey joined Lehman Brothers where he initiated and managed the firm’s Mortgage Product Management effort. In 1988, he managed the Firm’s Midwest fixed income business in Chicago.
When Lehman Brothers became a public company in 1994, Mark assumed responsibility for all Capital Markets activity in the Midwest region and was promoted to Managing Director. In 2003 he became responsible for Fixed Income Global Credit Sales and co-managed those businesses in New York, a position he held until he left the firm in March, 2006.
Mr. Lahey is a co-founder of Lafferty & Lahey Partners LLC. Since 2013, he has served as PriceTarget Research’s Chief Marketing Officer and is actively involved in implementation of PTR’s valuation and ratings.
Mr. Lahey received his B.A. in Economics from Brown University.