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GEO - data and analysis
No full textSummary
Since 2017, GEO shares have fallen sharply from 8.50 per share, at one point below even the book value of 1.02 Billion, GEO has the potential to increase 2-3x in the next 6-12 months.
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Thesis
GEO Group (GEO) is a deeply mispriced provider of privately-owned prisons, falling from a price of 8.50 per share. GEO has fallen primarily as a result of concerns about legislation regarding private prisons, a canceled dividend, the likely shift away from a REIT structure, and high levels of debt.
These overblown concerns have created a pretty solid structural opportunity.
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Company overview
GEO operates in several segments, such as GEO care, International services, and U.S. Secure Services.
Source: Annual report
1 - U.S. Secure Services
U.S. Secure services account for the majority of their revenue, 67%, and includes their correctional facilities and processing centers. Secure services manage 74,000 beds across 58 facilities as of the 2020 annual report.
GEO transport is included in U.S. secure services, but we felt it warranted its own paragraph. GEO transport provides secure transportation services to government agencies. With 400 customized, U.S. Department of Transportation compliant vehicles, GEO transport drove more than 14 million miles in 2020.
2 - GEO Care
GEO care is a series of programs designed to reintegrate inmates and troubled youth into society. They operate through reentry centers, non-residential reentry programs, and youth treatment programs. GEO care operates approximately 4-dozen reentry centers, which provide housing, employment assistance, rehabilitation, substance abuse counseling, and vocational and education programs to current and former inmates. Through their reentry segment, they operate more than 70 non-residential reentry programs that provide behavioral assessments, treatment, supervision, and education. GEO care made up 23% of total 2020 revenue.
Geo monitoring is included in GEO care. Through a wholly-owned subsidiary, BI Inc., GEO offers monitoring technology for parolees, probationers, pretrial defendants, and individuals involved in the immigration process. As of the 2020 annual report, BI helps monitor ~155,000 individuals across all 50 states.
3 - International operations
International operations made up only 10% of revenue in 2020, but it is showing signs of growth. GEO recently landed a 10-year contract with the United kingdom, which they expect to total 39 million and has a 4-year renewal period.
Why is GEO Mispriced?
While there are several reasons for the dramatic reduction in share price over the last 4 years, the main reason was the looming fear of legislation destroying privately owned prisons.
To a degree, this fear materialized on January 26th, 2021, when President Biden signed an Executive Order ordering the Attorney General not to renew any Department of Justice contracts with "privately operated criminal detention facilities."
At face value, this order seems as though it would have a devastating impact on GEO. However, only ~25% of total revenue is impacted in any form by this order.
The executive order only concerns branches of the Department of Justice. Only 2 DOJ branches have business connections with GEO, the US Marshals (USMS), and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Source: Annual report
It is imperative to note that
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is not a branch of the DOJ and is therefore unaffected by this order.
Individual states, as well as other countries, are unaffected by this order
Bureau of Prisons
GEO currently holds several agreements with the BOP relating to operations of prisons across the country. As of year-end 2020, agreements involving the BOP accounted for 14% of total revenue.
All revenue from the BOP will not disappear, as the executive order does not impact reentry facilities. In 2Q21, after the executive order was made, GEO renewed 5 BOP reentry contracts. GEO even scored a new contract with the BOP, regarding the construction and operation of a new facility in Tampa.
United States Marshal Service
The United States Marshal Service does not own or operate detention facilities but instead rents the use of facilities mostly through intergovernmental service agreements. GEO currently has 12 USMS facilities, 9 of which are operated through an intergovernmental service agreement and 3 of which are through a direct contract.
In their recent conference call, GEO stated that they are actively working with USMS to comply with the executive order. The order seems to focus mostly on direct contracts, which only account for 3 of GEO's 12 USMS facilities. That being said, GEO is waiting on USMS to fully interpret the order, and if found to restrict intergovernmental service agreements as well, GEO could lose all 12 USMS facilities at their contract expiration
ICE
As mentioned above, ICE is not a part of the DOJ, therefore there is no immediate legislative threat. While GEO does note under their risk section that ICE may be impacted by legislation in the future, we do not view this as likely for several reasons.
ICE is far more reliant on private detention centers than the Department of Justice, which is why we suspect Biden left ICE out of the executive order. According to Wikipedia, only 8.1% of the total US prison population is held in private detention centers. The number of immigrant detainees held in private facilities is much greater, "73% by some accounts."
ICE is currently under a crisis of sorts at the border, with border encounters significantly higher than years prior.
Source: US customs and border protection
Above is a graph of the number of southern border encounters by month, with each line representing a different year 2018-2021. So far into 2021, the southern border is facing record numbers of attempted entry into the United States.
This trend is evident in GEO's recent report. From 1Q21 to 2Q21, the population of GEO's immigrant processing centers has increased by approximately 100%, compared to the same period increase of 10% in the population of their USMS facilities.
Currently, a large portion of border facilities and processing centers are wildly above capacity. Here is an excerpt from an NBC news article published on July 31, 2021.
As of Saturday, border patrol processing facilities were holding migrants 585 percent above capacity. In the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest sector for border crossings, there were 6,671 immigrants being held in facilities meant for 965 people, according to one of the officials, leading to the spread of Covid-19, other viruses and lice among migrants.
With some facilities presently at 500% capacity, cutting the total capacity as much as 73% would result in complete disaster.
We firmly believe that until the border crisis subsides, it is unlikely that the government will cut ties with privately-held immigrant detainee centers. Why? Because ICE can't afford a capacity reduction.
What does this mean for GEO?
In their 2Q conference call, despite the executive order being in effect, GEO raised their full-year 2021 guidance. This increase represents a larger than expected boom in immigrant detainees, as well as a lower than expected impact of legislation on the core business. They now expect a full year 2021 revenue of ~20. They also project a net income of ~170 million for the full year, a figure that beats 2018 by ~35 million.
It appears that GEO believes that the increase in illegal immigration will offset the decrease in revenues caused by Biden's executive order, which falls in line with our thesis.
Current Valuation
Due to the perceived risk, GEO trades at some of the lowest valuation multiples on the market. We get GEO stock price in Excel and stock price in Google Sheets using Finsheet to compute the intrinsic valuation of GEO.
Chart
GEO's price is so low that it is trading at just 20% of the S&Ps PE, 21% of the S&Ps P/FCF, and 34% of the S&Ps PB ratio.
The Value
An important part of a discounted cash flow is the discount rate, below explains how it has been calculated.
Source: author calculations
The calculations below outline how an intrinsic value for GEO Group is arrived at by discounting future cash flows to their present value using the 2 stage method. We use analyst's estimates of cash flows going forward 10 years for the 1st stage, the 2nd stage assumes the company grows at a stable rate into perpetuity.
GEO Group is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), we use funds from operations (FFO) or adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) instead of levered free cash flow for REITs. This excludes depreciation and borrowing. Ideally analysts estimates of AFFO are used, where these aren't available we use FFO.
Source: author calculations
Source: author calculations
As you can see below, we arrive at an intrinsic value per share of 34 per share.
Source: author calculations
Applying a 25% margin of safety, we get a price target of 13 and below.
Risks
Future Legislation
To summarize our viewpoint, GEO offers other services to the Bureau of Prisons that are still being renewed, the USMS is working with GEO to get around these restrictions, ICE can't afford to cut border detention center capacity in the near future, and GEO has both international and individual state presence that would not be affected by these laws.
It is also worth noting that Obama enacted a similar order, which was then reversed by Trump early in his term. If the next president is a Republican, the current legislation may be reversed.
Debt
According to their latest balance sheet report, GEO has just over 2.95 billion in long-term debt and 100 million. During the first half of 2021, we further reduced net recourse debt by approximately 125 million and 125-150-4.5 billion including ~170 million annually for 2021, the 90% they are required to pay would amount to around ~15% of the current market cap. This "dilution" to a shareholder is offset by the value of the additional shares granted to the said shareholder, so a 15% reduction in share value would be offset by 15% more shares.
The transition away from a REIT and the dividend cut may cause short-term volatility in the share price, as income investors dump their shares and REIT ETFs are forced to sell, but the focus on paying down debt instead of paying dividends is arguably fundamentally bullish.
Conclusion
GEO has fallen far below fair value for reasons including their canceled dividend, a potential shift away from a REIT structure, their high debt relative to market cap, and concerns regarding legislation. GEO's business can and will survive, despite all the threats listed above. Eventually, the share price will converge to the stock's fair value.
To explore other alternatives to Finsheet, check out this guide from Columbia University about how to get stock price in Excel and stock price in Google Sheets
The Trillion Dollar E-Commerce Problem
No full textOne of the truly underappreciated marvels of the 21st century is online shopping.
You go online, you see, and you get the product. Amazing, right?
But if you're anything like me the first thing you probably check while shopping online (after the discounts of course) is if you can return the product.
After all, we all have trust issues.
But while this is an easy solution for us, have you wondered how difficult it makes things for brands?
⏪ The Reverse Logistics Problem
If the whole supply chain crisis has taught us one thing it is that logistics is a truly complicated business.
But reverse logistics is worse, because companies are going through the same complicated process, but this time they are losing money.
Hate it as they might, platforms have to allow returns because 89% of customers check the return and refund policy before buying a product online.
So, if you want business, you got to be able to take your product back.
What's more, a return policy inspires faith in the consumer that the company trusts its products and is ready to take them back.
But to be able to do this, a company needs to go through a lot of steps.
️ How I Returned Your Product
For us, returning a product has been made super easy. Click return, select any reason that comes to your mind and give the parcel back to the delivery person when they come to collect it.
But for an e-commerce platform this is a huge headache.
First, to allow returns it needs to create a whole return, replacement, refund policy and decide which products can be returned and when.
Second, it has to manage its supply chain in a way to make sure the same delivery people that are delivering orders can also accept them, saving money and time. Plus, to ensure speedy and timely return acceptances, they need to set up a transportation and warehousing system in place. Otherwise platforms could lose the chance to resell a product in demand.
Third, for marketplaces that aggregate products from other sellers, this becomes a bigger hassle because they have to decide whether the product will go to their warehouse or the seller's.
Fourth, because most of these products are to be listed on the platform and sold again, the platform needs to set up a quality control team. Or the return cycle will continue adding on to losses.
Now, all of these operations become too much for small scale sellers and platforms. Especially as they cannot initially predict how many orders and returns they will be getting.
But this needs to be done as e-commerce returns are set to grow to be worth a trillion dollars every year in the next few years.
And you know what makes matters worse?
Fake orders and fraud returns.
️ The Fraud Problem
Over 70% of orders in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities are cash-on-delivery but a lot of these orders are fake, with no one collecting them.
And when people are not busy placing fake orders they place fake returns. Huh?
What they do is buy a product, say they want to return it and instead of returning the original product they put something else in the packaging.
These kinds of shams could drown a small business.
And even if returns aren't fake, returned items are still not up to the mark. So, a lot of these items have to be thrown away or sold at a discount.
Over 30% of all e-commerce products are returned. And less than half of these products are sold at full price. So, businesses further lose money.
But here's where logistics firms have come to their rescue.
A shipping and logistics firm called Nimbu Post has designed tech that can help these companies identify COD related frauds by analysing buyer patterns.
Delhivery has also developed a Quality Check Return Product tool that helps delivery personnel identify whether the product is authentic, damaged or undamaged, should it be sent directly to the seller or to the company's warehouse.
Thanks to this, the resalability of products has grown up from 25% to 98%.
Now, all of this is fine for small to medium platforms. But ever wondered how a global giant like Amazon handles the millions of returns it gets?
How Amazon Solved the Reverse Logistics Problem
Well, for a lot of products the company has ended the return policy all together. For instance, you can no longer return books, only replace them.
Second, despite this, if you can return your product, chances are Amazon won't come to take it away from you. Huh?
Yes, if you have ordered something that's pretty cheap, Amazon will refund your money and ask you to either keep the product or gift it to someone. Why?
Because it often costs Amazon 20 to manage returns for products. So, if the product costs less than that, it makes no sense for the company to burn more money on it.
Based on its stock price in Excel, Amazon pretends to be kind and lets you eat your cheese and have it too. This also increases goodwill for the brand, making this a win-win for Amazon.
But wait, won't a lot of people exploit this opportunity?
Yes, which is why Amazon has built in-house tech that identifies customers placing a lot of returns. It bans such customers from its platform, helping it save money.
This system also helps Amazon analyse what should be done with the product once returned. Should it be listed again, should it go to the seller or should it be burned.
Why burned?
A lot of time Amazon accepts returns but because the products have been damaged in transit, it has no option but to throw them away. Since dumping them in a landfill will also incur a transportation cost, some products are simply burned.
Now, while some Indian platforms can take a cue from Amazon and implement these measures, for most this will be difficult to do.
However, they can take cues from some foreign countries and ask customers to return products themselves. Huh?
Well, in some countries these e-commerce platforms have dedicated drop boxes or rely on customers to post the item they want to return through post offices.
This will reduce the e-commerce platforms' logistics costs by a lot and also reduce fraudulent and random returns.
But will Indians be ready to embrace this hassle
Novavax Historical Data
No full textNovavax has a volatile chart and while I don’t usually recommend buying stocks this big (as higher multiples limit profit), here I might make an exception.
The drug maker’s shares tumbled 26.1% in the premarket following a Politico report saying it was having trouble meeting Food and Drug Administration quality standards for its Covid-19 vaccine.
With AZ wearing out in the UK and in other places, Novavax once they figure out their manufacturing and logistics could be an important global provider. It’s also based on tech that’s old and that people trust.
The ticker is 120 or less, it’s at 315 in February, 2021 and then again at 150 price is not actually that bad if you think it can run again. It is risky but the U.S. and the world have too much riding on Novavax to let it fail.
Like the Alibaba buy the dip play, it just seems destined to go back up eventually when it meets its mission statement. And it has made a lot of promises, through oddly without a major partner and relative high short volume based on short interest API.
The world’s vaccine distributor has been counting on U.S. companies to provide more than 2 billion doses to lower and middle-income countries by the end of 2022 — a crucial step in ending the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the campaign run by the international consortium known as COVAX, which has already been delayed significantly because of production lags, is now likely to fall short by more than 1 billion doses as a key supplier faces significant hurdles in proving it can manufacture a shot that meets regulators’ quality standards, according to three people with direct knowledge of the company’s problems.
The report said Novavax's difficulties are more concerning than the analytics and testing issues disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Novavax told Politico that it still plans on filing for emergency use authorization by the end of the year and will fulfill all its committed doses both in the U.S. and globally.
It’s not a sure bet however that Novavax will be able to critically meet its deadlines. However if you’ve been monitoring what’s going on in the UK, AZ has been a complete failure in that its efficacy has declined rather rapidly where breakthough cases are nearly the norm. Incredibly this week, the United Kingdom is recording close to 50,000 new Covid cases a day — giving it one of the worst daily infection rates in the world.
So AZ can save your life but not necessarily prevent you from getting long covid syndrome. “What’s happening is ... this real world experiment where the efficacy of AstraZeneca is decreasing, and they haven’t rolled out their boosters,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a former White House health policy director. This suggests Boosters for everyone is definatley coming in late 2021 or early 2022.
This means Novavax will have the entire world depending upon it. The reality is many vaccines begin to wane after 5 months and steadily go down every week after that. The U.K.’s early vaccination rollout began in December 2020 and was one of the first in the world. Now, however, it is seen as contributing to its high case rate, due to an increasing body of data that shows immunity in vaccinated people wanes after about six months.
MRNA vaccines like Moderna with a higher load might last considerably longer. The U.S. government invested $1.6 billion in Novavax in 2020 — the most it devoted to any vaccine maker at the time — in hopes that it would offer the world another option for a safe and effective vaccine to help protect against Covid-19. If it has to give it more money, I think it actually will.
The company however has had issues with the methods it used to test the purity of the vaccine have fallen short of regulators’ standards and the company has not been able to prove that it can produce a shot that is consistently up to snuff, according to multiple people familiar with Novavax’s difficulties. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive company conversations. Novavax in its history has never crossed the finish line with a Vaccine.
Let’s not underestimate the severity of the leak though in the company’s operations. Although Novavax recently attested to some of its analytics and testing issues in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company’s issues are more concerning than previously understood, according to two of the people with direct knowledge of the matter. This is therefore a rather risky buy the dip play, but with significant upside if they find solutions to their bottlenecks.
I would not BUY this stock at their current levels, but only if it dips considerably more. That’s just my opinion, always do your own due diligence
Finsheet - Stock Price in Excel and Google Sheet
No full textThis dataset contains the valuation template the researcher can use to retrieve real-time Excel stock price and stock price in Google Sheets. The dataset is provided by Finsheet, the leading financial data provider for spreadsheet users.
To get more financial data, visit the website and explore their function. For instance, if a researcher would like to get the last 30 years of income statement for Meta Platform Inc, the syntax would be
=FS_EquityFullFinancials("FB", "ic", "FY", 30)
In addition, this syntax will return the latest stock price for Caterpillar Inc right in your spreadsheet.
=FS_Latest("CAT")
If you need assistance with any of the function, feel free to reach out to their customer support team. To get starter, install their Excel and Google Sheets add-on
Volkswagen - Financial data of EV leader
No full textSummary
Volkswagen has been aggressively shifting towards becoming an EV giant.
Several reasons make Volkswagen well-positioned to gain a leadership position in the EV market. Its success has been evident in European markets with the ID.4 SUV.
Valuation multiples are one of the lowest in the industry despite a strong outlook.
Volkswagen (POAHY) Porsche SE is a holding company, owned by the Porsche family. Porsche SE DOES NOT produce or own the actual sports cars. Porsche SE controls around 53% of Volkswagen, thus buying Porsche SE shares ($POAHY) gives you a discount of about 20% than buying actual Volkswagen shares. To learn more about stock investing, check out this website about the best stock research websites which covers more details about Volkswagen
Business Summary
Volkswagen is a leading multi-brand automobile giant. It has two divisions: Automotive and Financial Services. Under the Automotive division, the company develops and produces passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, trucks, buses, motorcycles as well as software, engines, and other components for vehicles. Passenger car business accounts for nearly 70% of the group’s revenue. The financial services division includes dealer and customer financing, vehicle leasing, fleet management, mobility services, etc. Volkswagen has a broad portfolio of brands across volume, premium, sports, and truck categories. These include Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Porsche, Seat, MAN, etc. Below is the revenue mix by geography:
Structural shift in the automotive industry
The accelerated rise in new technologies, digitization, automation, connectivity needs, and shift towards a greener economy have led to bringing a transformational change in the automotive industry. These have led to shifting the customer preference from internal combustion engine (“ICE”) vehicles to electric, autonomous, and, connected vehicles. While the industry still deals with multiple challenges like lack of EV charging infrastructure and relatively higher cost, these challenges are diminishing rapidly and are expected to be overcome soon which would result in a massive boom for electric vehicles.
EV30@30 campaign launched by Clean energy ministerial targets EV sales to reach 30% of total vehicle sales by 2030. In absolute terms, the number of units is expected to be roughly 43 million, up from 3.1 million in 2020. As per Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm, the number of EVs sold is expected to reach 30 million in 2028 and represent 50% of all passenger cars by 2030. EV sales were up 39% in 2020 in terms of volume, while at the same time, total passenger car market declined 14% (Source).
Volkswagen’s transformation underway
While the overall EV industry growth trends based on above-mentioned estimates are appealing, Volkswagen expects even stronger growth in Europe. It expects EVs to account for more than 70% of total European vehicle sales by 2030. The company seems to go all-in with EV as it announced its plans to introduce the final ICE platform in 2026 with a lifecycle ending by 2040.
It plans to have six new battery factories by 2030. The company is also the largest automotive investor of QuantumScape (QS), a leading developer of solid-state lithium-metal batteries. Citi (C) expects Volkswagen to be one of the structural winners as the automotive industry transitions into electric powertrains and gave a buy rating to it.
Even crazier— Volkswagen’s research & development (R&D) budget is the 5th largest in the world; they spend more on research than Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle.
The company aims to become the global leader by 2025. It plans to sell 1 million electric or hybrid vehicles this year and aims to launch 70 EV models and produce 25 million+ EVs by 2030. Volkswagen has developed a Modular Electric Drive Toolkit (“MEB”) platform which is a scalable modular car platform for EVs. It also plans to launch a different modular car platform (PPE platform) for its premium EV series (Porsche, Audi, etc.) in 2022. Cars already launched on the MEB platform include ID.3 & ID.4. The newly launched first fully electric SUV, ID.4, became the first SUV to top the European BEV rankings in April. Its predecessor, the hatchback ID.3, took the second spot in the European BEV market. This success provides a strong vote of confidence in the company’s competency in the EV market. The aggressive move towards a greener economy with fully electric vehicles would also help to repair the company’s tampered reputation after the diesel scandal in 2015.
Well-positioned to compete & abundance of resources to support the transformation
Volkswagen is the second-largest carmaker with solid experience in large-scale manufacturing which can be a difficult task for new market entrants like Fisker and Lordstown Motors. The company also enjoys economies of scale and synergies between brands as electric vehicle technology/platform is highly scalable, involving high operating leverage and heavy technological investments. Volkswagen is also expected to benefit from its dominant position in Europe where other EV players have limited penetration. Furthermore, Volkswagen has a huge potential in China, where just 180 out of 1000 people own a car, compared to 840 and 600 in the USA & Europe respectively. 1 in 5 vehicles sold in China is a volkswagen-owned brand, and the market contributes one third to Volkswagen's earnings.
Besides that, the company has a solid liquidity position and spending capacity. It had €35.9Bn in Cash & Cash equivalents and €69.2Bn in gross liquidity (cash, cash equivalents, securities, loans, and time deposits) as of March 2021. The company also had solid cash flows to support technological investments. It reported €24.9Bn CFO and €13.61Bn FCF in FY2020. The company invested nearly €25Bn in R&D and Capex in FY2020. It aims to invest €46Bn in electric mobility and the hybridization of its fleet in the next five years. Based on Business Insider’s data, the company has been investing the most in EV programs among other top vehicle manufacturers.
Valuation multiples are still incredibly cheap
The company trades at very attractive valuation multiples with a forward P/S ratio of 0.37 times and a forward PE ratio of 5.5 times. The valuation is trading at a premium relative to its history due to the ongoing transformation. However, it is still trading at one of the lowest valuation multiples in the industry despite a strong outlook, thus making it highly undervalued.
We expect the valuation multiples to rise in the future as the company nears the transition to an EV giant and regains growth momentum. However, investors can also earn substantial price returns even if the P/E ratio does not increase because a strong improvement in profitability is expected. The company has undertaken several cost-saving initiatives. It expects a 7% decline in material costs & realize a €2Bn reduction in fixed costs by 2023. It aims to achieve a 7-8% operating margin by 2025.
Risks to the thesis
Lack of EV charging infrastructure and unavailability of key raw materials:
All EV market growth projections could be grounded into dust if the charging infrastructure is not sufficient to make the convenience equal to ICE vehicles for car owners. Additionally, the unavailability of raw materials used to manufacture EVs can lead to disrupting the production cycle or even increase the cost of production due to disruption in demand-supply curve of raw materials.
Conclusion
Volkswagen has been highly ambitious to transform into an EV giant and we believe it is well-positioned to become a leader in Europe and one of the top players in the rest of the world due to its strong experience in mass production, the abundance of resources, scalable platform, advantages of economies of scale, strong synergies between brands, and more. The valuation is still significantly cheap relative to other automotive players despite improved outlook. The stock offers immense upside potential for investors with a long-term investment horizon of 5+ years. The cheap valuation also reduces the downside risk for investors. Most of the research in this article is done using AlphaResearch - Edgar Company Search, the provide state-of-the-art search capabilities for SEC filings such as SEC filings,
10 k,
10q,
form 8k,
13f filings,
and sec form 4
Apple 30-year Financial Data
No full textThis dataset contains 30 years of historical fundamentals data of Apple Inc (AAPL). The data includes all 3 financial statements: balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements. This dataset is provided by Columbia University and Finsheet, a platform which provides stock price in Excel and stock price in Google Sheets
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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