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Extracted Text (OCR)
Methodology
Repatriation impact
We estimated cumulative overseas profits for the S&P 500 excluding Financials and
Real Estate via three sources: 1) Bloomberg data on cash held overseas (if
disclosed/available}, 2) BofAML analyst estimates on cumulative overseas profits or
cash, and 3) our own estimate if neither (1) or (2) are available, based on (Total cash x
[% of foreign sales +10%J]) for companies with at least 5% foreign sales.
We apply the effective tax rates proposed by Trump (10%) and the Blueprint (8.75%) to
our estimated $1.2tn in overseas cash to determine taxes due for the S&P 500 ex.
Financials & Real Estate. We estimate that 100% is brought back given that the tax is
mandatory. To compute the one-time tax impact to GAAP EPS, we divide the cumulative
tax impact by the S&P 500 divisor, after first excluding the impact from several large
multinationals (e.g. AAPL) which already provision a portion of their overseas profits for
US taxes and have effective US tax rates well above 35%.
Note that for companies for which our analysts provided estimates, we asked them to
provide cumulative overseas profits if possible, but in most cases this number reflects
overseas cash. Thus, taxes paid could be slightly higher than we estimate given that
both the Blueprint and Trump’s plans suggest a mandatory tax on all accumulated
overseas profits, some of which may be permanently reinvested; here, the Blueprint
suggests a lower 3.5% tax for retained earnings not held in cash/equivalents, suggesting
that any additional taxes payable that we are not capturing are likely to be small.
To calculate the % EPS impact from buybacks, we subtract the amount of taxes payable
from total cash brought back for the S&P 500 ex. Financials & Real Estate (and for each
sector) and divide this by the market cap for the S&P 500 (and for each sector.) We
multiply this % impact for the overall index by our 2018E EPS of $137 to determine the
potential EPS impact, applying various buyback scenarios (10-100%). We use 50% as a
base case scenario, which is lower than the 80% brought back during the 2004 tax
holiday, to be conservative.
Border adjustments impact on EPS
We estimate the costs of goods imported and exported for each company using the
latest company filings, conversations with analysts, industry research, management
commentary and the Input-Output accounts data published by the U.S. Department of
Commerce. For more information about the Input-Output accounts data, please refer to
the Bureau of Economic Analysis website at http://www.bea.gov/industry/io_annual.htm.
When using the estimates based on Input-Output accounts, we adjust them to account
for the varying foreign exposures of different S&P 500 industries. For companies that
source products through importers (e.g. retailers), we only included the costs of goods
estimated to be directly imported by each company, as taxes pertaining to those
imported goods should be paid by the importers themselves.
We estimate the earnings impact of border adjustments based on the additional taxes
that companies would pay on the costs of imported goods sold in the US (non-
deductible) and any reduction in taxes related to the production costs for exported
goods (deductible). To calculate this, we multiple the net value of imported COGS by the
assumed tax rate. Note that the net impact can be either positive or negative depending
on whether the company is a net importer or exporter. We assume a 50% haircut to the
impact to account for from alternate sourcing, currency rates and pricing power.
Lower corporate tax rate impact on EPS
We estimate the normalized effective domestic tax rate of a company based on
conversations with the analysts or the median 5-year domestic income tax rate. If a
company had a negative tax rate for a particular year, we exclude the tax rate of that
BankofAmerica <2”
24 Equity Strategy Focus Point | 29 January 2017 Merrill Lynch
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