Business Week recommends padding your portfolio with government-dependent Latino immigrants
Business Week’s year-end, double-issue special features an investment guide to 2005. One of the articles in the guide, called “How To Seize A Gran Oportunidad” (I thought that’s the name of Mexico’s emigration policy), touches upon investments that might benefit from the rapid Latinofication of America. Among the “opportunities:”
The hottest Hispanic-run company in terms of revenue, earnings, and stock price growth is Molina Healthcare Inc., a provider of health plans and clinics for Medicaid-eligible citizens, says Ramirez & Co.’s Garcia. Chronically underinsured after coming to the U.S. because few Latin American countries have a tradition of health insurance, low-income Spanish speakers account for more than a third of the Medicaid population, says Molina Chief Executive Officer J. Mario Molina. With more than 300,000 new Hispanic immigrants entering the U.S. each year, the ranks of Hispanics using government-sponsored health care are growing rapidly. That has helped push membership in the Long Beach (Calif.) health-maintenance organization up 40% this year, to about 800,000 customers paid for by Medicaid. The stock trades near a 52-week high. But with a price-earnings ratio of 19 and earnings expected by analysts to grow 22.5% in 2005, it remains relatively cheap. “Molina is becoming the Hispanic health-care provider of choice,” says Garcia.
Oddly, the article doesn’t list home or personal security companies as good investments.
