Hello Friends! It sure is cold here in the upper Midwest. I hope all of you are staying inside and bundling up when going out! The market is a bit rocky still but the NASDAQ is holding up fairly well...at least there are no stocks to unload today!
Looking through the gainers today, I came across Dendrite International (DRTE). As I write, they are trading at $16.99 up $2.73 on the day or 19.14%. According to the money.cnn.com snapshot, Dendrite "...is a worldwide supplier of sales force software products and support services to the pharmaceutical industry."
Once again, the driving force in the price move was an excellent fourth quarter 2003 earnings report. This company has been acquiring other companies and recently picked up Synavant, Inc. Including this, revenues for the quarter were up to $99 million from $57 million the prior year, a 74% gain, and net income was $5.8 million in 2003 vs $4.7 million in 2002 or on a per share basis came in at $.14/share in the fourth quarter of 2003 vs $.12/share in 2002.
Looking at the Morningstar.com "5-yr Restated" data, we find that this has been a steadily growing company with revenue of $131 million in 1998, $173 million in 1999, $214 million in 2000, $227 million in 2001, $226 million in 2002 and $279 million in the trailing twelve months.
Earnings per share have been erratic with $.32/share reported in 1998, increasing only to $.38/share in 2002 and $.48 reported in the trailing twelve months.
Free cash flow, while not growing steadily, has been nicely positive at $12 million in 2000, $22 million in 2001, $13 million in 2002 and $16 million in the trailing twelve months.
Their balance sheet, per Morningstar, looks quite nice with $26.2 million in cash and $86.4 million in other current assets with $80.4 million in current liabilities reported and only $10.0 million in long-term debt.
Taking a look at "key statistics" on Yahoo.com, we find that the Market Cap is a small $689.92 million. The trailing p/e is moderate at 33.30, with a forward p/e (for fiscal year 2004 estimates) at 20.37. The PEG is at 1.50 which isn't bad and the price/sales not too expensive at 2.08.
Yahoo reports that there are 40.63 million shares outstanding with 36.80 million of them that float. Of these, there are 1.81 million shares out short...representing 4.93% of the float as of 1/8/04...or 9.399 trading days (short ratio). This short ratio is actually quite high and we may be witnessing a bit of a short squeeze today.
No dividend is paid and the last stock split was a 3:2 in October, 1999.
Overall, this is an attractive issue. As you know if you read this BLOG, I am loaded down with margin, have my 25 positions I am planning today....so am not in the market for any shares at this time and do not indeed own any! But you never know what the future may hold!
Thanks again for stopping by! As always, please exercise due diligence when making investment decisions and consult with your investment advisor if you have any questions about your decisions. If you have any questions, comments, or words of encouragement (my favorite) for me, please drop me a line at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com or leave the comments right here on the website!
Bob