Hello Friends! Thanks so much for stopping by...and thanks especially for those of you who have taken the time to email me and let me know that you are out there and following this website. I suppose I would blog for just myself, but if I can know that I am sharing ideas with others, well it just makes it that much more meaningful for me. As always, I must recommend that you all do your own due diligence and research prior to making any investment decisions based on what you read here. Also, please consult with your investment advisors to make sure that these investments are appropriate and timely for you!
I came across Shuffle Master this afternoon, while looking through the lists of top % movers. SHFL is currently trading at $41.45, up $2.56 or 6.58% on the day. According to the money.cnn.com "snapshot", SHFL "...develops, manufactures and markets automatic card shuffling equipment, table games and video-slot machine game software for the gaming industry."
Looking for latest earnings reports, I quickly found the first quarter 2004 earnings report on Yahoo. In fact, this came out yesterday just after the close of the market, and is probably the reason why this stock is behaving so well today. For the quarter ended January 31, 2004, "...the Company reported revenue of $15.6 million, compared to $11.9 million for the same quarter a year ago, an increase of 31%. Net income for the quarter was $5.9 million or $.34 per diluted share, compared to $3.3 million or $.19 per diluted share for the first quarter of fiscal 2003."
Lookin at Morningstar.com "5-Yr Restated" financials, we can see the BEAUTIFUL revenue progression from $27.1 million in 1998, $28.9 million in 1999, $38.9 million in 2000, $48.0 million in 2001, $56.1 million in 2002, and $63.5 million in the trailing twelve months.
In an equally pretty fashion, earnings per share have improved each year from $.15/share in 1998, $.20 in 1999, $.53 in 2000, $.63 in 2001, $.77 in 2002 and $.95 in the trailing twelve months.
Free cash flow has also been improving: $9 million in 2000, $18 million in 2001, $18 million in 2002 and $22 million in the trailing twelve months.
Balance-sheet-wise, this is equally nice. They have $17.3 million in CASH, enough to pay off both the current liabilities of $12.0 million and the long-term liabilities of $400,000 combined. In addition, they also are reporting on the Morningstar website $23.4 million in other current assets. A very pretty picture indeed!
If we look at "Key Statistics" from Yahoo, we can see that SHFL has a market cap of $687.57 million, a trailing p/e of 42.00, but a forward p/e (fye 31-Oct-05) of only 26.74. With the rapid growth of this company, the 5-yr estimated PEG is only 1.35, making this a reasonable value. The Price/Sales ratio is quite high though at 9.57.
Per Yahoo, SHFL has 16.59 million shares outstanding with 15.10 million of them that float. There is an INORDINATE number of shares out short as of 1/8/04, representing 5.28 million (!), which is 34.95% of the float, or 17.189 average trading days. With the good earnings news, there may be a scramble for the exits here as the stock rises in spite of the shares that have been pre-sold and need to be covered.
No dividend is paid, and the last stock split was in June, 2001, when a 3:2 split was paid.
Taking a brief look at the technicals, we can see from a stockcharts.com point and figure chart that this stock was trading sideways until March, 2003, when it broke through a resistance level at about $20.00/share and has headed up fairly strongly to its current levels in the low $40 range. The technicals look nice imho, and I would not be going short against this one. By the way, I do NOT own any shares of this, but certainly would be interested if I wasn't sitting on my hands, waiting for a sale of a stock before buying....I also do NOT have any short or other option positions on this stock.
Just wanted to clear the air on all of that!
Thanks so much again for stopping by! If you have any comments, questions, or words of encouragement please feel free to email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com
Bob