It is 7:05 pm CST and I thought I was done for the day but hadn't finished scanning the lists of most actives. Our 'Investnuts' club met and we had a presentation on School Specialty (listed previous to the meeting), and Paychex and HMA. We bought some School Specialty and some Paychex....so for transparency sake, I guess I own some of both of those....at least 10% of the total!
To get to the point, Select Medical Corp. (SEM on NYSE), had a pretty nice day today up $.84 to $22.10 or a 3.95% gain.
Looking at cnn.money, for the profile, we find that Select Medical "is an operator of long-term acute care hospitals in the United States and outpatient rehabilitation clinics in both the United States and Canada." By the way, I do not own any shares of this nor do any members of my family or stock club (!).
Looking at the most recent quarter, on April 28th, Select Medical reported earnings for the quarter ending March 31, 2003. They reported net operating revenues increasing 14.9% to $312.3 million compared to $271.9 million for the same quarter prior year. Income from operations increased 28.3% to $30.8 million compared to the same quarter the prior year. These are nice solid numbers.
Checking out Morningstar.com we find that Select Medical had NO revenue in 1997, first year with revenue was 1998 with $0.1 Billion, $0.5 billion in 1999, $0.8 billion in 2000, and $1.0 billion in 2001 with $1.1 billion in the trailing twelve months. With the $312 million reported in the latest quarter it looks like, if we extrapolate a $1.2 billion year in 2003.
Select has had improving free cash flow, a nice measure of what I think of as true profitability with a -$6 million in 2000 going to $39 million in 2001 and $68 million in 2002. I like the level as well as the improving profitability this represents.
Assets and Liabilities pretty well-balanced and hopefully, the free cash flow will start helping Select pay down some of their longterm debt.
This is a nice, fairly steadily, and fast-growing health care concern. Have a great Tuesday evening! The market actually didn't do too badly today in light of the tremendous pessimism expressed that the market was way too high after its current run...and the overall expectations of a sell-off today!
Bob