Hello Friends! Happy Monday, and a happy one it is for us too with the market up nicely today and our stocks participating. As always, please do your own investigation on all of the stocks discussed and review them with your financial advisor to make sure they are suitable for you!
This BLOG must be getting pretty long as I have now had two repeats of my OWN postings! (AVP, and UNF). I THINK I am too young for what some of my older friends call a "senior moment". We just have so MANY stocks listed here. Please spend some time browsing through these lists. There is definitely a pony in there somewhere :).
Today I came across Gevity HR (GVHR) on the list of greatest gainers. Currently, as I write, GVHR is trading at $28.10, up $2.37 or 9.21% on the day. According to the Yahoo profile on Gevity, GVHR "...is a provider of human capital management solutions to clinents across the United States. The Company offers its clinets, which are typically small to medium-sized businesses with between five and 100 employees, products and services that provide a complete solution for the clients' human resources (HR) outsourcing needs."
What pushed the stock higher today was the news that Gevity was purchasing the "HR outsourcing portfolio of EPIX holdings Corp." which is expected to add to Gevity's earnings by $9 million or between $.08-$.10/share this year. Thus, the company RAISED its earnings estimates to a range of $.98 to $1.10/share as a result of this transaction. As you can see, raising earnings estimates by a company is very BULLISH for the stock price. By the way, I do NOT own any shares or positions in this company.
If we look at the latest earnings report we can see that on February 17, 2004, GVHR reported that fully diluted earnings per share grew to $.19/share from $.06/share for the period ended December 31, 2003, compared to the prior year same period. For the same period, revenue increased from $96 million to $118 million.
If we look at "5-Yr Restated" financials on Morningstar.com, we can see a steady increase in revenue from $256.2 million in 1998 to $403.9 million in the trailing twelve months.
Earnings, however, have been a bit erratic, ranging from $.97/share in 1998, dropping to a loss of $(.76)/share in 2001, and then back up to $.49/share in the trailing twelve months.
The company started paying dividends in 2001, and increased the dividend in 2002 to $.20/share. On March 11, 2004, GVHR announced a 20% increase in their dividend, as reported, increasing the payout from $.05 to $.06/share. This is also BULLISH for the stock price!
Free cash flow, as reported on Morningstar.com, has been erratic but positive recently, with $35 million in 2000, $(3) million in 2001, $34 million in 2002 and $10 million free cash flow in the trailing twelve months.
The balance sheet appears solid with $121.6 million in cash and $103.5 million in other current assets, enough to cover botht the $152.9 million in current liabilities and the $54.1 million in long-term liabilities.
If we look at "Key Statistics" from Yahoo, we can see that the market cap is a small $541.79 million. The trailing p/e is a bit rich at 45.45 but the forward p/e (fye 31-Dec-05) is more reasonable at 23.56. The valuation isn't as expensive as it appears, due to the fast growth in earnings anticipated, and the PEG is nice at 1.00. The price/sales also reasonable (imho) at 1.17.
GVHR has 19.32 million shares outstanding with only 12.20 million of them that float. There are 1.31 million shares out short, representing 10.76% of the float and 5.252 trading days of volume. (We may be witnessing a bit of a short squeeze right now!) These figures are as of 2/9/04.
As noted, the company DOES pay a small, but increasing, dividend of $.24/share yielding 0.93%. No stock splits are reported on Yahoo.
Looking at a "Point and Figure" chart on Stockcharts.com, all that I can say is that after breaking through a resistance level of $3.25/share, the stock has been heading higher very steadily to its current level. This is really a beautiful chart!
So, what is there NOT to like? Unfortunately, even though my trading portfolio is at 20 positions, with a goal of 25, I am SITTING ON MY HANDS, trying very hard at self-discipline. I am waiting for one of my 20 stocks to hit a sell point for a portion of my holdings before I add a position. You heard me right. That is the plan. Now let me see if I can stay with it.
This company has a nice recent record of revenue growth, is RAISING its earnings estimates, RAISING its dividend, generating free cash flow, has a nice balance sheet, and a beautiful chart. I think I am in love :). Anyhow, good luck investing.
If you have any questions, comments, or words of encouragement, please feel free to email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com
Bob