Hello Again! We are finding our kind of stocks. I do not own any shares of this company, but frankly, on first examination of the numbers, I am thinking seriously about picking some up. Again, I urge you to discuss all investment decisions of your own with your personal financial advisor as investments I discuss may or may not be suitable for you and may or may not be profitable investments!
Anyhow, back to the story. I have another fast-growing tech stock for you to look at. NetScreen Technologies, Inc. (NSCN), according to money.cnn.com, "...develops, markets and sells a family of network security systems and appliances for enterprises & service providers, delivering integrated firewall, VPN, and network traffic management capabilities." As I write, NSCN is trading at $27.16, up $2.92 or 12.05% on the day.
On October 29, 2003, (yesterday), NSCN reported their fourth quarter 2003 results. For the quarter ended September 30, 2003, revenue was $71.6 million, a SEQUENTIAL growth of 11.3% over the June 30, 2003 quarter and a 74.4% increase over revenue of $41.1 million in the same quarter last year. Fabulous results! Net income was $7.1 million or $.08/diluted share vs a loss of ($925,000) or ($.01)/diluted share last year. (please look at the actual reports as there DOES appear to be a lot of footnotes).
Morningstar.com records the rapid growth of this company from revenue of $700,000 in 1998, $5.9 million in 1999, $26.6 million in 2000, $85.6 million in 2001, $138.5 million in 2002 and $214 milllion in the trailing twelve months.
Net income just turned positive this year at $43 million. Looking at free cash flow on Morningstar, we find a gradual improvement from ($12) million in 2000, ($12) million in 2001, $28 million in 2002 and $61 million in the trailing twelve months.
The balance sheet is beautiful. As reported on Morningstar, this company has $315.2 million in cash, enough to cover multiple times the $79.8 million in current liabilities and $2.2 million in long-term liabilities. In addition, they have $72.4 million in other current liabilities.
From Yahoo.com, we find that the company has a market cap of $2.22 Billion with a trailing p/e of 45.24, a forward p/e of 41.79, and a PEG ratio of 1.38. Price/sales also a bit pricey at 8.04.
This company has 81.41 million shares outstanding with 54.90 million of them that float. 8.73% of the float is out short representing 4.79 million shares out short as of 10/8/03, which would take 2.305 trading days to cover. No dividend is paid.
This is a fast-growing, profitable company with a great balance sheet. Certainly not selling at a discount, the PEG ratio isn't too bad but the rest of the value parameters are a bit steep. Since I am already pretty heavy into margin, I will pass on this right now...but might be a good investment long-term.
Thanks for stopping by. Again, please discuss any of your own investment decisions with your own investment advisor and if you have any questions or comments you can email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com
Bob