Hello Friends! I hope you all had a great Holiday! Our family did Peter Pan yesterday. O.K. sounds juvenile but I won't grow up either. My 19 year old son kept talking about the only other person not growing up (I guess besides his Dad) was Michael Jackson. I guess he DOES call his ranch "Neverland"...so what else could I expect from my son?
Anyway, as ALWAYS, remember to check with your investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website. I just worry about you guys!
Today, Sharper Image (SHRP) made the lists. We are all familiar with this retailer with all of the GREAT gadgets (like Brookstone)....but this company has some interesting numbers which I will share with you and makes it an interesting choice this morning. As I write, SHRP is trading at $32.40 up $2.43 or 8.11% on the day.
A lot of retailers have reported fairly anemic results for the holiday season. As reported on Yahoo today, from a story carried by BUSINESS WIRE, SHRP reported strong retail sales, and related that "...Through December 24 comparable store sales increased 21% and total company sales increased 30%, compared to the same December 1 to 24 period last year." These are GREAT results!
Looking at the latest quarter for financial results we find that on November 20, 2003, SHRP reported and the story was picked up by BUSINESS WIRE and run by Yahoo.com, that third quarter results were excellent. For the three months ended October 31, 2003, total revenue increased 24% to $131.1 million from last year's $106.1 million. During that quarter, same store sales increased 10% and catalog sales were up 20%, and internet sales climbed 36%. WOW! Net earnings were $985,000 or $.06/diluted share compared to last year's net loss of $(504,000), or $(0.04)/diluted share.
Morningstar.com shows that this revenue growth is not a unique event...revenue in 1999 was $243.1 million, $304.1 million in 2000, $420.7 million in 2001, $396.2 million in 2002 (the hiccup), $523.3 million in 2003, and $574.5 million in the trailing twelve months.
During this period, earnings per share have increased from $.52 in 1999 to $1.35 in the trailing twelve months.
Free cash flow has generally improved as well from ($2) million in 2001 to ($11) million in 2002, $14 million in 2003 and $11 million in the trailing twelve months.
The balance sheet, in my humble opinion, looks nice as well. As reported on Morningstar.com, the company has $67.7 million in cash and $121.0 million in other current assets vs. $76.6 million in current liabilities and only $10.2 million in long-term debt.
Here is the nice part. Looking at Yahoo.com for "key statistics", we find that the company has a market cap of $489.32 million. The trailing p/e is very nice at 22.76 and the forward p/e (based on fye 31-Jan-05) is 16.65. And get this, the PEG ratio is 0.83 (very nice), and price/sales is 0.76 (!). These are very reasonable numbers in terms of valuation! (in my opinion.)
SHRP has only 15.11 million shares outstanding with 7.80 million of them that float. On top of all of this there is a LOAD of shares out short...with Yahoo.com reporting 2.84 Million shares out short as of 12/8/03) This is 8.928 trading days or 36.40% of the float. These guys may need to scramble and make some purchases to cover their short sales.
No dividend is paid and Yahoo does not report any prior stock splits.
Overall, I like this stock a lot. The company is a retail venture reporting same stores consistently over 10% and is doing well in both the catalog and internet portion of its business. I do NOT own any shares and since I am margined up to my ears, I do not plan to buy any. However, the valuation is great with a reasonable p/e, the PEG is under 1.0, and the Price/sales also under 1.0. Just to top off this cake with some icing, there are LOADS of shares out short which are just WAITING to purchase shares. Anyhow, I like it.
Hope all of you had a GREAT holiday and will have a safe and healthy 2004...not to add a profitable year!
Regards again!
Bob