Looking at our stocks, it wasn't too bad a day....but a crummy day for ACS...which I JUST PICKED UP YESTERDAY. Oh well, these things happen and down 5% it is still under our 8% sell-point.
School Specialty Inc. is a new name for me and hit the list with a nice move: up $3.76 or 17.34% (!) on the day to $25.45. Even more impressive, is after-hours it is continuing to move higher...at $26.57 up $1.12 or another 4.40%. Wow.
I don't own any shares of this stock...but it certainly had a nice move today.
If we look under the profile section of cnn.money, we find that SCHS "is a distributor of non-textbook educational supplies and furniture for grades pre-kindergarten through 12 districts, administrators and teachers through its catalogs."
Today, SCHS reported record revenue for 2003, with $870.0 million, a 13.4 percent increase over last year, and net income grew 81.8% to $39.6 million over 2002.
Fiscal 2003 fourth quarter revenues increased $10.5 million to $144.1 million, a 7.9% increase over the corresponding quarter in 2002. Apparently this is a very seasonal business....(like school!)...and the net loss per share this quarter improved 10.3% from $.29 net loss to $.26 per share loss in this ' seasonally light fourth quarter' as reported in the NYTimes on the Web.
Checking out the 5 year financials on Morningstar.com, we see the pretty bar graphs showing sequentially revenue of $310.5 million in 1998, $521.7 million in 1999, $639.3 million in 2000, $692.7 million in 2001, and $767.4 million in 2002.
Free cash flow has improved from 2000 when it was a positive $14 million to $21 million in 2001, and $64 million in 2002.
Overall, the company is a little heavy on debt with approximately 203.8 million in current liabilities while showing only $5.4 million in cash and $178.9 million in other current assets. Long-term liabilities are at $190.9 million.
The stock is very interesting and technically has quite a bit of price momentum as well as earnings momentum although a shade heavy on debt.
Have a great evening!
Bob