Hello Friends! I have been juggling some of my stocks in my trading portfolio....well not really juggling...selling a couple of losers and adding a new one. I try to post all of the changes in my trading portfolio in my Blog so everyone can see what I am actually doing as well as my thoughts on a lot of stocks that come to my attention.
As always, please do your own due diligence, that is do your homework! on everything I write and that you may read online. In addition, please be sure to consult with your investment advisor(s) before acting on any information you may read on this website.
According to the money.cnn.com "snapshot", Isco "...designs, manufactures and markets products used by industry and government to monitor compliance with water quality regulations and used in a variety of research and testing laboratories." ISKO had a nice day today, closing at $12.12 on the day up $1.78 or 17.21%.
What helped ISKO today, was, you will be surprised to know...a second quarter 2004 earnings report. I am only pulling your leg when I say you will be surprised, because that is exactly what seems to drive stocks higher, at least over the short run, is earnings reports. The results for the quarter ended January 23, 2004, was sales of $17.4 million, compared to sales of $14.3 million last year, and net income of $1.5 million or $.26/share compared to a loss of $(10,000) or $(0.0)/diluted share last year.
If we take a look at the "5-Yr Restated" financials on Morningstar.com, we can see that revenue has grown each and every year from 1999 from $52 million to $63 million in the trailing twelve months. Earnings, however, have been more erratic with $.49/share reported in 2001, dropping to $.22 in 2003, and increasing to $.25 in the trailing twelve months. With the current quarter report of $.26/share, this is more that all of 2003...and extrapolated would get us over $1.00/share in 2004. However, extrapolation is a dangerous business!
Free cash flow, while also erratic, has been positive with $6 million in 2001, dropping to $1 million in 2003, and back to $4 million in the trailing twelve months per Morningstar.com.
Balance sheet-wise, this company is quite solvent with $1.8 million in cash and $23.7 million in other current assets, more than enough to cover BOTH the current liabilities of $7.1 million and the smallish long-term liabilities of $1.1 million.
This is a very small company! Looking at the "Key Statistics" from Yahoo.com, we can see that the market cap is a microcap $69.45 million. The trailing p/e is at 49.06, no PEG is noted, I suspect no good estimates are out there...and am not sure if any analysts follow this stock. Price/sales is nice at 0.95, and price/book is also cheap at 1.28.
Yahoo reports only 5.73 million shares outstanding with 2.90 million of them that float. As of 2/9/04, there are only 6,000 shares out short representing only 0.21% of the float or 1 trading day of volume.
Interestingly, this company DOES pay a nice dividend of $.24/share yielding 2.32% which isn't shabby at all. The last stock split was a 6:5 split (don't see THAT too often do you?), on 6/13/88. (almost 16 years ago!).
If we look at a Point and Figure Graph from stockcharts.com, we can see that this company broke out of a narrow range in mid 2001, and recently broke through resistance at about $9.5 in early 2003 and has headed upward since then. I do not think that this is too late to enter this equity with a position.
Quite frankly, except for the TINY size of this company, I like it a lot. The p/e isn't great, but the growth in revenue has been steady and the earnings have improved greatly recently. If this stock gets any attention, it has the potential to rocket a bit like the Escalon Medical Stock (that I SOLD today after buying it AFTER the sharp rise and getting caught in the pullback :(). Anyway, that's an idea for you. I will try to hold off buying any other stocks, (if I can...), until such time as I sell a portion again at a profit.
Thanks again for stopping by. I hope that my rambling is helpful for you to think about stocks and I just encourage all of you to do your own necessary checkup on all of the stocks I suggest and discuss them with your investment advisors. If you have any questions or comments, or of course any words of encouragement, please feel free to email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com
Yours,
Bob