Hello Friends! It is tax time around here. So I hope you all have made your filing deadlines. Anyhow, as always, remember to do your own investigation and use your financial advisors to find out if stocks that are discussed on this website are timely and appropriate for you!
Option Care (OPTN) is having a nice day today, in the midst of what appears to be a continued correction, trading at $13.37 up $1.37 or 11.42% on the day. I do not own any shares or have any leveraged or short positions on this stock.
According to the Yahoo "Profile", OPTN "...provides pharmacy services to patients with acute and chronic conditions at the patient's home or other alternate-site settings such as physicians' offices."
What drove the stock up today was a report from the company that first quarter revenue and profit would exceed analysts expectations. For the quarter, OPTN is expecting earnings of $.20/share and revenue of $103 million ahead of the $98.8 million in revenue and $.18/share anticipated. It is almost ALWAYS bullish for a stock when the company raises expectations beyond what the analysts consensus is.
On February 17, 2004, OPTN reported 4th quarter results. For the quarter, revenues came in at $96 million, a 5% increase from revenue the prior year. Net income was $4.0 million or $.19/dilued share vs. $3.0 million or $.14/share the prior year.\
Looking at "5-Yr Restated" financials on Morningstar.com, we can see that revenues have grown from $114.9 million in 1998 to $351.1 million the trailing twelve months.
Earnings per share have been a little less consistent but we can see from the latest quarter (above) and the upcoming quarter (above) that revenue and earnings growth is back on track.
In addition, the Morningstar evaluation demonstrates that free cash flow which was $(12) million in 2001, turned positive at $5 million in 2002, and $22 million in the trailing twelve months.
The balance sheet looks just fine to me. They have $3.6 million in cash and $73.8 million in other current assets vs. $22.6 millin in current liabilities and only $9.3 million in long-term liabilities.
Looking at "Key Statistics" from Yahoo, we can see that this is a small cap stock with a market cap of $282.34 million. The trailing p/e is moderate at 32.58, but with the fast growth the forward p/e is nicer at 15.76 (fye 31-Dec-05). Thus the PEG is very nice at 0.81, and the price/sales also reasonable at 0.71.
Yahoo reports 21.09 million shares outstanding with 13.10 million of them that float. As of 3/8/04, there were 375,000 shares out short representing 4.31 trading days of volume or 2.86% of the float. This was down from the prior months' 451,000 shares out short.
No cash dividend is paid, and the last stock split was a 5:4 on 5/2/02.
Looking at a "Point and Figure" chart, we can see that OPTN was trading sideways until about April, 2003, when it broke through a resistance level at about $10.50, and has traded higher since that time.
Altogether, I kind of like this stock! The growth is steady and apparently accelerating, the valuation is great with a low forward p/e, although the trailing p/e isn't quite as nice. The PEG and the Price/Sales are BOTH under 1.0, making it a nice value as well. My only problem is that I am going to SIT on my hands at least until I can sell a portion of my holdings at a profit!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Again, if you have any questions, comments, or words of encouragement, please feel free to email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com
Regards!
Bob