Today the market is behaving nicely...that is going up! Tomorrow may be another story. But our focus is not on timing the market or predicting the weather next weekend. We are focussed on picking the very best companies with the most consistent results. Boring but effective.
Vital Images is a stock that I own shares in a managed account elsewhere (not my trading account). I may actually have sold the shares as I do not make the calls on that account but I do believe there are some shares there still...so I am familiar with this company.
VTAL is having a very nice day today trading at $21.66 up $2.18 or 11.19% on the day. Behind the stock's move, the earnings were reported today for the second quarter ending June 30, 2003: revenues were at $7.5 million up 54% from $4.9 million last year, Net income was $666,000 up from $201,000 last year, or on a per share basis...$.06/diluted share vs. $.02/diluted share last year.
Oh I forgot to tell you what they do! VTAL, according to CNN.Money, "...develops & markets visualization software and workstations for clinical diagnosis, surgical planning and medical research."
Morningstar.com shows a very pretty picture with revenue growth growing from $4.5 million in 1998 to $6.6 million in 1999, $10.6 million in 2000, $15.2 million in 2001, $21.1 million in 2002...and if we extrapolate the second quarter, we would have a rate of $30 million in 2003.
Free cash flow has turned positive from a negative $3 million in 2000 to nothing in 2001 to a positive $1 million in 2002.
The company is small but has lots of cash: $10.5 million in cash enough to cover the current liabilities of $6.9 million and the long-term liabilities of $0.2 million combined. In addition, VTAL has, according to Morningstar.com, $5.5 million in other current assets.
VTAL is a SMALL company with a market cap of $178.8 million with only 9.18 million shares outstanding and only 6.60 million that float. The p/e is a very steep 118.78....but with the fast growth may very well be worth the price. There are a bit over 360,000 shares out short...which represents just over a day's worth of trading....per Yahoo.
I like VTAL which has everything going for it except for the p/e which is steep. This is already in my portfolio and might deserve a place in yours!
Thanks for stopping by! Please feel free to leave a message right here or contact me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com if you have any questions, comments, or my favorite message....words of encouragement!
Have a Happy Tuesday!
Bob