Brian Nelson

Coinstar Pre-announces a Huge Earnings Beat; Chanos Blushes

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Coinstar (CSTR) pre-announced solid first-quarter results after the close Thursday. The owner of Redbox self-service movie rental kiosks said that it now expects consolidated revenue for its first quarter to come in over $569 million at the high end and core diluted earnings per share to come in the range of $1.36 to $1.40 per share for the period (consensus was at only $0.89 per diluted share). Coinstar noted strong consumer demand at Redbox in the quarter, particularly during February and March. The firm also witnessed strength in turns of the following titles: Moneyball, Puss and Boots, 50/50, In Time, Abduction, and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Specifically, Coinstar cited lower than expected card processing fees and direct operating costs at Redbox as the main reasons for the … Read more

Stay the Course: Alcoa’s 1Q Results Support the Overweight Aerospace Position in Our Best Ideas Portfolio

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Alcoa kicked off first-quarter earnings season with a solid report. Despite views that first-quarter earnings growth will be meager and almost negligible absent Apple (AAPL), we strongly disagree. We expect continued strong performance out of the cyclical aerospace sector coupled with improving earnings from the energy firms levered to oil. Alcoa, for example, posted $0.09 in earnings per share during the period versus consensus expectations of a $0.04 per share loss. But we had been expecting the earnings beat from the aluminum giant, and our fair value estimate for Alcoa remains unchanged following the report. We view Alcoa’s report more important for interpreting how certain end markets are performing than anything else. With that said, Alcoa reported year-over-year revenue growth … Read more

March Retail Sales Speak to Strength in the US Economy

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Retail sales numbers issued Thursday by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), which tracks 22 retailers, reinforced what we’ve been saying for some time: the US economy continues to grow and the pace of expansion may even be accelerating, even in the face of domestic political uncertainty, concerns about a slowdown in Chinese growth, and a recession in the Eurozone. According to ICSC data, retail sales rose 4.1% for March, with strong growth across all segments. We think the strong March retail sales performance and improving employment trends bode well for the US economy as we head into the second quarter. Though we liked the underlying March performance, we’re not making any changes to our fair value estimates for … Read more

Strong March Auto Sales Support Our Bullish Take on Ford

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Preliminary monthly data showed that March auto sales in the US increased 12.7% and that Ford’s (F) performance was its best showing for the month in five years. The industry-wide seasonally-adjusted rate came in at a whopping 14.4 million vehicles. Although Ford’s growth rate trailed other car manufacturers, many peers were lapping easy comparisons due to last year’s production setbacks, and we’re not reading too much into it. We continue to believe Ford is a core position in the portfolio of our Best Ideas Newsletter. Though the increase in Ford’s sales was lower than peers’ during the month, we can’t find too much fault in the company’s monthly performance and are excited about what the numbers may mean with respect to profitability. As … Read more

SanDisk Cuts First-Quarter Outlook; We Continue to Steer Clear of the Shares

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Flash-memory maker SanDisk (SNDK) issued a weak business update after the close Tuesday. The firm blamed weaker-than-expected pricing and demand, as it now forecasts total revenue to be approximately $1.2 billion in the first quarter, down from its previously expected $1.35 billion at the high end of the range and well below consensus expectations of $1.34 billion. SanDisk also said that its gross margin would be less than the 39% to 42% range it had previously expected in the period. We’ll be expecting more information from the chip maker when it reports quarterly results April 19. At this time, however, we’re sticking with our fair value estimate for SanDisk and continue to steer clear of the firm’s shares.  

Releasing Our Most Advanced Stock Screener Yet — the Valuentum DataScreener500

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Valuentum’s April Edition of Its Dividend Growth Newsletter! Another Month of Relative Outperformance!

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We had another strong month of relative outperformance in the portfolio of our Dividend Growth Newsletter, as we widened our outperformance gap relative to the Dow Jones Select Dividend Index (DVY) by another 40 basis points (please see page 5). We also collected (or have in receivables) roughly $547 in dividend payments from the publishing of the previous edition of our Dividend Growth Newsletter, a nice sum.   We continue to expect strong outperformance from our portfolio through the course of 2012 and beyond, and view Hasbro (HAS), Medtronic (MDT), Intel (INTC), and Republic (RSG) as the most timely dividend-growth opportunities on the market today, with each posting a 9 on our Valuentum Buying IndexTM. We may add to those … Read more