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Housing Recovery Powers Home Depot

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Home improvement giant Home Depot (click ticker for report: ) kicked off fiscal year 2013 with a strong start. Revenue rose 7% year-over-year to $19.1 billion, soaring past consensus expectations. Earnings also easily exceeded consensus estimates, growing 22% year-over-year to $0.83 per share. Free cash flow improved 7% compared to the prior year period to $2.4 billion. In spite of facing a difficult weather comparison, same-store sales were 4.3% higher on a comparable basis, with US same-store sales up 4.8%. The company received some benefit from ongoing demand from rebuilding efforts resulting from Hurricane Sandy, but we believe the broad based strength underscores the resiliency of the housing market in the US. Also helping to boost results was a shift … Read more

Don’t Get Too Floored By Lumber Liquidators’ Performance

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Over the past year, one of the more amazing performers has been hardwood floor supplier Lumber Liquidators (click ticker for report: ). Shares have steadily climbed a whopping 185% over the past year and are up 55% year-to-date. However, we do not believe such robust performance is likely to continue. Fundamentally, little is wrong with the company’s recent performance. In fact, Lumber Liquidators is benefitting from a strong rebound in the US housing market. Flooring is one of the more obvious features of a house, making it an obvious area to improve from almost all aspects of ownership, whether it be selling, buying, or renting. With hardwood floors still in vogue, the firm is capitalizing on this demand, experiencing a … Read more

Firms Raising Their Dividends in the Week Ending March 1

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The flurry of dividend increases continues. Below we provide a list of firms that upped their dividends for the week ending March 1. The dividend reports of covered firms on this list will be updated shortly with the new information. To access our dividend reports, please click here. Firms Raising Their Dividends This Week Acadia Realty Trust (AKR): now $0.21 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.18. American Realty Capital Properties (ARCP): now $0.075 per share monthly dividend, was $0.7458. Big 5 Sporting Goods Corporation (BGFV): now $0.10 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.075. CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. (CBL): now $0.23 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.22. Cedar Fair (FUN): now $0.625 per share quarterly distribution, was $0.40. Chico’s (CHS): … Read more

Home Depot Posts a Blowout Fourth Quarter

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Home improvement retailer Home Depot (click ticker for report: ) announced wonderful fourth quarter results Tuesday morning. Revenue rose 14% year-over-year to $18.2 billion, easily exceeding consensus expectations. Earnings also exceeded consensus estimates, growing 36% year-over-year to $0.68 per share. Same-store sales expansion outperformed the 1.9% growth rate we saw at Lowe’s (click ticker for report: ) earlier this week, jumping 7% year-over-year and 7.1% in the US. Management noted that large ticket items were the standout performer, saying: Total comp transactions grew by 1.7% for the quarter, while average ticket increased 5.6%. Our average ticket increase was impacted somewhat by commodity price inflation in lumber and copper, which contributed approximately 80 basis points to comp. Transactions for tickets under … Read more

Lowe’s Posts a Solid Fourth Quarter…Thanks Sandy

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Home improvement retailer Lowe’s (click ticker for report: ) reported modestly better than anticipated fourth quarter results Monday morning. Revenue fell 5% year-over-year to $11 billion, which was a touch better than expected. Earnings were flat compared to the year-ago quarter, coming in at $0.26 per share, but that figure also exceeded the consensus expectation. Though Lowe’s benefited from an extra selling week in fiscal year 2012 (ended January 2013), the results were solid. Hurricane Sandy rebuilding efforts helped stores remain productive after a decent third quarter, with same-store sales rising 1.9%. In total, management believes hurricane-related purchases added 70 basis points to same-store sales growth, and the firm anticipates Sandy will have a positive influence on fiscal year 2013 … Read more

Fiscal Cliff Averted; Aerospace Rallying

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After a volatile December, two of our favorite aerospace names, Astronics (click ticker for report: ) and EDAC Technologies (click ticker for report: ), are rallying significantly after a deal was finally reached to avert the fiscal cliff. Precision Castparts (click ticker for report: ), which had steadily moved higher during the fiscal-cliff ordeal thanks to optimism surrounding its planned acquisition of Titanium Metals (TIE), is also seeing strength today. We assumed both profit taking and overblown fears of defense cuts were the culprit behind the increased volatility, and it seems as though that could be the case. We continue to see substantial upside at these firms thanks to the massive, multi-year commercial aerospace backlogs of the large airframe makers. Our Best Ideas portfolio … Read more

Bed Bath & Beyond Posts a Mediocre Third Quarter

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Wednesday afternoon, home store Bed Bath & Beyond (click ticker for report: ) reported lackluster third-quarter sales growth. Revenue fell short of expectations, up 15% year-over-year to $2.7 billion. Earnings, on the other hand, jumped 8% year-over-year to $1.03 per share, a penny better than consensus expectations. Though we don’t expect a material change to our valuation, we plan to update our report soon. Earnings guidance was the real disappointment, as the company provided a fourth quarter earnings range of $1.60-$1.67 per share compared to the consensus calling for $1.75 per share. During the company’s prepared remarks, it blamed the integration of Cost Plus World Market and Linen Holdings for half of the margin weakness in the fourth quarter, with … Read more

You Are Ahead of the News As a Valuentum Member

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Remember When We Said Economic Prognosticators Were Off Their Rockers? From the September 2012 edition of our Best Ideas Newsletter (see page 2), released September 15, 2012: “Could you imagine if you had listened to bond-king Bill Gross (please note he is not the equity king), Marc Faber (author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report) or the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), which called for a recession in September 2011 – some 30% in the S&P 500 ago (yes, 30%!). Aside from being incorrect, bearish economic prognosticators fully admit that their expectations have little to do with what may happen to the equity markets in the future (as Bernanke’s unlimited QE has shown). Still, such admissions do not stop … Read more

Leucadia: Berkshire Light?

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After acquiring the remaining shares outstanding of Jefferies (JEF) a few months ago, Leucadia (LUK) has come into the spotlight. This under-the-radar holding company has been compared to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) in the sense that it owns several unrelated companies and uses the cash flows to invest in different businesses. However, calling the two firms similar is a bit of a misstatement given Berkshire’s enormous insurance operations, and a slightly different investing style. Unlike Berkshire, which has an enormous “elephant gun” able to acquire relatively large companies with ease (Berkshire also tends to concentrate on reliable, large cap companies with strong balance sheets), Leucadia concentrates on deep value in struggling or unloved companies and industries. Interestingly enough, the companies are … Read more

FAQ: Why Doesn’t the ‘Percentage Undervalued/Overvalued’ Match Up to the Actual Discount/Premium to Valuentum’s Fair Value Estimate of the Company?

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We view the intrinsic value of a firm as a range, not a single point estimate. So instead of us saying that a company is worth exactly $55 per share, for example, instead we’d say it is worth between $50 (low end) and $60 per share (high end) — think of this range as our margin of safety. We use a margin of safety due to the inherent uncertainty of predicting with absolute precision a firm’s future free cash flow stream — a firm’s future free cash flows determine our estimate of the company’s intrinsic value, and the future is not known yet. As a result, the ‘percentage undervalued/overvalued’ (as shown on our 16-page reports) is calculated by comparing the firm’s current price with the … Read more