Rex,
It all depends on your appetite for the kind of nasty publicity based risk that THC has got itself into. I preferred to buy TRI which was taken out and shot in sympathy with THC. Looking at the charts, the lowest "safe" price to buy THC would have been 15 and it's trading at 16.06 today, a 7% rise.
TRI however was a "safe" (imho) buy at 28, although I was a little late on the trigger, and it trades today at 32, for a 14% gain.
THC may outperform TRI over the next 3-6 months, it certainly sports a lower p/e. But TRI strikes me as the safer play of the two, a relatively easy play back to 35 ~37.50, for a topside 33% gain with less downside risk. For riverboat gamblers who believe that all the cockroaches in THC have been exposed and all the lawsuits, Federal investigations, political grandstanding has to be not only priced into the stock but overdone, then THC is the way to roll the dice.
Solamente dos centavos,
[Edit: here's Doomberg's positive spin:
quote.bloomberg.com
<<Tenet Healthcare's Stock Drop Was an Overreaction Says Hospital
Valuation
Expert with Health Capital Group
CHICAGO, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- James Unland, President of the Health Capital Group, author of Valuation of Hospitals and Medical Centers, said in a wide-ranging presentation that the recent precipitous fall of Tenet's health care stock was out of line given the available facts. Excerpts follow (he has not and does not own stock in Tenet, and the opinions expressed are his own):
"I consider this to be, at least partially, a post-Enron emotional reaction," said Unland, author of 15 books and dozens of articles and considered a leading health care valuation expert (see www.capitalexperts.com ). "It was a stunning overreaction given what is known about the context of the reimbursement issue and the company's overall condition."
"The precipitous drop in this company's stock is, to me, more reflective of the state of the Medicare program than the state of Tenet. Every hospital CFO in the United States tries to legally maximize their Medicare reimbursement, and so did Tenet, if more aggressively. Now that we know this, should other hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and everyone else take a big stock hit for their pricing to Medicare or exploiting reimbursement regs? How aggressive is too much and who decides that??
"My read on this is that Tenet played Medicare's own rules. Should the stock of the whole company now be down 75% from a few weeks ago? Is Tenet really going to take that proportionate an earnings hit given the known facts, even if they have to make some forward pricing adjustments? It doesn't compute, it's way out of whack. >>
Kb |
