Pirah --
You deserve, and I trust I will soon be able to provide, a substantive response to your last two posts. But time is short, and for the nonce, here are a couple of queries/remarks:
1) Revealing my ignorance again (I've never denied it!), what do "CF" and "CE" stand for: "cash flow" and "cash ??"?
2) My figures did not indicate that CPQ had great operating cash flow -- just great FREE cash flow. IBM's -- and SUNW's -- operating cash flow is much better than CPQ's, but the latter's free cash flow (according to my sources) is much better than the former's.
3) Which brings up another point: how is it that some companies (no matter what source you consult) have lower price/free cash flow ratios than price/cash flow ratios, when the reverse is usually true (the average p/CF ratio for the S&P is about twenty points higher than the p/FCF ratio)?
4) I sent an e-mail query to Morningstar the other day about the difference between their numbers & the S&P report numbers. I received a reply (Morningstar has absolutely the best customer service of any website I have ever encountered), in which I was told that they too were puzzled by the discrepancy, that perhaps it was due to different time periods used (fiscal year/calendar year), but that in any event they would get back to me after checking with the folks that actually prepare and feed the data into their computer system. We'll see!
5) Telescan (which has the WORST customer service I've ever encountered) has a bug right now that affects its free cash flow per share parameter, but as I recall, its numbers tend to correspond closely with the numbers provided by Morningstar & MarketGuide.
6) Market Guide's Ratio Comparisons (only $5 per month for unlimited use) are unique. As far as I know, nobody else gives comparative figures for i) the company, ii) the industry, iii) the sector, and iv) the S&P, for everything from valuation ratios to profit margins (gross, EBITDA, net, etc.)to sales to efficiency ratios. Of course, those numbers reflect only the situation in the here-and-now; you have to check other sources to get a fix on the past and future. But the Ratio Comparisons are great at providing a rough over-all view of a company's performance vis-a-vis its competitors.
7) I agree that the 10-K's are the best source of all -- but you can't start with them. Unless you have unlimited time at your disposal, you must start with a source that will narrow the universe of stocks down for you, i.e., give you candidates meriting further research. I use the Telescan Pro Search platform (when it's functioning!) for that, and in my opinion, there's nothing better (even if you might cavil at some of its calculation methods).
8) Yet another ignorance-revealing question: what's the difference between "cash per share" and "cashflow per share"? I'm presuming that there is a difference, and that the former reflects the amount of cash/cash equivalents on the balance sheet, while the latter reflects the cashflow numbers from the consolidated cash flow statements. Whatever the case, the (free) Market Guide Company Snapshots give CPQ more than $7.00 cash per share, but SUNW something in the vicinity of $3.00 per share. (I'm relying on memory here. Obviously, I've got to start putting all these numbers into a spreadsheet!) As I recall, the Yahoo! company profile gives similar numbers for the two.
That is all just "for the nonce."
jbe
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