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Strategies & Market Trends : Disciplined Investing, especially the NAIC way -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: - with a K who wrote (384)	2/11/2003 6:57:56 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 469

I'm using the NAIC data file. The recent sales growth has only been about 6% (outlie 92, 93, 94). Because of the erratic nature of the earnings growth, as shown on the PERT-A, I tried the preferred procedure. I used future sales growth of 6%, not having any reason to believe on first look that the company would grow sales faster than it has been. I left the margins and taxes alone. I increased stock to 650.0 because I notice that the number of shares has been increasing each year. That gave me fifth year earnings of $1.92, which is basically zero earnings growth from the end of the earnings line, but I'm not sure what it would be from the 1.64 earned last year because my good calculator just ran out its batteries. There's something a wee bit strange about their 4th quarter earnings. NAIC doesn't have them yet. First Call shows FY 2002 earnings of $2.00. But S&P on page 1 shows 4th quarter earnings of $.42 and FY 2002 earnings of $1.67. Schwab can't find an earnings report. From their website, their 8K shows earnings from continuing operations of $.43 with an adjustment from discontinued opertions of -.42 for a reported.01. The twelve months shows earnings from operations of $1.72, discontinued operations charges of -.43. So why does First Call show actual of $2.00???????????? Quarter over quarter sales growth, per the Pert-A, was 5.9%, in line with the 6% I used before finding this filling. Quarter over quarter earnings, using the .43, were down 20%. TTM figures for earnings are still fine, but for sales have dropped each of the last four quarters. I don't like to consider an SSG on stocks where sales are declining until I have looked closely at the business operations and what is going to turn that trend around. If sales drop, eventually so will the earnings and so will the stock price. So I wouldn't personally give this another look unless I were willing to dig into their operations and figure out what's going to turn their sales around.