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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (18834)	3/8/2004 12:19:18 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78507

Buying just a little SUP for an exploratory position: Imo, consistently good profit margins and decent roe. Consistently increasing bv. P/e is a bit high-priced (imo)if one lumps this stock into the "auto parts, supplier to OEMs" category. OTOH, in many past years, SUP's p/e has averaged higher than present. Stock's ~$36/sh. Should revert back to $40-$45 easy. LOL! Famous last words- "should" and "easy". :>) finance.yahoo.com Paul Senior Jmo, and I have been wrong oh so many, many times.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (18834)	3/8/2004 8:06:10 PM
From: - with a K	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78507

I have a full position of WRLD, but here's a nice plug today: yahoo.smartmoney.com Snips: Even more astounding is what Wall Street is saying now about this high-rise stock: not much. Its shares, in fact, turned up recently on our Unheard Of Screen. We scanned 8,200 companies for those with coverage by at least two analysts, but no more than four. And we looked for PEG ratios of less than 1.0, a telltale sign of cheap growth. Debt for all of our survivors had to be manageable, and consensus earnings estimates had to be on the rise. See the recipe to the right for details on all of our criteria. Our search turned up 10 companies, including World Acceptance Corp. (WRLD). World Acceptance makes more than a million loans per year, through 470 offices in the southern United States. Customers typically have limited access to mainstream credit sources like, say, banks. Either their credit is poor, they're poor, or both. Essentially, World Acceptance works like a pawn shop without the electric guitars for collateral. Loans, including advances on tax-returns and paychecks, range from $130 to $3,000, and average $725. They're payable in monthly installments over anywhere from four to 15 months. Default rates are fairly high-about 15% of the loan portfolio is charged off each year - but the interest rates are high enough to make Tony Soprano blush, running from 24% up to 205%. World Acceptance's third-quarter results, reported Jan. 20, showed earnings rising 37% year-over-year to $4.6 million, or 23 cents per share, matching analysts' expectations. Revenues increased 13% to $44.3 million. The company loaned a record $270 million in 372,000 transactions, and notes it has seen a slight shift to smaller — and more profitable — loans. World Acceptance chief executive Doug Jones isn't subtle when talking about the high rates. "Basically, all of our loans are priced at the maximum allowed by states," said Jones on the earnings conference call. He says that makes his customer base less price sensitive than that of traditional lenders, which tends to keep demand steady when interest rates rise. Its trailing 12-month operating margin is 24%, compared with 21% for the financial services industry. And World Acceptance compares just as well with respect to valuation. Its shares trade at 13 times 2004 earnings, on par with the industry. But Acceptance is projected to increase earnings by 15% annually over the next five years, faster than peers' 12%. That gives the stock a PEG of 0.87, cheaper than the group's 1.08 or the S&P 500's 1.76.