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

To: Paul Senior who wrote (19866)	10/15/2004 2:06:06 AM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78465

re HELE - i don't really know either that's why i am passing opn this stock. i keep on reminding myself that earning are only an "accounting concept" and only cash (or cash flow) is real. HELE does not pass the small test, beyond capex (which is fairily low) they keep on spending cash on intagible like trademarks etc. which IMO are ongoing expenses and need to be subtracted from cash flow to calculate the real free cash flow. it's a similar situation with some of the specialty pharma /licensing compenies. They have low R&D expenses but by big chunks (with real cash) of research and products. Then they do "nonreoccurring non cash writeoffs" on same intagibles which reduce subsequent amortization expense and make earnings appear higher. Those companies typically trade at lower PE's and some people wonder why - it's simply that those companies over the LT down't generate the cash flow that other companies do that expense R&D rather than buy capitalized chunks of it. Enough of a rant for today, I guess.