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Non-Tech : Littlefield Corporation (LTFD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Market Tracker who wrote (7719)	3/9/1998 8:16:00 AM
From: WallStBum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10368

Another good article below. I just keep reminding myself of a $2.50 book value, $1.25 in cash, and a PE in low double digits if not in fact single digits. Scott Fagerstrom The Stock Yard Fort Worth Star Telegram 3/8/98 Updated: Saturday, Mar. 7, 1998 at 18:23 CST Analysts like Harken Energy, American Bingo despite slides There are no guarantees in life -- or in the market. All the glowing earnings reports and positive analyst comments in the world can't promise that Company X will be a good investment, at least in the short run. That's particularly true for small caps, which fluctuate rapidly enough to give the unwary investor a case of whiplash. In the past couple of weeks, for instance, we've received several calls about Irving's Harken Energy and Austin's American Bingo. Both have earned high praise from analysts quoted here, yet neither has shared in the huge market surge of 1998. American Bingo and Gaming, in fact, has lost nearly half its value since we first wrote about the company in early January. That's when First Research Financial analyst Robert Kecseg told us about the rapidly growing consolidator of bingo operations, noting that it featured terrific earnings-growth potential, a low price-earnings ratio and a "pristine" balance sheet. What happened? Less than a week after that column was published, American Bingo announced that its president and CEO, Gregory Wilson, was resigning to pursue other interests and that the company chairman would fill his shoes. Three days after the first announcement, there was a second: Gregory Wilson would remain as president and CEO. The latest news, according to Kecseg: Wilson becomes chairman, taking over the post of the guy who was supposed to take over for him. We don't know, or frankly much care, what's behind all this. Suffice to say that all the announcements "created a whole focus on who's running the company" -- rather than the fundamentals, Kecseg said. Those fundamentals remain the same, he added: Americans spend an estimated $4.4 billion on bingo, but the market is extremely fragmented and inefficient -- and thus potentially profitable to experienced, large-scale commercial lessors. American Bingo is taking advantage of that by gobbling up the most promising of the little guys and establishing new centers in attractive markets. Kecseg had predicted that American Bingo would produce earnings of 44 cents a share, and says the company now thinks the estimate came in a bit high. But in the worst-case scenario, Kecseg said, the company might earn something like 35 cents a share. And at the current stock price of $3.69, that would still represent a price/earnings ratio of only about 10.5, or about a third that of its peers (the average small company on the Russell 2000 currently goes for about 32 times annual earnings). The company "is truly in better financial shape today than when it went public at $5 a share. It's just a perception repair that has to take place," Kecseg said, although he concedes there's no telling how long it might take to fix the problem. The company trades as BNGO on the Nasdaq Exchange.