Browsing Category: "Stock Research"
This is a follow-up to a series of posts I wrote last year on companies that are consistent cash creators. Given we are potentially at a market turning point, I decided to run my Consistent Cash Creators screen again.
Sotheby’s (BID) stock dropped almost 12% today just on the heals of a $198 million auction for Damien Hirst’s art earlier this week. This was a record sale for an auction by a single artist according to Sotheby’s. The auction total was much higher than any of the expectations I saw published.
So what’s with the steep stock [...]
Today I’ve been thinking about who the winners and losers of the government bailout of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) will be. It will take some time to sort the impact of unprecedented government intervention on the financial markets. However, the market is already betting on how this “black swan” event will play out.
Placing the two [...]
This past Saturday I had the opportunity to finally visit one of the Western Sizzlin Corporation (WEST) restaurants. The particular restaurant I visited was actually a Great American Buffet branded Western Sizzlin restaurant. After fishing with my son on the Potomac River all morning, we stopped by the Alexandria, VA restaurant that was fairly close to where we [...]
Last week I received a great suggestion for normalizing the earnings yield number I use to sort the list of Consistent Cash Creators. Instead of just using EBIT from the previous 12 months, I instead used the average EBIT over the past 7 years divided by enterprise value for today’s screen. The idea here is that [...]
Continuing my series on Consistent Cash Creators, this week I’ve pulled all my previous work together to create an actual screen. In Part 1 of Consistent Cash Creators, I examined the most consistent cash generating companies. I received some excellent feedback. In response to a comment regarding the appropriateness of using a linear trend model, I examined whether [...]
Stop using compound growth rates now! While using a percent growth rate for free cash flows might be conventional, mathematically convenient and easier to convey to others, it is not as accurate or conservative as using an absolute rate of change from a linear trend model. Value investing is all about being conservative and accurate, so think twice [...]
The topic of consistent free cash flows came up in the Value Investing News Forum last week. A member was scanning the S&P 500 one company at a time looking for companies that are consistent free cash flow generators. I thought there might be a better way to scan far more companies to identify the ones that [...]
Sardar Biglari describes what Western Sizzlin (WSZL) really is in his recent letter to ITEX Corporation (ITEX) shareholders:
What you are getting is not a steakhouse even though that is how our name originated.
Western is a holding company, owning interests in other businesses, in whole and in part, with the prime objective of achieving high returns on capital in [...]
Last night I listened to Steak n Shake’s first quarter 2008 earnings conference call. You might be wondering why I was interested in this conference call. The reason I made time to listen to this call was because of a recent letter Sandar Biglari of Western Sizzlin (WSZL) sent to Steak n Shake (SNS) shareholders. Since I hold Western Sizzlin in both [...]
