Last year, actually 18 months ago now, James Cramer had enough faith in the Rite Aid Corp (NYSE: RAD) to include it in his 2007 picks. At that time the stock was trading for $5.49 per share. It closed yesterday at $1.56 and is trading further down today.
When I say RAD is wrong, wrong, wrong, I mean it literally. There is a store located a few blocks from my office that I shop at perhaps once a month. Yesterday I bought a few things and was amazed at how bad their accounting was.
My primary mission was to acquire some toothpaste, but there are always a few tempting sale items. When I was checking out I discovered that the sports drink for sale at "5 for $5 dollars" was a mistake and the sign in the store display should have been taken down because the offer had expired. Another item I purchased was marked down from $3.99 to $1.99, great deal! . . . but they told me that the sale price was placed on the wrong shelf for that product and what I wanted was not on sale.
Brand-Name Stocks Uner $10: Buyer Beware These well-known names in the bargain bin may look appealing, but experts advise laying off until their earnings picture is clear. Among the stocks to be weary of are Sprint Nextel, Motorola, Ford Motor, Qwest, Washington Mutual, Northwest Airlines, Del Monte, Rite Aid, Chico's, Crocs, United Airlines, Palm, Sealy, Blockbuster, Circuit City and Orbitz. Brand-Name Stocks Under $10: Buyer Beware
Rite-Aid (NYSE: RAD), a competitor of CVS (NYSE: CVS) and Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), tanked Thursday. By the end of the trading session, the pharmacy's stock declined almost 23% on heavy volume. Yes, it was a horrible day in the market overall, but don't blame the market at large. Rite-Aid is simply a company to avoid, and its latest earnings data show why.
According to the AP, Rite-Aid booked a loss of $0.20 per share for its fiscal first quarter versus a profit of $0.04 per share in the year-ago period. There are some growing pains going on here, since Rite-Aid is attempting to integrate its purchase of Brooks Eckerd. That acquisition propelled the company to top-line revenue growth of 48%. Unfortunately, analysts were looking for the company to lose only $0.09 per share. The significant differential made investors feel justified in punishing the stock. Heck, I'll bless the sell-off myself.
It'll be a long time before Rite-Aid finally turns its ship around. The next fiscal year will bring more losses, and with strong competition out there from CVS and Walgreen, the road ahead for management won't be for the faint of heart. This is truly a speculator's stock. I took a look at a post I wrote on Rite-Aid back near the beginning of April. At that time, the stock was priced at about $2.89 per share. As of Thursday's close, the shares were trading for $1.35. The Rite-Aid story belongs in the horror genre, and its stock is best left to those professionals who don't mind losing money. Individual investors? This company isn't for you, in my opinion.
Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.
Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) reported sluggish Q3 numbers last week. Net sales increased a little under 10% to $15 billion. Net income increased a whopping two pennies to 58 cents per diluted share (the term "whopping" is used here sarcastically). According to this article, Walgreen met top-line expectations but missed the bottom-line call by a penny.
Gross margin remained relatively stable, but the net margin dropped to 3.8% in the quarter compared to 4.1% in the previous year's similar period. But same-store sales increased 3.4%, which is a decent number. Also, operational cash flow jumped over 19% to $2.5 billion. That's excellent; it's always good to see cash coming in. It helps mitigate the tepid earnings expansion. Walgreen did well with its cash-flow statement last time around as well. Walgreen management cited the economy as a factor in its earnings stats and highlighted the fact that it cut back on expenses, including advertising. Making sure costs don't get out of hand is important, but I'd be careful about eliminating too much of the advertising budget. Competing with CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), Rite-Aid (NYSE: RAD), and the pharmacy at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) obligates brand-building and differentiation.
Walgreen's Q3 wasn't beyond awesome, but it was solid enough. The stock is only down slightly as I write this. As a long-term play on the need for drugstores, it's not a bad way to go.
Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.
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CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), a big competitor of both Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) and Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), released its Q1 earnings last week. They were very good, and they reminded me that I probably need to throw a drugstore chain's stock in my core portfolio as a long-term play on the increasing health-care needs of the baby boomers (and every other demo, for that matter).
Looking through the reported growth rates, you can see that we're talking best-of-breed here. Revenues were up over 60%, and adjusted earnings per share increased over 18%, coming in at $0.55. The Caremark merger has obviously proven to be a good move. Same-store sales rose 3.9%, benefited in part by the early appearance of Easter in March.
According to earnings.com, CVS Caremark basically matched earnings expectations. That's okay, though, I don't think you can hold it against this big brand name. As of this writing, CVS is near a 52-week high. Buying at the 52-week high is always a dicey thing, but if you plan on holding for years, it wouldn't be that much of a concern. Shorter-term traders would need to wait for a pullback. But I like the first quarter results for CVS, and I think the stock is poised to do well over time. And like I said at the beginning, this really may be a stock for the core portion of an individual's investment program -- a true buy-and-hold idea.
Disclosure: I don't own shares in any company mentioned here; positions can change at any time.
Shares of nation's third-largest Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) have been plunging over 8% in early trading after the company announced this morning it swung to a fourth quarter loss. The slump also came after the retailer issued a disappointing 2009 fiscal year guidance.
Rite Aid posted a loss of $960.4 million, or $1.20 a share, compared with a profit of $7.1 million, or a penny a share, in the same period a year ago. The company's quarterly numbers were hurt by a income tax charge and other costs connected to its acquisition of more than 1,800 stores last year.
Included in the company's earnings numbers were $894.9 million related to a non-cash income tax charge. Excluding that, Rite Aid's quarterly loss would have come at $65.5 million, or 8 cents a share. Analysts' forecast (which typically exclude one time items) was for a loss of 7 cents a share in the quarter, according to Thomson Financial.
Stock futures were lower this morning amid fears of weak earnings reports and jitters about oil prices, which continue to rise today.
Stocks fell Wednesday after a lowered outlook from UPS, seen as an economic bellwether, and oil briefly topping $112 a barrel, bringing the Dow industrials down 49 points or 0.4%, the Nasdaq Composite down 26 points or 1.1%; and the S&P 11 points or 0.8% lower.
On the economic calendar today, the weekly jobless claims data for the week ending April 5 is due out this morning at 8:30 a.m. EDT. According to Bloomberg, claims are expected to be around 386,000, and anything above 400,000 will fuel concerns about the weakening of the job market. Investors will also be watching March chain store sales reports. The day began with an upbeat report from Costco (NASDAQ: COST), whose sales rose 7%. Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) then reported its same-store sales rose 0.7%, which was below analysts' estimates of 1%, but said it expects better April figures. The company said its inventory in US stores is well managed.
Dupont (NYSE: DD) said in a statement today that its first quarter earnings topped forecasts.
Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), I should disclose, is one of my least favorite companies and stocks. Nevertheless, I don't mind checking in on it from time to time when there is news about it. Yesterday, the pharmacy released sales data for the month of March (the data excludes the Brooks Eckerd acquisition). Did they change my outlook on Rite Aid at all?
No, although I should say that this wouldn't be necessarily expected; a month of same-store sales data isn't the killer app of an overall investment thesis for a retail idea. Still, shareholders follow comps religiously, and I have to say that Rite Aid's number was nothing to write home about. A 2.6% gain in sales at stores open more than a year is weak. Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) said earlier in the week that its comparable-store revenues grew by a much better 4.4%. Walgreen was able to take advantage of the Easter shopping excitement in a much better fashion than Rite Aid. It all comes down to brand and execution; Walgreen, as well as CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), are more valuable in terms of both those attributes.
I may not have been bowled over by Walgreen's recent earnings release, but I can tell you that Rite Aid's share price is downright frightening and telling -- it's telling people to stay away, or at least understand that it may be essentially like buying a lottery ticket (it closed at $2.89 yesterday). Rite Aid's same-store sales were weak, and so is its investment potential.
Disclosure: I don't own shares in any of the companies mentioned here; positions can change at any time.
Walgreen Company (NYSE: WAG) reported earnings for the second quarter on Monday. Net sales grew by a very decent 10%. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.69 versus $0.65 in the year-ago period; this represents a bottom-line gain of 6%.
Considering some of the other action on Wall Street on Monday -- the increased offer for Bear Stearns, the approval of the Sirius/XM merger -- Walgreen's earnings report was simply an okay event, even though the stock closed up around 5% on the news. Same-store sales may have increased 4.7%, but the retailer sold a lot of items with lower margins this time around, thus reducing its gross-margin metric by 14 basis points (the release did cite a big shift to pharmacy sales in the quarter as having negatively impacted margins). So Walgreen needs to work on its non-pharmacy revenues. One cool thing from the report is the jump in net cash from operations -- that number increased by 10%.
Walgreen, which competes with CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE: CVS) and Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE: RAD), isn't a bad way to play the long-term drug-retailing business. To be sure, baby boomers -- as well as everyone else -- will always need to visit drugstores on a go-forward basis. It's the company that can capture a significant amount of non-pharmacy sales that will prosper the most. Walgreen and CVS are excellent brand names in this sector -- I'm not so keen on Rite Aid, though (take a look at the stock price and see if you think the company might be cheap-for-a-reason, as they say).
Disclosure: I don't own any shares in any of the companies mentioned here; positions can change at any time.
MOST NOTEWORTHY: Teradyne, Omnivision and DemandTec were today's noteworthy upgrades:
Oppenheimer upgraded shares of Teradyne Inc (NYSE: TER) to Outperform from Perform after channel checks indicated several positive catalysts, including continued market share gains and that the company is benefiting from the inventory build of game consoles.
Jefferies upgraded Omnivision Technologies (NASDAQ: OVTI) to Buy from Hold and named the stock their Tuesday Value Pick, as they find the risk/reward favorable at current levels. Jefferies thinks fundamentals will likely bottom in the April quarter.
JMP Securities raised DemandTec Inc (NASDAQ: DMAN) to Strong Buy from Outperform, as they believe the company had a very strong close to the year and is seeing real traction with its Promotions product.
Merrill Lynch downgraded PetroChina (NYSE: PTR) from "buy" to "sell," according toBriefing.com. The news service also reports that Credit Suisse upgraded Mastercard (NYSE: MA) from "underperform" to "neutral."
Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) was raised to "overweight" from "neutral" at JP Morgan, according to24/7 Wall St. The website also reports that Automatic Data (NYSE:ADP) was downgraded to neutral" from "buy" at Banc of America.
This is the final review of the seven stocks I picked twelve months ago, and the time has passed quickly. This covers the period from December 28 2006 through December 27 2007. It has been a stock pickers year for sure given that the S&P 500 index moved up only modestly. Having come to this conclusion, I must admit my seven picks were all over the place. Three beat the indices, two performed sorely and two were basically break even except for the healthy dividends.
If the stock you happened to pick was Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), which I included as sort of a "stalking horse" because of its popularity, it beat all else as a portfolio of one. As a matter of fact GOOG beat my picks by a whopping 930% meaning it bested my returns with very little effort with a gain 9.3 times the average of my seven stock picks.
The average of my seven picks fell dramatically in the last two months and I have gone from wonderboy with about a 22% YTD return, to waterboy with about 5.5% return -- UGH! I rode the Chinese market up and down, among the macro events.
Highlighting the fact that this year was suited to the stock pickers, James Cramer's average based on his nine picks beat all the indices by a healthy margin. Cramer, as you might imagine, had the most volatile picks. The two best Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) did spectacularly well. Apple was appreciating most of the year while Savient saved Cramers tush by doubling in the last month due to approval of one of their drug therapies.
Walgreen
CVS Caremark
Stock futures were lower this morning amid fears of weak earnings reports and jitters about oil prices, which continue to rise today. .gif){kind=logo}
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