Finish Line (FINL) is getting spanked today after it released disappointing earnings that demonstrated just how bad business is right now.
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Susquehanna’s Sam Poser, for one, noted that “without a strong Finish Line brand its nearly impossible, in the current environment, to perform well regardless of what merchandise is carried.” And that point is driven home by Cowen’s John Kernan and team, who contend that Finish Line is “still undercutting Nike (NKE) and adidas (ADDYY) on price.” They explain:
Management is guiding FY18 SSS up low single digits (each quarter), in-line with consensus, and EPS in the range of $1.12-$1.23, including +6c from a 53rd week, below our pre-release estimate of $1.41 and consensus of $1.46. With footwear, especially basketball, and softgoods under pressure and its banners (mall-based stores and Macy’s (M) in-store shops) ostensibly feeling stepped up competition from peers Foot Locker (FL), Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) and brand DTC options, we view guidance as aggressive. Recall that FINL was pricing NKE cheaper than Nike.com intra-quarter (Cowen Footwear Tracker). March SSS improved somewhat from Feb.’s -15.5% but did not regain all of the planned tax refund business. We are lowering our FY18 EPS to $1.13 from $1.41 and FY19 EPS to $1.25 from $1.59.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: S&P GSCI(GD)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By WWW.KIPLINGER.COM]
Its this kind of environment that has made the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF(ITA) one of the best-performing ETFs over the past decade. Companies like Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) and General Dynamics Corporation (GD) have thrived by producing solutions funded by a thick military wallet.
- [By Rich Smith]
Huntington’s problems may not end at the water’s surface, either. While it’s the principal contractor building the Ford-class carriers, Huntington will cooperate with peer shipbuilder General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) to build the new Columbia class of ballistic missile submarines, which will replace the current Ohio class (and up until recently, it was commonly called the “Ohio Replacement Class”).
- [By Rich Smith]
As details about the Pentagon’s plan have emerged, it’s become clear that this will be a sizable program, amounting to perhaps $1 trillion in spending over 30 years — not just to upgrade the Minuteman missiles, but also to buy new B-21 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC)and have General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) and Huntington Ingalls (NYSE:HII) design an entirely new class of ballistic missile submarines (to be known as the “Columbia class.”)
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Express-1 Expedited Solutions Inc.(XPO)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By WWW.THESTREET.COM]
In the Lightning Round, Cramer was bullish on GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) , Chubb (CB) , XPO Logistics (XPO) , FedEx (FDX) and Nordson (NDSN) .
Cramer was bearish on Prudential (PRU) , Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASX) and ZTO Express (ZTO) .
- [By WWW.THESTREET.COM]
With a trailing 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 28.79, FedEx’s valuation is in line with UPS (27.52) and far cheaper than XPO Logistics (XPO) (90.25).
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Sirius XM Radio Inc.(SIRI)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Rick Munarriz]
There are a lot of people betting against Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI)these days, even as the stock is hitting 10-year highs. There were 280.1 million shares of Sirius XM sold short at the end of 2016, just below the late-November peak of 285.1 million shares but nearly double the short interest that we were seeing a year ago.
- [By Peter Graham]
A long term performance chart shows Pandora Mediapeaking in 2014 before heading back to where it started while other streaming media stocks such as large cap satellite radio stockSirius XM Radio Inc (NASDAQ: SIRI) has performed better and InternetTV stock Netflix, Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) has been a homerun:
- [By Jon C. Ogg]
The long saga regarding Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) has finally come to a head. Well, maybe. Rather than KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE: KKR) investing $150 million, Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) will be investing up to $480 million in the streaming music rival. With its ticketing unit sale taking place as well, it might seem that Pandora is getting a great deal and helping to bolster its books.
- [By Ashley Moore]
But before we get to the stock pick, here’s a list of the 10 top-performing Warren Buffett stocks so far this year…
Company YTD Gains
Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO) 34.25%
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) 30.24%
Verisign Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) 29.88%
Restaurant Brands Inc. (NYSE: QSR) 29.16%
WABCO Holdings Inc. (NYSE: WBC) 28.97%
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) 26.20%
Liberty Sirius XM Group Class C (Nasdaq: LSXMK) 24.54%
MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA) 24.35%
Liberty Sirius XM Group Class A (Nasdaq: LSXMA) 22.89%
Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: SIRI) 22.81%Again, we don’t recommend all of the stocks above for retail investors. After all, Warren Buffett is one of the most wealthy and legendary investors in history. He has a completely different set of goals from us.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc.(WEN)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Stark Merrifield]
Bill Ackman: Fifty-year-old Ackmans career began in 1992 when he and fellow Harvard graduate David P. Berkowtiz founded the investment firm Gotham Partners. The firms high-profile bid for Rockefeller Center in New York caused investors to flock to the firm, growing it to $500 million in assets. Then in 2004, with $54 million in personal funding, Ackman started Pershing Square Capital Management. Through Pershing, Ackman bought significant shares in companies like Wendys Co. (Nasdaq: WEN), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG), and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (NYSE: VRX). Today, Ackman is worth $1.4 billion and is No. 256 on the Forbes 400.
- [By Michael Flannelly]
KeyBanc analysts upgraded fast food restaurant operator The Wendy’s Co (WEN) on Friday, noting that the company has a number of positive developments that could provide a floor for the stock.
The analysts upgraded WEN from “Underweight” to “Hold.”
KeyBanc analyst Christopher O’Cull said, “We are raising our rating for The Wendy’s Company to HOLD as we believe: 1) Wendy’s SRS performance will diverge from the industry for the foreseeable future as new products are supported by more effective use of marketing dollars; 2) better menu and promotional management will lead to improved franchisee profitability (a focus of the new CFO Todd Penegor); and 3) the opportunity to extend the re-franchising program will provide a floor on the stock.”
Wendy’s shares were up 7 cents, or 0.81%, during pre-market trading on Friday. The stock is up 57.01% year-to-date.
- [By Monica Gerson]
Analysts expect Wendys Co (NASDAQ: WEN) to report its quarterly earnings at $0.06 per share on revenue of $352.08 million. Wendys shares rose 1.79 percent to $11.38 in after-hours trading.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: S&P Smallcap 600(PH)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Charles Mizrahi, President and CEO, Hampton Investors, Inc.]
Parker Hannifin (PH) generates strong revenue from its aerospace division, while its primary industrial segment is lagging.
Overall, we like the company’s balanced portfolio. PH had solid order rates this past year with backlog of $3.6 billion between its industrial and aerospace segments.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: USG Corporation(USG)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Jon C. Ogg]
USG Corp. (NYSE: USG) was reiterated as Hold but the price target was raised to $35 from $29 (versus a $34.23 close) at Jefferies.
Thursday’s top analyst upgrades and downgradesincluded Biogen, Goldcorp, GoPro, Oracle, Sirius XM, Tyson Foods, Ciena and many more.
- [By The Ticker Tape]
Homebuilders like Lennar, PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM), and D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE: DHI) could benefit from a strengthening housing recovery. If you’re bullish on housing, you might want to take a step back and think about other companies in that space. Home improvement stores like Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) and Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW) could get a boost as well as companies that supply products for new homes like Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) and USG Corporation(NYSE: USG).
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Kohl’s Corporation(KSS)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By WWW.THESTREET.COM]
Takata, whose faulty airbags led to the recall of 42 million cars, said in a statement that excluding costs related to the recalls, the company has “continued to produce healthy profits and cash flows from its existing businesses.” Safety technology company Key Safety Systems Inc. (KSS) agreed to buy the bulk of Takata’s assets for 175 billion yen ($1.588 billion). Japan’s Ningbo Joyson Electronics Corp. acquired KSS for $920 million on Feb. 2, 2016.
- [By Craig Jones]
Jon Najarian noticed that options traders were buying out of the money puts in Kohl's Corporation (NYSE: KSS). The company is going to report earnings on August 10 and it seems that traders believe the stock is going to continue to trade lower.
- [By JJ Kinahan]
Stocks to watch for possible Black Friday impact include Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE: BBY), Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT), Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT), Macy’s Inc (NYSE: M), Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE: KSS), and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), among many others. Infotech also could jump into the ring because electronic goods seem to be high on many peoples’ lists. Even though Cyber Monday has yet to dawn, early analysis from some of the major analytic firms suggested a major jump in online sales as of late Thursday, and stock indices moved higher in pre-market trading.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: International Business Machines Corporation(IBM)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Jack Foley]
The huge tailwinds Amazon has at present (as it rolls out its infrastructure) is the growth of its marketplaces and web division. Just look at how competitors such as Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)and International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM)are building out their cloud infrastructure but still remain miles behind Amazon. Growth here is just beginning as more sectors are moving their entire business models to the cloud. Investors have no idea just how much work ( both from a commercial and personal standpoint) will be done on the cloud in the future. Amazon at present is in a prime position so expect growth rates to continue.
- [By Jack Foley]
First of all, when analyzing any investment, my first port of call is always to see if the stock has strong competitive advantages. Although, Amazon doesn’t pay a dividend, it definitely has huge assets within its arsenal that protect the stock from a huge sell-off to the downside. These advantages include but are not limited to the following.
Competitive Advantage
Why Is This ImportantLow Cost operations In terms of scale (Although Amazon has intentions ofopening up brick and mortar stores for groceries), fulfillment centers and online ordering (Amazon’s model) is generally accepted as a cheaper alternative to scaling brick & mortar stores. The “fitting out” of a fulfillment center costs much less than a Super-center from Walmart (NYSE:WMT)for example. This enables Amazon scale its operations at a much faster rate than its competitors.
Network Effect The low prices translate into a network effect which attracts buyers, third party sellers and large merchants on mass. The synergy between these three different groups of people results in a huge array of products being available on the platform for sale. Investors should note that all groups are increasing meaningfully in numbers at present. Third party sellers are a huge cash cow for Amazon due to the margins involved. This “network effect” will only intensify in years to come.
Amazon Prime Amazon’s premium service is another huge competitive advantage the company has. Why? Because Amazon is constantly adding more value to the service by adding more products (either at a discounted price or completely free). Jeff Bezos’s vision here is to add massive value here in order to up-sell normal Amazon users into Prime. Again growth rates are re-accelerating with Prime having just launched in China recently.
Amazon Web Services Amazon has the biggest cloud computing service in the world by far and the margins in this segment are really impressive. In fact, AWS makes up - [By Andrew Tonner]
In fact, some of businesses’ biggest names trade at significant discounts to the market, including companies like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK.B), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), and International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM). As such, let’s dive into what specifically makes these value stocks particularly intriguing investing opportunities today.
- [By Paul Ausick]
The X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) team at International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) published a report on Wednesday related to the Shamoon malware attacks against thousands of computers in the Gulf states in the 12 months from November 2015 to November of 2016. Shamoon is designed to destroy computer hard drives by wiping the master boot record (MBR) and data irretrievably, unlike ransomware, which holds the data hostage for a fee.
- [By Vikram Nagarkar]
For starters, like we mentioned earlier, AMD recently restructured its long term debt, effectively locking in low interest rates for a longer period of time, while also reducing its interest burden. After clawing back some GPU market share from arch-rival NVIDIA (NSDQ:NVDA)over the last few quarters, AMD has bagged some important deals with the likes of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and more recently,Alphabet’s (NSDQ:GOOGL)Google. As we discussed in an earlier post, AMD’s deal with Google is of specific importance, because it could open the doors to other cloud platforms, like the ones run by Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) and International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM). Last but not the least, the latest round of rumors has it that Intel wants to license AMD’s Radeon GPU technology, which could be another handy deal for AMD.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Emerson Electric Company(EMR)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Ben Levisohn]
Lower WACC has moved in lockstep with higher multiples and as the rate regime shifts, we see limited excuses for another leg absent material growth. EPS growth/visibility at a reasonable price will matter, with those that are not reflecting upside today seeing multiple expansion and safety stocks that are not safe reverting. With this backdrop, our top picks are Honeywell, Ingersoll-Rand, and Danaher, with a positive bias on Neutral-rated United Technologies, while we are most negative onGeneral Electric and Rockwell Automation (ROK), with a negative bias on N-rated $51.92 Emerson Electric (EMR)…
- [By Ben Levisohn]
3) Other downside catalysts have come and gone, such asEmerson Electric (EMR) effectively ruling out aRockwell deal;
4) However, our view that the upward trajectory in customer capex spending remains muted combined with the stock still trading at >19x NTM EPS limits our upgrade to just Market-Perform despite our long-term bullish view of industrial automation in general and Rockwell specifically
- [By Ben Levisohn]
Shares of General Electric have dropped 3.8% so far this year, with everything from its accounting to weaker margins being blamed for its weakness. Barclays’ Scott Davis and team, however, spoke with a source they call the “smartest man in the room,” who just so happens to be “nibbling” on General Electric now. They explain why and offer his views on Honeywell International (HON), Emerson Electric (EMR), and ITT (ITT) as well:
- [By Ben Levisohn]
Industrial companies like Dover (DOV), Emerson Electric (EMR), Eaton (ETN), 3M (MMM) and Rockwell Automation (ROK) are calling for earnings growth to get better during the second half of the year. Bernstein’s Steven Winoker and team aren’t feeling as confident:
- [By Paul Ausick]
Blaming the unwillingness of its target even to discuss a buyout, Emerson Electric Co. (NYSE: EMR) on Tuesday announced that it has withdrawn its unsolicited offer to acquire Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE: ROK) for $225 a share in a deal valued at nearly $30 billion.
Top 10 Cheap Stocks To Watch Right Now: Compass Minerals Intl Inc(CMP)
Advisors’ Opinion:
- [By Monica Gerson]
Compass Minerals International, Inc. (NYSE: CMP) is projected to post its quarterly earnings at $1.33 per share on revenue of $347.03 million.
MKS Instruments, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKSI) is estimated to post its quarterly earnings at $0.33 per share on revenue of $177.19 million.
