Sears Issues Upside Guidance
From Chad Brand at Peridot Capitalist Sears Holdings (SHLD) projected fourth quarter earnings well above consensus estimates Wednesday. The company estimates EPS for the period will be in a range between $4.87 and $5.39, well above estimates of $4.86 per…
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
From Chad Brand at Peridot Capitalist
Sears Holdings (SHLD) projected fourth quarter earnings well above consensus estimates Wednesday. The company estimates EPS for the period will be in a range between $4.87 and $5.39, well above estimates of $4.86 per share. Despite reports in the financial press that sounded much more gloomy about the company’s core retail business, real estate sales and derivative contracts are expected to contribute only 8 cents to earnings for the quarter.
Chairman Eddie Lampert has decided against share repurchases for the period, which will result in a cash balance of $3.5 billion, or $23 per SHLD share. What exactly he will use the cash for is still unknown, but many are speculating that a lack of share repurchases in Q4 signal that other uses for the money are far more likely in coming months. That seems like a very reasonable assumption.
Shares of SHLD rose 3.5% on the preannouncement, to $172 per share, but it still appears to be attractively valued. Full year earnings should come in around $9.38 per share, putting the stock’s trailing P/E at around 18. With 2007 earnings expected to jump more than 20 percent, a below-market multiple for Sears stock seems quite low. As a result, it remains a large long position of mine.
Full Disclosure: Long SHLD
http://www.peridotcapitalist.com/
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.