Sunday, May 28, 2006

FTD - May Flowers or May Showers?

The next stock to consider is FTD. I didn't actually realize that this was a company. I mean everyone (my age at least) has used FTD to order flowers long distance. Do people still need that service today with the Internet??? Let us look more closely.

Profile - well, they are actually on the Internet ( http://www.ftd.com/). They sell flowers and similar items via phone and internet directly to you and me. Then they provide services to floral companies. They just raised guidance the other day, I suppose you could say "everything is coming up roses".

Key Facts
  • Market Cap - 362m
  • Earning Yield: 10% ROC: 31% (per this handy link: MF style rankings based off Yahoo Finance )
  • They have a current ratio of .629. That means for every dollar of short term debt, they only have 63 cents of short term assets.
  • Revenues grew 3% Y o Y in most recent quarterly report.
  • 52 week range: $9.02 to $13.02 with current price of $12.96
  • It should be noted that Easter was in 1st qtr in 2005 and 2nd qtr in 2006. With Easter adjustment, revenue growth was 9%.
I think I have looked far enough. This is a company I would not touch with a ten foot sunflower (watch them double this year!). Many of these recent IPOs (these guys went public in 2005) are companies that Hedge Funds have purchased, loaded with debt and then sold off via an IPO. It is an unsavory practice and certainly Caveat Emptor. Of their $565m of assets, $121m is for their trademark and $337m is goodwill. That makes their tangible assets equal just over $100m. But they have very tangible liabilities of $370m. Yuck.

Next! (I can't believe FTD made it through the screen)

1 comment:

Erik Hochstein said...

FTD has been my BIGGEST MFI gainer -- I bought them in Feb and they are now up (mid Aug) 68% --