La-Z-Boy's Clever Ploy

While perusing the 52-week low list a few weeks ago, I came across La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB), and with its annual report due out, I made a note to follow up. As I wrote here, the low list is one of my favorite places to look for investment ideas, and La-Z-Boy has many of the qualities I look for in a solid company experiencing temporary difficulties.

Not all Fools may agree with me on La-Z-Boy. On the same day I was falling under the spell of La-Z-Boy's free cash flow, Rick Aristotle Munarriz wrote this piece, highlighting La-Z-Boy's struggles against imports and increasing debt load.

You'll get no argument from me on whether imports have made furniture companies dicey investments. One look at Ethan Allen Interiors' (NYSE: ETH) chart shows that La-Z-Boy isn't the only furniture company struggling lately. However, La-Z-Boy is increasing its mix of imported furniture and, in turn, reducing the amount made domestically. This is a strategy similar to the one successfully executed by Hidden Gems selection Hooker Furniture (Nasdaq: HOFT).

Last week, investors bid up shares of La-Z-Boy, apparently on news that the U.S. Commerce Department will impose tariffs on furniture imported from China. If investors are still thinking of La-Z-Boy as a domestic manufacturer that would reap maximum benefit from tariffs, they may be in for a surprise. Instead, investors may want to focus on La-Z-Boy's ability to execute a strategy that utilizes the best available source of product instead of a reliance on any one source.

La-Z-Boy does have more relaxing qualities to consider as well, like cash to pay the bills, healthy stock buybacks, and a 2.4% dividend yield. While La-Z-Boy's debt load may look worrisome -- it has been stuck at a fairly high level for over a year -- it isn't. The fixed low-interest rates on much of the debt show that not all is bad, and La-Z-Boy's free cash flow is robust enough to make the payments as they come due.

La-Z-Boy does have challenges to overcome, but at prices a little bit above the 52-week low of two weeks ago, I believe La-Z-Boy may let investors sit back and relax.

Fool contributor Nathan Parmelee owns shares in Hooker Furniture, but none of the other companies mentioned.