Every spring we can count on the snow melting, the birds coming back, and the whine and whir of all-terrain vehicles.
The mountain where we live is about 75% vacation cabins surrounded by dirt roads. Most of our neighbors come here from the city in the warmer months to beat the heat and ride their ATVs. Polaris Industries (NYSE:PII) is about as close to a pure play on this leisure segment as there is. In addition to ATVs, Polaris makes snowmobiles, jet skis, and sport boats. My experience with the products leads me to believe the equipment is topnotch.
Polaris, a member of the S&P Small Cap Index, is trading at a forward price/earnings ratio of 14.6. Polaris sports other excellent metrics, too. Its return on equity (ROE) is 39%, it has free cash flow of better than $3 per share, and it has a 2% dividend yield.
Polaris trades in line with its industry in almost every statistical category. Likely to make a value investor cringe, however, is the fact that Polaris trades at six times book value and it has mid-single-digit revenue growth.
If you want to own a leisure stock, think about Polaris as you construct your portfolio. It gives you a track record of outperforming the S&P Leisure Index (yes, there is such a thing), and it might be a good time to own this type of stock, particularly if you believe the economy will keep growing. You could expect demand for Polaris' products to do well at this point in the economic cycle. The only obstacle to that idea could be rising interest rates.
I believe there is a more powerful catalyst to create demand for ATVs and jet skis. I keep reading that baby boomers are spending money on second homes and motor homes. As these folks move into their peak earnings years, they are making lifestyle-spending choices for their retirement. If you buy a house on a lake, you're probably going to buy something to play with on that lake. I see all sorts of ATVs on my mountain. You can apply the same logic to ski lodges and beach houses. This may be yet another way to make a play on the healthy aging of America.
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Fool contributor Roger Nusbaum is an investment manager and wildland firefighter in Prescott, Ariz. At press time, he owned none of the stocks mentioned, nor does he own Polaris on behalf of clients.
