Motley Fool Money is a one-hour weekly business radio show syndicated to radio stations across America. On our most recent show, host Chris Hill talked with our analysts about some stocks on their radar. You can catch this week's show online at motleyfoolmoney.com. In this lightly edited transcript, the guys share three stocks on their radar.
Chris Hill: Let's talk about the stocks that are on our radar. Charly Travers, let's start with you.
Charly Travers: I've had my eye on Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM). Very popular stock, and not in a good way. Their most latest entry into the smartphone market, the Torch, is apparently doing lukewarm sales, so I wouldn't say it's the nail in the coffin for the company. It's a bit premature to come to that conclusion; but all the same, if you're a RIMM shareholder, you've got to be extremely worried about Android, which is on fire and the always-strong Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone offering. I wouldn't make a bet that RIMM will be around in five years.
Chris: In five years?
Charly: Yeah. I think it will happen very quick.
Seth Jayson: They're the next Palm, definitely.
Chris: James Early, what's on your radar this week?
James Early: Chris, I am going with Kimberly Clark (NYSE: KMB). This is a consumer products company -- makes things like Kleenex and toilet paper.Who's going to use less of that in a recession? I mean these are long-term, well branded products that are essentials. There's a 4.1% yield, 41% return on equity and 12% of its sales convert into free cash flow, which is a very, very good margin.
Chris: Now, I don't want to go too far down the scatological path here, but ...
James: But you do ...
Chris: ... it seems like you're intimating that during a recession, people use more toilet paper.
James: Not more, per se, but how are you going to cut back on that? I mean, I guess you could if you tried, but it's not something you want to think about.
Chris: Seth Jayson?
Seth Jayson: I have been running some numbers on accounts receivable, which sounds really boring, except is often an indicator of which companies are not going to do well on their sales in the future ...
Chris: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just dozed off there. Did you say "accounts receivable"?
Seth: Yeah, that's the amount of money that a company is owed by its customers. And a company that is failing my test currently, as I'm looking at it on my screen, is Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE). Everybody knows Adobe, right? Well, its accounts receivable for the last quarter grew at a much higher rate than did the revenue, and that's not good, so I wonder what's going on at Adobe. I'm not going to predict a quick downfall, but I think they may be kind of pushing some sales or offering them on too generous terms, and I'd be a little bit worried.
James: In case you slept through Accounting 101 -- and I couldn't blame you, it was not an interesting class -- but the difference here is sales are the actual revenues of the company. But if you come to find out not all of those people have paid you, that counts as accounts receivable. So if you sell a hundred bucks, but twenty of those dollars you haven't actually received, that could be a problem. And Adobe, as Seth points out, is not strong in this area.
Seth: Yeah, so if you're looking at the most recent fully filed quarter, revenue is up in the 30, 40% range. Accounts receivable, the graph has so many numbers, it's hard to peg it exactly, but up there are close to 70%. That's a 30 percentage point difference. That is something that needs an explanation.
Chris: I think this is the first week we've had two stocks on the radar for a bad reason.
Seth: It must be the economic mood ...
Chris: Is that it? Is that what listeners can look forward to?
Seth: Well, we're all just hatin'. We're just hatin'.
Chris: We're just looking to short more stocks. Is that it?
Seth: Yeah, I'd like to be cheerful ...
Charly: Not enough vodka this morning.
