Not every stock has taken a dive during the savage correction that has rocked the market over the past month and change. Believe it or not, there are still dozens of companies checking in with fresh 52-week highs. Unfortunately, some of them haven't earned the right to buck Mr. Market's malaise.
I may come off as a heartless killjoy, but I see a few companies that hit highs last week, but will likely head lower in the coming weeks and months:
|
Company |
6/7/10 |
High |
Low |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Hain Celestial (Nasdaq: HAIN) |
$21.95 |
$22.81 |
$14.45 |
|
Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM) |
$41.22 |
$43.50 |
$15.86 |
|
Lions Gate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF) |
$6.94 |
$7.37 |
$4.81 |
|
MercadoLibre (Nasdaq: MELI) |
$51.02 |
$56.16 |
$21.20 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
Let's go over the reasons to curb your enthusiasm regarding these overachievers.
Hain Celestial
There are plenty of encouraging signs when it comes to the organic foodstuffs industry. Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) -- which struggled with negative comps through the recession -- has now delivered positive store-level growth in each of the past two quarters. United Natural Foods, which provides 60,000 different organic, natural, and specialty products to stores, posted better-than-expected quarterly results last week.
Against this tempting backdrop, Hain Celestial finds itself sputtering. Its latest quarter was a dud. The company behind high-end Terra veggie chips, Celestial Seasonings teas, and WestSoy soymilk saw a drop in fiscal third-quarter revenue, even if one backs out a recent asset sale.
Analysts are targeting a profit of $1.04 a share this fiscal year, and $1.21 a share come 2011. This may seem like a decent step up, but it's more of a V-shaped chart when you factor in the $1.24 a share Hain earned last fiscal year.
You know what's truly sad here? You have to go back nearly two years to find the last time that Hain Celestial beat Wall Street's bottom-line estimate. Not all organic ships are rising with the tide.
Akamai
The leading content-delivery network is a dot-com rock star. It serves up software updates, web pages, and video streams for some of the Internet's most popular companies.
Unfortunately, this is also a very competitive market. Akamai wowed the market with its market-thumping first quarter, but the pros still see earnings taking a breather this year. Just like Hain Celestial, projected bottom-line improvement next year still finds Akamai earning less in 2011 than it did in 2009.
As the market leader, Akamai should be able to hold its breath underwater the longest, but it's also trading at a rich valuation. Paying 30 times this year's earnings and 26 times next year's target is steep for a company growing a lot more slowly than that.
I'm also concerned about AT&T's (NYSE: T) recent decision to stop selling unlimited data plans to new smartphone owners. If other wireless carriers and broadband providers follow suit, we're going to have more conservative bandwidth sipping habits. That's not good for Akamai.
Lions Gate
Executives rejected an ambitious effort by Carl Icahn to acquire the film and television studio for $7 a share last week.
Where does Lions Gate stock go from here? Well, Icahn didn't become a billionaire investor by bidding against himself and overpaying for his investments. He'll move on, and Lions Gate will become gory hacksaw-fodder in its next Saw flick.
Lions Gate has several hot indie faves in its arsenal. It's the company behind Mad Men, Weeds, and Nurse Jackie. However, it has also posted a quarterly loss more often than it has delivered a profit over the past two years.
Spotty profitability and an iffy movie slate -- led by this past weekend's disappointing Killers opening -- aren't all that encouraging here.
MercadoLibre
There is nothing inherently wrong with the leading Latin American online marketplace. It's growing nicely, and it continues to leave analysts eating its dust, topping consensus estimates by at least 22% in three of the past four quarters.
However, web-based marketplaces are easy to disrupt. Just ask eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY). It was able to topple rival auction sites, but has encountered slower growth these days, as online classifieds and social networking provide opportunities to move wares and services for free.
MercadoLibre is expanding in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking markets, so the company certainly has room for growth. However, eBay was once a speedster. MercadoLibre is fetching 46 times this year's projected profitability -- a lofty valuation given the lack of visibility in terms of what the competitive landscape will look like in a few years.
