After postponing fourth-quarter earnings earlier this week, everything-under-one-roof retailer Hastings
Part of the problem is evident in the company's forward P/E, which, based on today's fiscal 2005 earnings guidance of $0.55-$0.58 per share, is near 11, twice as high as the trailing P/E. From the disparity, you can probably figure out that Hastings is having more than a few problems with the bottom line. just in case you didn't deduce that from the 60% drop year-over-year in Q4 earnings.
Still, this is a company with real earnings, positive cash flows, and more than half a billion dollars in sales. It probably doesn't deserve to be hovering near penny-stock territory.
Fans of one-stop shopping love Hastings Superstores, where they can "buy, sell, trade, or rent" -- which just so happens to be the company's new marketing slogan -- a wide range of new and used books, music, and videos. Combined, these operations produced revenues of $173.1 million in the last quarter, a 6.1% increase from the year before.
Merchandise comps for the quarter climbed a solid 6.6%, driven by significant sales gains in DVDs and video games of 27.5% and 47%, respectively. Same-store book sales rose 1.5% for the year, falling between similar gains of 0.6% at Borders Group
But these numbers were partially offset by the approaching demise of VHS movies, whose sales were down by two-thirds. And the strength on the rest of the merchandise side is being hurt by continued weakness in rentals, whose quarterly and full-year comps dropped 6.4% and 4.5%. Blockbuster
With many movie buffs opting to buy rather than rent their favorite movies, and still others turning to the convenience of online renting through Blockbuster or Netflix
Fool Contributor Nathan Slaughter owns none of the companies mentioned.