The Buckle Picked Up By Reuters (And Now Motley Fool)

Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe it's coincidence, but a stock I provided a rudimentary analysis for has made it into a Reuters "Buy Or Sell" feature. The stock is The Buckle, Inc., and my analysis is here. The Reuters feature on it does add some detail missing from my own work, such as the fact that the company depends on price increases to keep its margins growing. This point was made by the bear-side analyst cited in the feature. That analyst, Adrienne Tennant of FBR Capital Markets, downgraded The Buckle to "udnerperform" right after its disappointing same-store sales results for July.

The bull-side analyst is Laura Champine, chief financial analyst at Cowen and Co. She pointed to the valuation, noting that its P/E is well below its peers. Each analyst's arguments can be found in the feature.

This is the second time I've lopped into a stock before the pros did. The first was Compass Minerals: after my own rudimentary jobbie, a J.P. Morgan analyst upgraded it on more thorough grounds. To be frank, I'm just glad of the coverage regardless of any influence I have. Time constraints, plus my own dearth of intellectual capital, means that any analysis I undertake will be little more than a poke-through of the financials. Having pros take notice of the same company gives me information I can't scarf out on my own.

So, thanks. Thanks to Reuters; thanks to Nivedita Bhattacharjee, the author of the feature; thanks to both analysts; thanks to J.P Morgan and the analyst for the Compass analysis; thanks to the iStockAnalyst.com reporter who wrote it up...


Update: The Motley Fool has published a bullish analysis on The Buckle by Alyce Lomax, which has gotten three supportive comments so far. On the other hand, this fellow went into a Buckle store and didn't like what he saw.

Disclosure: I'm holding both Compass and The Buckle in the actively-managed Marketocracy mock fund I run.