Strong And Under The Radar: E W Scripps (SSP)

Trade-Ideas LLC identified E W Scripps (SSP) as a strong and under the radar candidate

By Jamie Hodge , Mar 2, 2015 9:51 AM EST

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified

E W Scripps

(

SSP

) as a strong and under the radar candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified E W Scripps as such a stock due to the following factors:

SSP has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $5.4 million.

SSP is making at least a new 3-day high.

SSP has a PE ratio of 463.0.

SSP is mentioned 1.29 times per day on StockTwits.

SSP has not yet been mentioned on StockTwits today.

SSP is currently in the upper 20% of its 1-year range.

SSP is in the upper 35% of its 20-day range.

SSP is in the upper 45% of its 5-day range.

SSP is currently trading above yesterday's high.

'Strong and Under the Radar' stocks tend to be worthwhile stocks to watch for a variety of factors including historical back testing and price action. Market technicians refer to such stocks as being in an accumulation phase before a mark-up and peak. Traders and hedge funds have frequently found that these types of stocks continue to build a solid price base and then ultimately spike higher and peak when others 'discover' how good the stock is performing. By leveraging the social discovery aspect of StockTwits we are highlighting stocks that don't currently receive much attention from retail investors, but we suspect may soon garner more attention.

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More details on SSP:

The E. W. Scripps Company, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a media enterprise with interests in television stations, newspapers, and local and national digital media sites. SSP has a PE ratio of 463.0. Currently there are 3 analysts that rate E W Scripps a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and none rate it a hold.

The average volume for E W Scripps has been 228,500 shares per day over the past 30 days. E W Scripps has a market cap of $1.0 billion and is part of the services sector and media industry. The stock has a beta of 1.63 and a short float of 9.6% with 15.19 days to cover. Shares are up 3.2% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Friday.

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TheStreetRatings.com

Analysis:

TheStreet Quant Ratings

rates E W Scripps as a

hold

. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and increase in net income. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including disappointing return on equity and poor profit margins.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

SSP's revenue growth has slightly outpaced the industry average of 6.5%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 9.5%. Growth in the company's revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share.
The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.37, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels. To add to this, SSP has a quick ratio of 1.92, which demonstrates the ability of the company to cover short-term liquidity needs.
Net operating cash flow has increased to $30.72 million or 45.98% when compared to the same quarter last year. Despite an increase in cash flow, EW SCRIPPS's average is still marginally south of the industry average growth rate of 47.54%.
The gross profit margin for EW SCRIPPS is currently extremely low, coming in at 8.65%. Regardless of SSP's low profit margin, it has managed to increase from the same period last year. Despite the mixed results of the gross profit margin, SSP's net profit margin of -0.64% significantly underperformed when compared to the industry average.
The company's current return on equity has slightly decreased from the same quarter one year prior. This implies a minor weakness in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Media industry and the overall market, EW SCRIPPS's return on equity significantly trails that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.