Today's Dead Cat Bounce Stock Is Century Aluminum (CENX)

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Century Aluminum (CENX) as a "dead cat bounce" (down big yesterday but up big today) candidate
By TheStreet Wire ,

Trade-Ideas LLC identified

Century Aluminum

(

CENX

) as a "dead cat bounce" (down big yesterday but up big today) candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Century Aluminum as such a stock due to the following factors:

  • CENX has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $12.9 million.
  • CENX has traded 188,056 shares today.
  • CENX is up 3.1% today.
  • CENX was down 5.8% yesterday.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get the inside scoop on opportunities in CENX with the Ticky from Trade-Ideas. See the FREE profile for CENX NOW at Trade-Ideas

More details on CENX:

Century Aluminum Company, together with its subsidiaries, produces primary aluminum in the United States and Iceland. It produces standard grade and value-added primary aluminum products; and carbon products, such as anodes and cathodes. Currently there are no analysts that rate Century Aluminum a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 3 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Century Aluminum has been 2.2 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Century Aluminum has a market cap of $599.8 million and is part of the basic materials sector and metals & mining industry. The stock has a beta of 0.25 and a short float of 24.2% with 6.21 days to cover. Shares are up 46.8% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE.

TheStreetRatings.com

Analysis:

TheStreet Quant Ratings

rates Century Aluminum as a

sell

. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in its earnings per share.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

  • Return on equity has greatly decreased when compared to its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a signal of major weakness within the corporation. Compared to other companies in the Metals & Mining industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, CENTURY ALUMINUM CO underperformed against that of the industry average and is significantly less than that of the S&P 500.
  • The gross profit margin for CENTURY ALUMINUM CO is currently extremely low, coming in at 5.71%. It has decreased significantly from the same period last year.
  • Net operating cash flow has significantly decreased to $14.90 million or 87.18% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, when comparing to the industry average, the firm's growth rate is much lower.
  • Despite any intermediate fluctuations, we have only bad news to report on this stock's performance over the last year: it has tumbled by 39.31%, worse than the S&P 500's performance. Consistent with the plunge in the stock price, the company's earnings per share are down 125.00% compared to the year-earlier quarter. Naturally, the overall market trend is bound to be a significant factor. However, in one sense, the stock's sharp decline last year is a positive for future investors, making it cheaper (in proportion to its earnings over the past year) than most other stocks in its industry. But due to other concerns, we feel the stock is still not a good buy right now.
  • CENTURY ALUMINUM CO has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. The company has reported a trend of declining earnings per share over the past year. However, the consensus estimate suggests that this trend should reverse in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, CENTURY ALUMINUM CO swung to a loss, reporting -$0.78 versus $1.13 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings (-$0.42 versus -$0.78).

EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE.

Loading ...