Today's Unusual Social Activity Stock: Boston Scientific (BSX)
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
(
) as an unusual social activity candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Boston Scientific as such a stock due to the following factors:
- BSX has more that 20x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 8.55 mentions/day.
- BSX has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $314.1 million.
Identifying stocks with 'Unusual Social Activity' tends to be a valuable process for traders looking to capitalize on the 'talk of the town' stocks that are basking in far more attention from the StockTwits financial community than normal. Good press? Bad press? It ultimately doesn't matter if it's good or bad if you know how to trade around the sentiment. Certain hedge funds use such data for their proprietary algorithms and it is not uncommon to see shared social sentiment play itself out in a stock's price trend.
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More details on BSX:
Boston Scientific Corporation develops, manufactures, and markets medical devices for use in various interventional medical specialties worldwide. The company operates in three segments: Cardiovascular, Rhythm Management, and MedSurg. Currently there are 14 analysts that rate Boston Scientific a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 7 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Boston Scientific has been 13.2 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Boston Scientific has a market cap of $22.4 billion and is part of the health care sector and health services industry. The stock has a beta of 0.97 and a short float of 2.1% with 1.27 days to cover. Shares are up 26.9% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday.
Analysis:
rates Boston Scientific as a
. 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, solid stock price performance, expanding profit margins and notable return on equity. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- BSX's revenue growth has slightly outpaced the industry average of 0.9%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 2.7%. This growth in revenue does not appear to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, displayed by a decline in earnings per share.
- The debt-to-equity ratio is somewhat low, currently at 0.62, and is less than that of the industry average, implying that there has been a relatively successful effort in the management of debt levels. Although the company had a strong debt-to-equity ratio, its quick ratio of 0.79 is somewhat weak and could be cause for future problems.
- Compared to its closing price of one year ago, BSX's share price has jumped by 26.08%, exceeding the performance of the broader market during that same time frame. Looking ahead, the stock's sharp rise over the last year has already helped drive it to a level which is relatively expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.
- BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORP's earnings per share declined by 25.0% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. This company has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently. But, we feel it is poised for EPS growth in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORP turned its bottom line around by earning $0.19 versus -$0.08 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($0.91 versus $0.19).
- The gross profit margin for BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORP is rather high; currently it is at 64.18%. Regardless of BSX's high profit margin, it has managed to decrease from the same period last year. Despite the mixed results of the gross profit margin, BSX's net profit margin of 4.61% is significantly lower than the industry average.
- You can view the full Boston Scientific Ratings Report.
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