Ultra Petroleum (UPL) Marked As A Dead Cat Bounce Stock
Trade-Ideas LLC identified
(
) as a "dead cat bounce" (down big yesterday but up big today) candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Ultra Petroleum as such a stock due to the following factors:
- UPL has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $14.1 million.
- UPL has traded 101,466 shares today.
- UPL is up 5% today.
- UPL was down 9.8% yesterday.
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More details on UPL:
Ultra Petroleum Corp., an independent oil and gas company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, production, and operation of oil and natural gas properties in the United States. UPL has a PE ratio of 4. Currently there are 2 analysts that rate Ultra Petroleum a buy, 1 analyst rates it a sell, and 9 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Ultra Petroleum has been 2.9 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Ultra has a market cap of $763.2 million and is part of the basic materials sector and energy industry. The stock has a beta of 1.06 and a short float of 21.3% with 9.02 days to cover. Shares are down 62.7% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.
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Analysis:
rates Ultra Petroleum as a
. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, 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:
- The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed against the S&P 500 and did not exceed that of the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry. The net income has significantly decreased by 102.5% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, falling from $125.36 million to -$3.10 million.
- The debt-to-equity ratio is very high at 15.85 and currently higher than the industry average, implying increased risk associated with the management of debt levels within the company. Along with this, the company manages to maintain a quick ratio of 0.35, which clearly demonstrates the inability to cover short-term cash needs.
- Net operating cash flow has declined marginally to $167.88 million or 0.37% when compared to the same quarter last year. Despite a decrease in cash flow ULTRA PETROLEUM CORP is still fairing well by exceeding its industry average cash flow growth rate of -26.28%.
- Despite any intermediate fluctuations, we have only bad news to report on this stock's performance over the last year: it has tumbled by 81.02%, worse than the S&P 500's performance. Consistent with the plunge in the stock price, the company's earnings per share are down 102.46% 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.
- ULTRA PETROLEUM CORP 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. This company has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently. We feel it is likely to report a decline in earnings in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, ULTRA PETROLEUM CORP increased its bottom line by earning $3.51 versus $1.54 in the prior year. For the next year, the market is expecting a contraction of 85.5% in earnings ($0.51 versus $3.51).
- You can view the full Ultra Petroleum Ratings Report.
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