There appears to be a some Wall Street investors moving toward below-the-radar financial services stocks, and yesterday Nicholas Financial, the subprime auto lender, got some props, via SeekingAlpha.com, from fund manager Eddy Elfenbein, who writes the Crossing Wall Street blog:
Nicholas Financial (NICK) just came out with earnings and it was another good quarter. The company earned 22 cents a share compared with just eight cents a year ago. It really is remarkable how cheap this stock is. For the first six months of their fiscal year, NICK earned 43 cents a share. For Q4 of last year’s fiscal quarter, they made 20 cents a share, so that’s 63 cents for the last three quarters. The big issue to watch for NICK is percentage for credit losses, and that fell to 5.84% from 9.86% a year ago. This is the second quarter in a row of declining year-over-year numbers. In other words, things are most likely to get better for them.
Whoever sold out last week was probably expecting some bad news. Well, it didn’t come.
NICK is trading just south of $7 per share, approaching its 52-week high. The company has a market capitalization of nearly $73 million.
