Altria Beats: Easily

17 Oct 9:00am
Posted by ToddSullivan
0 Comments
Read original blog entry
Altria (MO) released results and the news was good, very good.

Excluding tax items and charges from asset impairment, earnings from continuing operations increased 18.9% to $1.21 a share, up from $1.07 a year earlier vs. analysts estimates of $1.14 a share.

Net income fell to $2.63 billion, or $1.24 a share, from $2.88 billion, or $1.36 a share, a year earlier, due to the spinoff of Kraft(KFT). Revenue rose 8.9 percent to $19.21 billion. Altria raised full year earnings expectations from continuing operations to be $4.20 to $4.25 a share, compared with its earlier forecast of $4.05 to $4.10 a share.

Said CEO Louis Camilleri "We continued to witness improvement in our business fundamentals, which generated robust earnings growth. In addition, we took numerous steps to accelerate our growth by investing behind product innovation and announcing our intention to pursue a further restructuring of our company."

Altria's U.S. tobacco business, achieved a record 50.6% retail market share, up 0.2 points, driven primarily by Marlboro, which increased its retail market share 0.5 points to a record 41.1%.

Philip Morris International (PMI), reported that its revenues net of excise taxes were up 9.3% to $5.9 billion. Operating companies income grew 18.8% to $2.5 billion, due primarily to higher pricing, favorable currency of $138 million and productivity and cost savings. Excluding the impact of asset impairment and exit costs, acquisitions and currency, operating companies income grew 10.2%.

As of 9/30/2007, Altria was sitting on $7.3 billion in cash vs $4.7 billion on 12/31/2006 and long term debt dropped from $6.2 billion on 12/31/2006 to $3 billion on 9/30/2007.

Could you really ask for more going into the PMI spin? The only thing that remains to be seen is if there is an update on the smokeless products on the call today. This company virtually has more money than it knows what to do with and for shareholders, that is very good news indeed. Do not expect anything to be said about it until the Jan. 30 board meeting at the earliest but, know that it is there piling up fast and also know that the company is a very shareholder friendly one. What does that mean? Expect a bunch of it to be coming back your way.


 Subscribe in a reader

Enter your Email


Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

Comments

Back to top

Post comment

Back to top

Post a comment

Please login to post a comment

About

ToddSullivan

A Massachusetts based value investor, I look for companies whose current valuation is at a discount to their true value. When I purchase a stock, my typical holding period is several years. I consider buying a stock purchasing a piece of a business. I am confident once I make a decision to buy that eventually the market as a whole will recognize the true value of the business and value it accordingly. It may take 1 month, 6 months or a year, but if I buy it at enough of a discount to its true value my results will be (and have been) superior to the market as a whole. Of all the disparate investing disciplines, value investing has stood the test of time. The great investors of have all been value investors. Warren Buffett, Ben Graham, Bill Ruane (Sequoia Fund), Bill Miller and Wally Weitz, all have consistently outperformed the market for decades by using various forms of value investing. Currently I am a contributing writer to Seeking Alpha, Vinvesting.com, The Stock Masters and Value Investing News. Posts have been reprinted in The Wall St. Journal, Yahoo Finance, Google Alerts, Google Finance, TheStreet.com. 24/7 Wall St. and Topix.net.

Recent Entries