The Razor's Edge

2-Year Price History

A Word Of Caution

While, we stand by our ratings methodology for long term value investors, sometimes smaller companies will be more volatile in terms of revenue, cash earnings, and other fundamental factors. LSI Industries Inc. (LYTS) is such a stock. Because many micro-caps are lightly traded their stock price can fluctuate because of a single large trade. Also, there is less analyst coverage of such micro-caps and therefore less information from which to base our ratings.

Therefore, (and as always), check additional sources and available information regarding LYTS before making an investment decision.

Ockham's Rating

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LYTS Revenue

As we have often noted, in our valuation methodology, "Cash is King." Well, it goes without saying that if a company cannot produce sales then there is no ability to generate cash flow. By that logic we look very closely at revenue numbers as our second most important factor in valuing a company's stock. We have established reasonable Price to Sales per share ranges based on historical data of the last 10 years. For, LYTS the high and low end of the Price to Sales per share ratios are 1.36x and 0.80x respectively.

Notice that LYTS's current Price to Sales per share ratio is 0.48x, which is quite a bit below what we consider a normal Price to Sales ratio for this stock. Given normal conditions and a price of $7.24, LYTS is 56% below where we would expect to see it. This will beneficially factor into our final analysis of LYTS as it is not often that this stock sinks to these levels.

LYTS Cash Earnings

Looking at LYTS specifically in their Cash Earnings capabilities, Ockham views LYTS as significantly below their historical average multiples of Cash Earnings, as calculated by our proprietary analysis. It is incredibly important to understand that for LYTS, the current level of Cash Earnings compared to its historical levels helps identify where LYTS is in relation to what the investing community was willing to pay for this level of Cash Earnings in the past. With a historical high Cash Earnings per share ratio of 16.02 and a historical low Cash Earnings per share ratio of 9.25, an investor can relate where value becomes optimal.

So what does "significantly below" mean when we talk about Price to Cash Earnings numbers for LYTS? From the Ockham perspective, we are looking specifically at LYTS to see if the market is recognizing the huge disparity between LYTS's past stock price to Cash Earnings ratio to today's levels. At a difference of 45% below the average historical Price to Cash Earnings ratio, our view would be quite positive at this point. However, as with all metrics, we need to also take other factors into account when looking at LYTS. While we view better Cash Earnings metrics as very important, if the market is slow to identify this value, or if Cash Earnings were to fall from these levels, we would become more neutral in our stance.

LYTS Dividends

A positive Ockham rating does not require a company to pay out an inviting dividend or a dividend at all. However, we believe dividends provide a useful measure on a company's inherent expectations.

Comparable to our analysis of Sales and Cash Earnings per share, we examine dividend yields from LYTS against the historic high and low levels over an available data range. Because LYTS has an established history of paying a dividend to shareholders, there is value in comparing recent dividends to historical dividends. In LYTS’s case, the estimated annual dividend is $0.20 producing a current dividend yield of 2.76%. The highest dividend yield from LYTS in recent history was 4.71% while the lowest dividend yield was 1.06%. LYTS is not making us feel all that confident when their current dividend yield is below the historical median by 4.33%.