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Subject: Ralph Seger's Pick: FAST

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Joe Craig
Ellicott City, MD
StockCentral Administrator

01/22/2007 10:48 AM
Ralph Seger has picked FAST as one on his stocks. "FAST has done well in terms of maintaining growth and improving same store sales. The current P/E ratio, based on estimated EPS of $1.56 12 months in the future provides ample room for a price increase based on both growth of EPS and an expanding P/E ratio. Management seems to have their head screwed on correctly and makes the correct moves to grow the business.The US/DS ratio is a comfortable 7.2. The P/E as a percent of the growth rate is a bit high at 133.6, but I will take the risk."
Attachment: FAST.SSG
Joe

Rajiv Roy

01/25/2007 9:52 PM
And here is the online version of the analysis http://www.stockfundas.com/home.aspx?cmd=cmdRcvTckAnl&frmUsrId=3&tckId=3316

Rajiv www.stockfundas.com

Brian Kindel

02/02/2007 11:38 AM
Hello Everyone, I’m new to StockCentral and would like to start by thanking Doug, Ellis and their staff for all they have done for individual investors over the years . I’ve just read the thread on Fastenal for the first time today and would like to add my two cents. In the spirit of full disclosure I have to tell you I own some Fasten in my personal portfolio as well as two investment clubs that I belong to. I first heard about Fastenal sometime in the early 1990s and have owned shares ever since. They are a very well managed company with a long history of increasing shareholder value while remaining debt free. No easy task in any industry. I’m going to upload an excel file for those of you who want to look at it. I’ve created several charts from the data presented. Those charts include: Sales growth Store growth Sales by Quarter High Price by Quarter Low Price by Quarter And, Average High and Low Price by Quarter One thing I would like to point out is the sales per quarter chart. Since Fastenal generates a good deal of their sales to construction companies they are a bit seasonal. I believe this chart shows the pace of forth quarter sales are consistently softer than the first three quarters year after year. The Average High and Low Price by Quarter was an attempt to see if there was a generally better time of year for buying opportunities. I don’t believe this chart bears that out. Either way, I don’t believe in market timing, but I do believe in waiting patiently for the price to the stock to be low enough that I can achieve a return that is in line with the risks I’m willing to take. My SSG has Sales at 3411.7 and EPS of 2.38. I’ve chosen to use a high PE of 35 because looking at section 3 of the SSG I don’t see any year that it wasn’t at least 37. Which results in a forecasted high price of 83.3. I’m using 28 for the low price. I hope you find the excel data informative and wish you all the best of luck in the market. Respectfully, Brian Kindel Treasurer, Capital Area Chapter (MI) of BI
Attachment: fastenal.xls

Dan Hess

02/02/2007 2:14 PM
Brian Welcome to Stock Central and I hope you will continue to post. I am also a long time owner of shares of Fastenal but your EXCEL charts showed me something I had not previously observed. You noted the Q4 sales were generally lower and I also had observed this especially in December. However, your charts only show this starting in 1998. Prior to that the Q4 sales did not lag. Any idea what may have changed here? As you probably are aware Fastenal provides a wealth of information on sales at their web site. Click here to see. I expect they will report January sales on 2/5. I see these reports provide early information on how FAST is doing as well as a good measure on the overal economy. It seems your spreadsheet may not have factored in the 2:1 stock split in 2001 as seen on the Hi and Lo price quarterly charts. My SSG is slightly differnet than yours. I have 5 years sales at 3509 vs your 3411, Hi EPS of 2.50 vs your 2.38, Hi PE of 28 vs your 35, Hi Price of 70 vs your 83.3, Lo price of 21.9 vs your 28. I view these differences as minor and to be expected by different people preparing an SG. I do note Manifest Investing shows Fastenal to have an average PE Ratio of 27 over the next 5 years and a projetced Avg price of 79.03. Thus I may be a bit overly conservative. I admit to not paying too much attention to FAST since I own a full position of shares and view it as a very well managed high quality company and a long term holding. Thanks again for sharing your information. Dan Hess

Brian Kindel

02/02/2007 2:50 PM
Dan, Thank you for the welcome and catching that oversight. I dusted that sheet off this morning and forgot to factor that split in. I'll fix that before I show anyone else . As for the pre 1998 4th quarters not falling off, you are correct, but then again, they are year after year almost identical to the 3rd quarters. I agree differences in our SSGs are minor. But I just love it when the "analysts" predict so much per quarter and the market reacts blindly. Creates that opportunity we might be looking for. Brian Kindel Treasurer, Capital Area Chapter (MI) BI

Lawrence Moreno

02/18/2007 8:39 PM
I ran a recent SSG on FAST using Classic Plus and imported OPS data. I see the 2006 numbers are updated since Ralph's SSG, but the % Earned on Equity is blank. I went to the data entry page and see the Equity column is blank. Is this a timing issue with OPS data, a bug or some other factor I am unaware of?
Attachment: FAST.SDF

Dan Hess

02/18/2007 9:37 PM

I ran a recent SSG on FAST using Classic Plus and imported OPS data. I see the 2006 numbers are updated since Ralph's SSG, but the % Earned on Equity is blank. I went to the data entry page and see the Equity column is blank. Is this a timing issue with OPS data, a bug or some other factor I am unaware of?

I suspect this is due to the official 10K report that would provide the balanace sheet data to compute ROE is not yet available. However one can go to the companies 8K report and find the preliminary numbers. For 2006 this shows Net Income of 199038 and shareholders equity of 922093 or an ROE of 21.6% compared to 21.3% for 2005. These numbers are based on ending year equity. I prefer to use the beginning year equity for reasons Ellis Traub has described. Using this approach the 2006 ROE was 25.4% versus 24.4% for 2005. You can obtain the ROE using beginning euity with Toolkit by pressing Alt-R while observing section 2.

Dan Hess

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