A.O. Smith; awaiting Q1 EPS results to enter a long position

27 Mar 2020

A.O. Smith corp. has a history of stable EPS growth; however, the Corona lockdown is likely to affect the EPS in 2020 and maybe the consecutive year’s expected growth. In FY 2009, the company traded at a P/E ratio of 13 in average. Taking a very pessimistic perspective, one could argue that the economy will experience a recession similar to the one in 2008, that the P/E ratio will fall as the future growth perspectives turn negative. At the same time yearly EPS fall to $1.7, which would justify the stock price falling to $1.7*13 = $22.1. Shortly after the recession as future prospects get better and the company is able to generate higher EPS, we could expect both annual EPS and P/E ratio to recover and the share price to bounce back to $2.6*19 = 49.4$. This is an extreme perspective and a more realistic movement of the share price could be: share price falling to $1.5*19 = $28.5 (within April 2020) and bouncing back to $2.23*19 = 42,3 $ by the end of 2021.

Buying idea
Option 1 Option 2
Entry price $28.5 $22.5
Take profit $42.75 $49.5
Max expected holding period 18-months 18-months
Profit 50% 220%

I`ll buy the stock as soon as it hits $28.5. Good luck!