Q1 2020 Service Corporation International Earnings Call

Service Corp. (SCI) doesn't possess the right combination of the two key ingredients for a likely earnings beat in its upcoming report. Get prepared with the key expectations.

To the annoyance of some shareholders, Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) shares are down a considerable 33...

Service Corp. (SCI) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.

Once again, investors are nervous, after two sessions of losses pushed the S&P 500 back below the 2,850 upper resistance level. The index’s appreciation has slowed in recent weeks, after a sharp bear market rally in the last week of March brought it back from the doldrums. Investors are wondering now if this rally is real, or if the bear will come roaring back at them.It’s at times like these that some comprehensive stock analysis is most helpful. TipRanks has the right tool for that job: the Smart Score, which analyzes 8 separate factors from the TipRanks database, all collected and measured by AI algorithms, and uses them to generate a simple, comprehensive score for the market’s most traded stocks. The Smart Score measures the traditional factors of stock analysis, including the technical and fundamental analyses, as well as the conventional wisdom on a stock, through analyst, blogger, and news sentiment, and the collective investor views, through hedge activity, insider trading, and individual investor activity. The result is an aggregate, a single number that points out the stock’s likely forward path.We’ve used the TipRanks database to find three undervalued stocks with “perfect 10” Smart Scores. While these shares are trading low, the perfect Smart Scores suggest that is more an artifact of the recent overall market slide – for a variety of reasons, each of these stocks has a clear path forward, toward price appreciation. Here is what makes them stand above the crowd.Wix.com, Ltd. (WIX)Since its founding in 2006, Wix has built a solid reputation as the place to go for do-it-yourself website construction. The platform offers users a range of tools and editors to make site building simple, even for non-experts. Wix has become wildly popular due to its ease of use, and brings in recurring revenue of $707.2 million annually. Wix’s successful platform rests on the ‘freemium’ business model. The basic service is offered for free, to all comers, while company revenue is derived by selling subscriptions, downloadable user tools, and upgrades.Coming into 2020, before the COVID-19 epidemic, Wix’s financial state had been gradually improving. Quarterly earnings were on the way up – Q4 2019 showed $204.6 million in total revenue, up 24.6% year-over-year. The company finished the year with over $331 million in cash on hand.Despite that strong finish to calendar year 2019, Wix shares tumbled badly in the Q1 2020 market slide. The stock hit a peak on February 19, dropped by nearly half to its trough on March 18, and while its has bounced back, WIX is still down 20%.The Smart Score, however, suggests that WIX is undervalued. Wall Street’s analysts still rate the stock a Strong Buy, the financial bloggers are 90% bullish on the shares, and the news coverage of Wix has been 100% positive. Along with an increase in hedge fund purchase activity, these are strong signs that the stock retains plenty of investor confidence.SunTrust Robinson’s 5-star analyst Naved Khan describes that confidence in clear prose: “We believe Wix's freemium offering remains relatively resilient given its focus on providing mission critical online tools/services to SMBs. We view the company's recent decision to pause the price hike as a prudent, customer centric move to keep churn low and expect to see a pick-up in DIY sign-ups as lockdowns catalyze demand for online services.”Khan rates Wix a Buy, and supports that rating with a $167 price target that implies a robust upside potential of 35%. (To watch Khan’s track record, click here)Wall Street’s analyst corps agrees with Khan – which we saw in the Smart Score review. WIX shares hold a Strong Buy rating from the analyst consensus, based on 13 recent reviews – including 12 Buys and only a single Hold. The average price target is $150, somewhat more cautious than Khan’s, but still suggesting a 21% one-year upside for the stock. (See Wix stock analysis at TipRanks)Hudson Pacific Properties (HPP)Our next stock is a real estate investment trust, a sector that is well-liked by income-minded investors who appreciate the high dividend yields offered. Hudson Pacific is an REIT focused mainly on office space in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver areas. The company owns almost 15 million square feet of leasable space, in some of the prime tech centers in North America. HPP counts some heavy hitters among its tenants, including Alphabet, Inc. and Netflix.HPP’s earnings grew steadily from Q2 through Q4 of last year, reaching 55 cents per share in the final quarter, beating the forecast by 12%. Full year revenues came to $818 million, with full year net income of $42.7 million. HPP used that fund a 25-cent per share quarterly dividend, which annualizes to $1 and gives a yield of 4.3%. It’s a solid foundation for investors seeking profitable investments.And right now, HPP shares are well down from their peak. The stock hit its top value on February 14, just 5 days before the bear market started – and that bear hit HPP hard, knocking out 58% of the stock’s share value. It has had trouble regaining traction; many tenant companies are facing their own coronavirus problems, and so are having trouble meeting the rent, cutting into HPP income stream. The stock is still down 39% from its peak, severe underperformance compared to the S&P 500’s 16% net fall.Once again, however, a look at the Smart Score shows us why we should see HPP as undervalued, rather than depressed. The stock keeps a Strong Buy analyst rating, as well as 100% bullish sentiment from the financial bloggers and news outlets. But the real key here is the insider sentiment – corporate officers have taken advantage of the stock’s low price to buy up $2.29 million worth of shares, giving the stock a strongly positive insider trading strategy. These factors add up to that ‘perfect 10’ Smart Score.Writing from Wells Fargo, analyst Blaine Heck rates HPP a Buy, although his price target of $24.50 suggests a modest 4.4% upside. Supporting his Buy thesis, Heck writes, “HPP has done a nice job managing its unleased development pipeline exposure... HPP trades at a discount to its West Coast office peers, so if HPP can again report strong rent spreads, maintain a strong pre-leased rate on its development pipeline, and indicate that demand from tech tenants remains strong, we believe shares can outperform.” (To watch Heck’s track record, click here.)Sentiment on Wall Street is a bit more bullish on HPP than Heck allows, perhaps influenced by the strong insider confidence noted above in the Smart Score. Of 6 analyst reviews, 5 are Buys and 1 is a Hold, making the consensus rating a Strong Buy. Shares are selling for $23.46, and the average price target, at $29.67, indicates an upside of 26% for the coming 12 months. (See Hudson Pacific stock analysis at TipRanks)Service Corporation International (SCI)We don’t like to think about it, but death is business, too. Funeral services, and cemetery management, are a major operation, as surviving family and friends are always deeply interested in seeing that proper care is taken of the departed. SCI, based out of Texas, owns and operates over 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries across 43 states and eight provinces in the US and Canada. The company regularly brings in over $3 billion annual revenues.Wrapping up 2019, Q4 finished with a strong top line of $851 million, up 3.6% year-over-year, with EPS of 60 cents. The company saw earnings gain from lower expenses, while partially offset increased taxes and softness in cemetery revenues. Q1, however, reflected the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing measures. Those measures have cut back on funeral services, and SCI’s top line revenue was down 4.4% sequentially. EPS, at 43 cents, fell sequentially and missed the forecast, also by 4.4%.SCI hit its peak in early March, after the market slide began, but when it fell, the fall was steep. SCI shares bottomed out after losing 34%, and have remained essentially flat since then in volatile trading. Despite the hit to share values, the company maintained its dividend, even raising it to 19 cents per share – the third increase in the last three years. SCI’s dividend annualizes to 76 cents per share, and offers an above-average yield of 2.13%. The reliability of the dividend is a clear attraction for the stock while share price value remains down.The Smart Score shows some of the reasons why this stock remains a solid buy. Wall Street’s analysts and financial bloggers are bullish, as are the hedge funds, which have bought more than 128,000 shares in the last quarter. Better, though, is the 12-month return on equity, which is strongly positive at 21.57%. This all adds up to a Smart Score of 10, topping the scale.4-star analyst Scott Schneeberger sees a path forward for SCI, writing, “[Service International] is using technology to innovate in the current operating environment, executing expense management, remains financially sound generating ample free cash flow, and should rebound significantly as "social distancing" progressively eases.”He gives the stock a Buy rating, with a $47 price target that implies an upside of 31%. (To watch Schneeberger’s track record, click here.)In addition to a ‘perfect 10’ Smart Score, SCI shares also have a unanimous Strong Buy analyst consensus rating, based on 3 recent Buy reviews. SCI shares are selling for $35.72 at this writing, and the average price target of $45.83 suggests the stock has room for 28% growth in the next 12 months. (See Service International stock analysis at TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI) announced it expects to issue a press release with financial results for the first quarter 2020 on Wednesday, April 29, 2020, after the market closes. A conference call will be hosted by SCI Management on Thursday, April 30, 2020. Details of the conference call are as follows:

Details the 52-week lows for Southwest Airlines and Service Corp. International Continue reading...

Q4 2019 Service Corporation International Earnings Call

We hate to say this but, we told you so. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW and predicted a US recession when the S&P 500 Index was trading at the 3150 level. We also told you to short the market and buy […]

What’s happening in the short term and the long term with this funeral company? Continue reading...

Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI), the largest provider of deathcare products and services in North America, today reported results for the first quarter of 2020 and provided updates related to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their five-year EPS growth rates topped that of the S&P; 500 Continue reading...

Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in 3 days time. If you purchase the...

Does the April share price for Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we...

Service Corporation International (SCI) could be a stock to avoid from a technical perspective, as the firm is seeing unfavorable trends on the moving average crossover front.

Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI), the largest provider of deathcare products and services in North America, today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a quarterly cash dividend of nineteen cents per share of common stock. The quarterly cash dividend announced today is payable on June 30, 2020 to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 15, 2020. While the Company intends to pay regular quarterly cash dividends for the foreseeable future, all subsequent dividends, and the establishment of record and payment dates, are subject to final determination by the Board of Directors each quarter after its review of the Company's financial performance.

Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has completed a periodic review of the ratings of Service Corporation International and other ratings that are associated with the same analytical unit. The review was conducted through a portfolio review in which Moody's reassessed the appropriateness of the ratings in the context of the relevant principal methodology(ies), recent developments, and a comparison of the financial and operating profile to similarly rated peers.

The pandemic threatens to exacerbate a trend: More families are forgoing traditional funerals in favor of cremations, and they’re picking less-expensive options when they do opt for a burial.

Service Corp. (SCI) doesn't possess the right combination of the two key ingredients for a likely earnings beat in its upcoming report. Get prepared with the key expectations.

The coronavirus has become bad business for U.S. funeral homes, even as fears grow of a wave of deaths. Like companies across the United States, funeral homes and mortuaries are limiting contact with customers in order to avoid spreading the highly contagious respiratory illness, in some cases livestreaming memorial services to extended family and friends. The state of Washington, the early epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, has outright banned funerals, and the pandemic appears to be leading to lost sales of funeral homes' most profitable services, such as elaborate memorials and luxurious coffins.