EFOI

Has this board discussed Energy Focus (EFOI)? Looks like a candidate. Also, is there any good way to search the board?

1 Like

The Motley Fool board search function doesn’t work very well. But you can try something like this at google.com

EFOI site:*.fool.com

1 Like

Paul, welcome to the board,

http://investors.energyfocusinc.com/index.cfm
Energy Focus, Inc. is a leading provider of energy efficient LED lighting products and a developer of energy efficient lighting technology. Our LED Lighting products provide energy savings, aesthetics, safety and maintenance cost benefits over conventional lighting. Our long-standing relationship with the U.S. Government continues to enable us to provide energy efficient LED lighting products to the U.S. Navy and the Military Sealift Command fleets. Customers include national, state and local U.S. government agencies as well as Fortune 500 companies and many other commercial and industrial clients. World headquarters are located in Solon, Ohio with additional sales offices in Washington, D.C., New York and Taiwan

Note that this can be a competitive, commoditized space, but can still be profitable. Competitors I know of: Cree, Philips, FIET (China that sells thru costco), GE(?)

  • Give us some earnings stats as described in the KB (get them from company press releases, use non-GAAP which are often clearly displayed in the news release, but sometimes not). Here is some interesting info you can find in last release: (but not sufficient)
    http://investors.energyfocusinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?Releas…

Financial Highlights:

Record quarterly net sales of $18.3 million represents year-over-year growth of 151.0 percent
Record quarterly gross margin of 49.8 percent represents 15.6 percentage points of improvement, year-over-year
Record quarterly operating income of $3.7 million represents a $3.4 million year-over-year increase, or 1,076.4 percent, from $318 thousand in the third quarter of 2014
Record quarterly net income of $4.3 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, including net tax benefit of $651 thousand, represents a $4.7 million year-over-year increase from the prior year’s third quarter loss
Net sales of commercial products increased 66.8 percent to $3.3 million compared to $2.0 million in the third quarter of 2014
Ended the quarter with $35 million in cash, reflecting the sale of 1.5 million new shares at a price to the public of $17 per share, raising $23.6 million in net proceeds to the company

This snippet shows they are currently having great growth, but it is no doubt coming off a small base. We want evidence that it will be sustainable. Is it due to a single contract, sustainable growth, a goofy tax benefit, etc.

The say they have been running losses. We typically like to see a string of positive earnings and growth over 8 Quarters. IF this stock is truly a winner, it will eventually have 8Q of real earnings and growth and then still have great prospects - that is when we invest.

So, go look at the spreadsheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H_v6WOjFi81rM3TH9ZHS…
and look at the stocks with 1YPEG below 1.0 and then look at the 8 Quarters of earnings listed. That is what you want.

IBD growth rankings indicate it is relatively weak. It is also ranked 12th in its IBD group (AMWD is #1 in the group)
Composite Rating 89 Neutral (Weak)
EPS Rating 79 Fail
RS Rating 99 Pass (Strong)
Group RS Rating A Pass
SMR Rating D Fail
Acc/Dis Rating C+ Pass (but weak)

Remember, this board is about teaching you to fish, so my challenge to you is to go to the news releases and get the last 8 quarters of non-GAAP earnings and calculate the 1YPEG from them. See KB for how-to.

Welcome aboard.

Pete

P.S. A gentle nudge: if you don’t have the drive to read the KB, check the spreadsheet, try to get earnings from the press releases and check some old candidate posts on this board, then it will be very hard to be successful and you should stick to index funds or Stock Advisor picks. We hope you have the drive, will join us, and present good candidates!

Check these “candidate” posts for the kind of things we would love for you to learn to do…

CNC
http://discussion.fool.com/centene-cnc-31893048.aspx

Casey
http://discussion.fool.com/has-saul-lost-it-investing-in-general…

I think this was my first candidate, the post was ok, but insufficient
http://discussion.fool.com/lgi-homes-candidate-stock-31934694.as…

here is where Saul did LGIH up right…
http://discussion.fool.com/lgih-some-analysis-and-a-new-position…

Here was my next one, I had learned a lot by then
http://discussion.fool.com/the-case-for-dycom-31942427.aspx
but I was lucky the stock was in the spreadsheet so I didn’t have to do too much digging.

http://discussion.fool.com/candidate-stocks-31799932.aspx

I wish I could provide more, but the search engine sucks!

1 Like

Pete - I just now saw this reply! I don’t know how I missed it but it is phenomenal. Thank you!

I’m very interested in learning more. Your post got me started today and I’ll mull it over some more, but I might need a little help. For instance, what are “IDB growth rankings” and where do you find them?

I’ll hold off on my questions on the Google Doc until I have a little more time to absorb it (suffice to say I don’t understand how it decides whether or not the entry is a candidate), but it is awesome!

But on this post from Kevin (http://discussion.fool.com/candidate-stocks-31799932.aspx?sort=w…), he includes several I don’t see on the spreadsheet at all, like NYMT, or that explicitly didn’t pass, like FEYE. Maybe I should ask him this, but do you know why?

Thanks again, so much. This is awesome.

-Bear

PS - I added HRTG to the sheet and it’s calculating as a 24 bagger, so I’m guessing I did something wrong. Ha