Overstock.com: The Trend Continues Lower (OSTK), Really?

Submitted by Steve Reeves on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 16:47

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Financial News

overstock.com sith The only news that Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) has had lately is that its shares are tanking, but that appears to be on the mend. In the last 30 days OSTK have quietly moved up 17%, adding 3.8% yesterday and trading flat today.
Could the Sith finally be working for Overstock.com by punishing the Shorts, maybe its the option activity, and when is Overstock.com going to have its next earnings call?

Short interest on Overstock.com (OSTK) shares is at 20.11% according to shortsqueeze.com, it's moved down 3.93% from last month and it gives 17.8 days for shorts to cover their asses.

Yesterday (March 2nd) Overstock.com options experienced some interesting call activity. A total of 13 put and 4,958 call contracts were traded raising a low Put/Call volume alert. There were 381.38 calls traded for each put contract.

As marketintellisearch.com noted:
Unusual volume provides reliable clues that the stock is expected to make a move. Investors can use the Put/Call ratio statistics to measure trader sentiment. A high Put/Call ratio suggests that the overall investment sentiment is bearish and that investors expect the underlying stock to decrease in value. Conversely, a low Put/Call ratio implies that the overall investor sentiment is bullish based on the large amount of call options.

EARNINGS/GUIDANCE -- ANYONE, ANYONE?
overstock lady Overstock.com says it will still report its first annual profit when it gets its 2009 financial statements out. How about bringing back Overstock.com lady Sabine Ehrenfeld while you're at it, how you doing? KPMG, the new auditor, is still at work and there could be more things coming. For now, $1.9 million of income moves from 2009 to 2008, and another $900,000 comes out of 2009 profit due to improper accounting for stock options. There are a bunch of other undisclosed errors being fixed, but none of them are said to be material.

Then there's the question of when will Overstock.com report Q4 2009 earnings and will the company provide any type of guidance? Here's a look at what Yahoo Finance has on the company, earnings for Q4 shoud be in the money at 45 cents per share and Q1 2010 might see earnings of one penny:

Overstock.com (OSTK) Analyst Estimates - Yahoo Finance:

Earnings Est	Current Qtr Dec-09	Next Qtr Mar-10	Current Year Dec-09	Next Year Dec-10
Avg. Estimate	0.45	0.01	0.24	0.66
No. of Analysts	2	2	3	2
Low Estimate	0.32	-0.02	0.16	0.27
High Estimate	0.58	0.04	0.36	1.04
Year Ago EPS	-0.07	0.04	-0.55	0.24

Revenue Est	Current Qtr Dec-09	Next Qtr Mar-10	Current Year Dec-09	Next Year Dec-10
Avg. Estimate	274.00M	213.50M	839.30M	921.73M
No. of Analysts	1	1	2	2
Low Estimate	274.00M	213.50M	832.60M	907.77M
High Estimate	274.00M	213.50M	845.99M	935.70M
Year Ago Sales	255.86M	187.37M	834.37M	839.30M
Sales Growth (year/est)	7.1%	13.9%	0.6%	9.8%

Earnings History	Sep-08	Dec-08	Jun-09	Sep-09
EPS Est	-0.26	-0.03	-0.26	-0.03
EPS Actual	-0.07	0.04	0.02	-0.03
Difference	0.19	0.07	0.28	0.00
Surprise %	73.1%	233.3%	107.7%	0.0%