Live Ventures Inc. (NASDAQ:LIVE) is a diversified holding company that specializes in acquiring profitable companies that have demonstrated a strong history of earnings power. On December 27, the company announced its 2017 fiscal year-end results, which turned out to be Live’s best year yet. The news generated a wave of investor excitement and the company saw its stock spike to $26.00 when the market opened this morning.
Now, at the time of writing, the stock has leveled off a bit but is still an incredible 70% more than Wednesday’s closing price. Currently, the stock is trading at $22.45, which puts it up $9.25, or 70%, from the previous closing price of $13.20.
The 2017 fiscal year-end results, the best in the company’s history, reported a record-breaking $152 million in revenues, which is a 92% increase over the previous fiscal year. Company operations generated $9.5 million in cash flow, and Live is attributing much of its success for the year to its most recent acquisition of Vintage Stock Inc., which is a 57-store retail chain focusing on nostalgic movies, music, and video games. Live has also disclosed that because this acquisition has yet to be fully finalized, the company will report final earnings per share, along with some other financial information, at a later date.
Despite having an incredible year, it looks like Live had a rather mundane fourth quarter, based on the total numbers the company gave for the year-end compared to the added total of the known previous three quarters. Quarter four results haven’t yet been reported, but the year-end results suggest that Live only made $40.1 million in revenue in its fourth quarter, which is less than the $41.3 million reported for quarter three. Live already previously reported that the company’s first nine months saw a cash flow of $8.8 million, which implies, based on the total cash flow reported for the 2017 fiscal year, that quarter four only saw a $700,000 cash flow.
None of this seems to matter to investors though, given the mad dash that has occurred towards Live Ventures’ stock. And why should it? Even if one quarter of the year was a little weaker than the others, the company still achieved its best year yet. One quarter wasn’t enough to ruin that, and it won’t be enough to hold off the investors.
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