Forclosures, Moving and SSS Storage

Sovran Self Storage (SSS) raised its dividend, which amount to a nice reward for a bet on people having to leave. At 7.40% it would appear that SSS is a good place to park as Americans sort out their financial issues and go on the move to new digs, or self storage lockers. After all, Oprah reminded all of America on Thursday that we'll have to make do with less and she must know since she picks presidents now.

Most recently on Sept 7, Oppenheimer reminded investors to "get smart" (see photo, and video below), as it initiated coverage with a cautious "underperform" rating.

SSS enjoyed a run up of 5% in the last minutes of trading on Friday to end the worst week ever, even if it's 15 points from last year's high. That's a little odd, in light of it trading Ex-dividend on Oct. 6, meaning investors will miss the boat on the Oct 22 payday. Nevertheless, bulls seem to love the idea of cash flows from storage.

However, SSS ratios are not exactly a delight. SSS's P/E, PEG and P/S are leaving The Yield Hoe with that feeling of being overworked and underpaid, like a fire fighter who spends half the day chasing a cat from a tree. In spite of the Hedge fund manager in Ireland speaking gloom and doom on CNBC the other night ("fundamentals are now just an intellectual curiosity at this point as investors raise whatever cash they can from the equity markets around the world"), we're in camp with Oppie on this one on the fundimentals: not amused, given SSS's PEG ratio of 1.96.

P/E (ttm):	17.27
EPS (ttm):	1.90
Div & Yield:	2.56 (7.30%)

PEG Ratio (5 yr expected): 1.96

Don't get me wrong, we like the idea that Uncle Bob's has expanded to Tampa and several other location in Floridas, Texas, Ohio and KY and Colorado. SSS paid 140 million for 21 units of the "Lock N Key" brand. We were in Tampa last year and could not get a anything to eat anywhere upon rolling into town, after 10pm. It was a far cry from the good old days of the Telecom boom. Self Storage is the kind of real estate we like in this hypothetical end of the world climate, but the values just do not seem to be there in SSS or any of it's peers, such as U-Haul, U-Store-it, or the giant Public Storage. But we wonder what happens when people don't pay their bills. Does EBAY 's earning grow, as managers struggle to sell all of American's "stuff" of which they take delivery? Perhaps there is a cash to be bullish for online flea markets, Pawn shops, Cash Advance and Payday loans too.

Here's the dirty low down from Yahoo competitors, on the self storage business:

	SSS	UHAL	EXR	PSA	Industry
Market Cap:	720.87M	678.25M	1.04B	14.25B	997.54M
Employ­ees:	1,057	11,100	1,853	5,700	153
Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy):	4.60%	-2.10%	19.00%	-4.90%	18.70%
Revenue (ttm):	194.69M	2.04B	267.09M	1.83B	267.09M
Gross Margin (ttm):	72.03%	29.32%	68.03%	65.22%	72.92%
EBITDA (ttm):	112.65M	416.20M	142.95M	1.12B	198.44M
Oper Margins (ttm):	40.34%	9.00%	36.61%	34.08%	35.96%
Net Income (ttm):	40.53M	42.90M	35.02M	702.30M	N/A
EPS (ttm):	1.902	2.189	0.514	4.153	1.34
P/E (ttm):	17.27	15.78	24.69	20.42	22.39
PEG (5 yr expected):	1.96	1.55	1.5	1.98	1.50
P/S (ttm):	3.58	0.30	3.53	6.46	3.79

So I guess we're trying to say, in this new age of Chaos, it may not even pay to "Get Smart", but it's better than making bad bets at OTB, right?:

When You Are Done Puking...

The bad news: After years of creative accounting and "managed financial reporting", Markets are in free fall. John Deere has dropped from the 90's to 36 today, no doubt because food will no longer be in fashion in what lies ahead. It all seems TBTBT ("to bad to be true"), and yet, as Galileo said after his conviction, "and yet, it moves". He was talking about the earth around the sun; in this case we're talking about the mouse clicks of hedge fund managers who are liquidating to raise cash to pay the guy who fueled up their waiting jets.



The good news: yields are absurdly rich, to the point that even TV stock guru Jim Cramer is pushing The Yield Hoe method of screening the market one of the few safe methods for finding better places to park new cash. These high yielding securities are like a orchard of ripe apples. The keys are low debt, solid cash flow, in a line of business that's not going away anytime soon.



Seth Glickenhaus, the grand master of money management was quoted in the Wall Street Journal today as a bear on business by a bull on a one of the stocks we've followed for years-- Eagle Bulk Shipping, which has dropped to a point where it's priced for the end of times, with a 17%+ yield. Seth's other picks:



Enterprise Products Partners, Energy Transfer Partners and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, and shipping companies Navios Maritime Holdings, which all yield greater than 7.90%.



ETP and EPD are both in the energy sector, and yield a Navios has the absurdly low (encouraging) PEG ratio of .17, which makes it very historically cheap for the amount of growth it offers. It's p/e is less than 2, and it operates in a lucrative, and vital sector if you believe that the emerging markets to the east will not undergo so much demand destruction that they will no longer need any dry bulk commodities, such as coal, iron or grains.


Now hear this, and recall, "Everything will perish under the sky, and music alone shall remain and never shall die":

ENT drops like a stone, and suspends yields

On September 7, Enterra, ENT, a Canadian oil and gas investment company announced it's CFO would be leaving. Never a good sign. On the 17, they suspended yields, and the stock price plunged to a low of $1.99. The news has been deafening in its silence about the details, even if the the writing on the wall has lead the lemmings to jump out of the stock as it bounces off its bottom. The question of valuation remains. Are ENT assets worth more than the stock price of $2.67; do the 40,000 undeveloped acres have more reserves? Will the yield return (it would be 27% at these levels.

Only time and more research will tell.

Turn Up Your Rad-e-o with CDL

We learned our lesson when we predicted the tumble in the now "defunked" New Century (NEW), after the head of Investor Relations of that one time NYSE listed company actually hunted us down and called to "clarify a few things", including the idea that NEW did not have much Sub-prime paper in the hopper.

Needless to say, we just pulled the post out of reflex, like a cat with a turpentined ass, and even retracted our posting, but kept the puts anyway, and bought a few more in the rest of the usual suspects in the mortgage lending space. We'll, long story short, it's time to take those modest gains from the these company's falling stocks as they have come to reflect the drop in Ninja lending by these mortgage sausage factories that were writing loans to everyone and their Golden Retriever, then packaging, stamping and roll them out overseas to grab up those petro dollars, and maybe the return on those new Chinese sky scrapers from Yield Hoes the world over.

So, we put our ear to the ground to find somewhere to make a forward pass over all the shit flying in the market right now.

I believe it was Van "the man" Morrison who said: "Turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, radio Turn it up, thats enough, so you know its got soul Radio, radio turn it up, humLa, la, la, la...


Citadel Broadcasting Corporation (symbol: CDL), which you've literally heard of if you ever tuned to 77ABC or WPLJ in the New York radio market is trading at a p/e of 18, and yielding 16%. However, tis' true enough-- it's PEG, which reflects it's growth rate is bloated, at 2.88; but there again, we are talking radio, which is pretty long in the teeth, unless you believe broke Americans are going to start signing up for SAT radio in droves at $10.00+ per month to listen to potty mouths Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony and maybe even Don Imus.

All things together, I'm thinking these CDL numbers are like acid rock, man.

You saps might could do worse than to load up on CDL's TP, and get paid to watch ad rates climb as broke businesses try to reach out to broke consumers more and more by Rad-e-o. As always Mr. Phelps, tight stop loss orders will protect your expectation of quarterly income if CDL shits itself for some unknown unknown.

Get 9% from Small and Mid Cap Financings

Capital Source, symbol CSE, is offering 9 percent form certain middle market financing activities that include the upscale chain coffee-pastry shop, Au Ban Pain (or "Urban Pain", as we used to say), JC Penny store, a child photography business, vacation club membership business, and a few prime Chicago hotels to name a few. To see more, click their recent transactions. They described as offering:

Corporate Finance, Healthcare and Specialty Finance, and Structured Finance. The Corporate Finance division provides senior and mezzanine loans to businesses backed by private equity sponsors. The Healthcare and Specialty Finance division offers asset-based revolving lines of credit, first mortgage loans, and senior and mezzanine loans to healthcare businesses and other companies. The Structured Finance division provides commercial and residential real estate lending, and asset-based lending to finance companies.

CSE trades at a low P/E vs. it's growth, or .62 by recent count, which seems almost TGTBT and may well be, so it's best to look before a leap; but Zacks appears to like it too.

Right now, it trades at it's 200 day moving average, which would suggest a good point to plough in for a little high yield with good growth prospects, something you won't get from most bonds.