"It's NFL football season and that can only mean one thing. Football,Wings,and Beer. That leads me right to Buffalo Wild Wings, (BWLD), and it's 16 different sauces. It makes your mouth water."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,662.91 (UP) Week ending 08-15-2014

Well, its NFL and college football season again, and for Minneapolis, Minnesota based 

Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., (Symbol BWLD, $142.81), it is a great time to be selling NY Style Chicken Wings and cold Beer. 

This is a second time appearance of BWLD on the Freewilly stock blog, with the last recommendation in my February 12th, 2012 blog , when I told you to buy the stock when it was trading at $70.30 per share. You would have had a "double" in your equity in 2 and 1/2 years. There are still only 18.9 Million shares outstanding, a very small number by today's market standards so earnings add up quick.

So now let's take a look at the current numbers.
The Return on Equity on the stock is 19.27. The PEG ratio according to Y-Charts is 0.6048. It like both of those numbers.

The trailing twelve month Revenue is 1.39 Billion dollars so this is still a small cap stock. The company has an earnings rating in IBD of 98 so that is outstanding. 

Buffalo Wild Wings currently has 992 stores with 60% being company owned and the rest being franchised to private owners. There are some analyst concerned that they already have 66% US market penetration, but don't worry about that. Guess what! Ron Jaworski and some other smart folks have been working for 3 years on an NFL Style football league in China which may launch soon. Can you see the possibilities here?

The company has three to five year earnings growth of 24.6% and one year earnings growth of 12.7% so we are slowing a bit there. Next quarter earnings growth though is projected at 23.8%.

Earnings per share in 2014 is projected at $5.05 per share and for 2015 we are looking for $5.98 per share with a current PE of 29.8. 

The one year change in the value of the stock in the trailing 12 months is 36.11%

The best news for you Minneapolis, Minnesota folks is that I have the explosive Cordarelle Patterson, Vikings Wide Receiver on my fantasy football team and will have him playing every game. See, I can pick stocks and good fantasy football players too! I love stats of all kinds.

Cordarelle Patterson, Vikings WR

So my opinion this week is you can buy currently into a LONG position in this stock, ( BWLD),  and as always buy in with small increments.

Here is were you can find a BWLD bar and grill near you: Click here to find Buffalo Wild Wings bar near you

Enjoy the beautiful weather and make sure to feed the birds,

Freewilly

" One of the miracles of the investment firm Goldman Sachs is how they always minimize their risk by balancing with hedging positions. If you are a growth stock investor, the way you need to hedge is to barbell your portfolio with some solid dividend stocks."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,554 (UP) Week ending of 08-08-2014

In the great real estate and investment crash of 2007, with its lovely derivative CDOs and CDO Squared bundled mortgage packages, one firm that realized the great investment risk and hedged their positions was Goldman Sachs. Some folks were mad at Goldman because these positions were opposite of the CDO products that were being sold to customers. Their "mark to market" accounting warned them to beware and hedge.

Lloyd Blankfein , CEO Goldman Sachs

You, like Goldman Sachs, need to be constantly assessing the risk in your portfolio positions if you are a growth stock investor. To keep long in your good growth positions, which will naturally have some market swings, you should balance out your portfolio with some good solid dividend stocks that may have an added growth kicker. This will lower the volatility in your portfolio and it will let you sleep a little better at night during big market swings.

Here are a few stocks that I have found useful for that purpose.

T. Boone Pickens

The first one is from the great US energy advocate, T. Boone Pickens and it is Mesa Royalty Trust (Symbol MTR, $26.94).

I have seen dividend percentages paid for the company on different websites of anywhere from 9.79% to 13%. It think the actual number is 11.31%, but at any rate, at least 10%.  MTR has a profit margin of 96% and a Return on Equity of 74.99.  The current PE on the stock is 13.7. The stock was as high as $37.60 back in June 2014, so you are getting a pretty good deal at the current price.  This is an MLP, so there are some tax considerations with this one.

 The next stock with the nice dividend would be Blackstone Group L.P. (Symbol BX, $32.98). This one is captained by another brilliant man, and a local Abington PA. product, Stephen A. Schwarzman.

Stephen A. Schwarzman

Blackstone pays out a nice 6.79% dividend. Blackstone Group has had an excellent year with the selling of some of its Hilton Worldwide Group holdings.

"Blackstone Group LP is a global manager of private capital and provides financial advisory services. Its alternative asset management businesses include the management of corporate private equity funds, real estate funds, funds of hedge funds, credit-oriented funds, collateralized loan obligation vehicles and separately managed accounts. Blackstone also provides a wide range of financial advisory services, including financial advisory, restructuring and reorganization and fund placement services. The company operates its business through five segments: Private Equity, Real Estate, Hedge Fund Solutions, Credit Businesses and Financial Advisory." 

Here are a few other names that could come in handy:

Richard K. Davis

U.S. Bancorp (Symbol USB, $41.18) is a company of which Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett, (and Charlie Monger, don't forget Charlie!), own a bunch of shares.  It pays a 2.3% dividend and has a PE of 13.55. USB is a Super Regional bank holding company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Return on Equity of 15.99% and they produce quarterly Free cash flow of $1.1 Billion dollars per quarter. No worries here! This tight ship is run by Richard K. Davis. 

The last one is Amgen (Symbol AMGN, $126.95) which had just run up recently on excellent quarterly results. AMGN  is an American multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, CA. The company pays a 1.92% dividend and gives you a nice growth kicker to go along with the dividend. The company is projected to earn $8.98 per share next year. This one is run by Robert A. Bradway. 

Robert A. Bradway or "Bob"

If any of these stocks are added to your IRA, they will give balance to all of those growth stocks you have that have little or no dividend, because they are rapidly reinvesting money back into the growth of their business. There are many others, but here's a warning: do not buy any that cannot sustain their dividend.

Finally, NFL Football is started up here back in the USA. Time for my other stats to keep, Fantasy Football. A great education in picking out performing assets.

Thanks,

Freewilly

"Looking for Buried Treasure? Sometimes you need only to look in your own backyard, (my backyard is in Pennsylvania), and look under the Big "W".

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16493.37,  (Way, Way Down) Week ending 08-01-2014

Famous treasure hunters from the "Mad World" movie

Looking for buried treasure? We all want to own stocks in Copper mines in Indonesia or an oil stock company in the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada or some place far away. It seems like these would be the exotic places where great fortunes could be made suddenly and shuttled away safely to the bank. But sometimes all you need to do is look in your own backyard to find your treasure.

In the movie, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", (Vintage 1963),  the mystery buried treasure was buried under a big "W", ($330,000 dollars),  but nobody knew where it was located.

My backyard is in Pennsylvania. So I  looked underneath the Big "W" out there in Wilmerding, PA., in Western Pennsylvania, for an old company that long represents that W symbol, and a company that was organized back in 1869 called "Westinghouse". 

Specifically the daughter company , WABTEC (Symbol WAB, $80.86) , otherwise known as Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp. 

I first heard about this company from a radio business show trivia quiz. "What company's stock has been up 14 out of the last 15 years"? The answer: WABTEC (WAB). 

WABTEC is a major player in the global rail industry. It has a 50% market share in its primary braking related equipment and is a leader in most of its other product categories.

WABTEC has a Return on Equity of 20.32 and a PEG ratio of 1.534. The current PE is 24.78.

Revenues for the company yearly are $2.739 Billion dollars and they generate Free cash flow of $99.42 Million dollars per quarter. The Current ratio of the company is 2.3 to 1.

The company has an amazing 5 year stock chart and pays a small dividend of 6 cents a share.

Earnings for 2013 were $3.05 per share and 2014 is looking like $3.54 per share. The projection for 2015 is $4.08 per share, (a forward PE of 20.46). 
Analysts on the stock are 6 BUY, 2 Outperform and 6 Hold. In this fully valued market you should buy in small increments on market dips.

The Insider purchasing at 3, 6 and 12 months are all favorable to the purchase side. This company is just a very steady performer: the kind of company you want to own in this kind of volatile stock market. 
A good railroad can carry a ton of freight 436 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel. That is still the world's cheapest way to move it. You better have a good braking system in place with that much weight in motion to slow it down when you need to. WABTEC provides that solution to the railroads of the world. 

I wouldn't be in a hurry to buy anything this week in US markets until things settle down a little bit.

Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. partners on A/C Electricity

Have a great weekend and a good week. Make a better life for yourself, save money and buy stocks.

Freewilly