Want To Invest In Saia Inc (NASDAQ:SAIA)? Here’s How It Performed Lately
For long-term investors, assessing earnings trend over time and against industry benchmarks is more beneficial than examining a single earnings announcement at a point in time. Investors may find my commentary, albeit very high-level and brief, on Saia Inc (NASDAQ:SAIA) useful as an attempt to give more color around how Saia is currently performing. View our latest analysis for Saia
How Did SAIA’s Recent Performance Stack Up Against Its Past?
For the purpose of this commentary, I like to use data from the most recent 12 months, which annualizes the latest 6-month earnings release, or some times, the latest annual report is already the most recent financial data. This allows me to analyze many different companies in a uniform manner using the latest information. For Saia, its most recent trailing-twelve-month earnings is $53.7M, which, against the prior year’s figure, has grown by a somewhat unexciting 9.54%. Given that these figures may be fairly short-term, I have calculated an annualized five-year value for Saia’s earnings, which stands at $39.3M. This suggests that, on average, Saia has been able to consistently improve its profits over the last few years as well.
How has it been able to do this? Let’s take a look at if it is solely attributable to an industry uplift, or if Saia has seen some company-specific growth. In the last couple of years, Saia expanded its bottom line faster than revenue by efficiently controlling its costs. This has led to a margin expansion and profitability over time. Looking at growth from a sector-level, the US road and rail industry has been growing, albeit, at a muted single-digit rate of 9.94% in the previous year, and 9.98% over the previous five years. This shows that whatever tailwind the industry is benefiting from, Saia has not been able to reap as much as its industry peers.
What does this mean?
Saia’s track record can be a valuable insight into its earnings performance, but it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. Companies that have performed well in the past, such as Saia gives investors conviction. However, the next step would be to assess whether the future looks as optimistic. I recommend you continue to research Saia to get a better picture of the stock by looking at:
1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for SAIA’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for SAIA’s outlook.
2. Financial Health: Is SAIA’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 30 September 2017. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
