CEI v.s. its competitors

**yhan** Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:04 am

CEI v.s. its competitors
While looking at the CEI statistics, I compared it with other competitors such as CRE, HRP.

CEI's data is worse than these. Could you explain why you choose CEI, instead of CRE or HRP?

or the Yahoo's statistics is not correct?

**blast_investor** Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:32 am

Re: CEI v.s. its competitors
Can you clarify a bit more?

Which numbers are you comparing CEI to its competitors?

**yhan** Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:42 am

sorry about the confusion.

I compared EPS, P/E, Growth rate, Cash flow, Price/book etc. Looks to me that CRE and HRP are better. Currently CEI EPS is -0.74.

**blast_investor** Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:57 am

value investing is investing like a businessman. The important number for businessman is "true profit", not some EPS numbers.

Because of accounting rule, real estate stock negative EPS number does not mean that the company is losing money. its "true" business profit is significantly higher.

The standard REIT metrics in Wall Street is FFO. Therefore, all these PE EPS etc based number in Yahoo is not useful for comparing REIT.

Price/book is useless too. NAV is the number you want to compare.

Yahoo does not provide NAV FFO, you have to dig out these from SEC filing or calculate by yourself.

Of course, FFO may not be enough to compare, which is exactly what I said in CEI report to look beyond typical Wall Street metrics FFO.

One useful service I provide through BIRTP is stock analysis and research beyond this Yahoo numbers.

yhan wrote: Currently CEI EPS is -0.74.

**shu_wd** Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:06 pm

hi, Blast,

This brings out another question -- how did you calculate CEI's net worth and come up with the $20-$25 number? Could you share with us?

Also, I have another question -- I believe one of the attractiveness of CEI is its 9% dividend. However, as you said in your trade alert, it could be cut down by the company. How much chance is that?

thanks a lot

**blast_investor** Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:46 pm

$20 NAV was disclosed by conference call.

$25 NAV goal was disclosed in conference call or SEC filing as well, which I believe CEI can deliver.

Dividend cut is not very likely. CEI has ton of cash to pay that.

Of course,dividend cut fear is there for CEI, which offers great opportunity for value investors to take advantage of this fear.