Monday's Street Chatter: 3M Company, Ask Jeeves, and Kmart Holdings

Beth Gaston (bgaston@sir-inc.com)7/19/2004 1:58 PM ET 
 
A daily feature available on SchaeffersResearch.com is "Street Chatter." Every day, we'll focus on three newsworthy stocks that are generating a lot of attention on Internet message boards. We hope that this will effectively offer stock information, particularly on equities that are currently popular among those in the investing community.


3M Company

Consumer-goods giant 3M Company (MMM: sentiment, chart, options) issued a mixed earnings report this morning. For the second quarter, the company collected 97 cents per share, a penny above the Wall Street estimate and 24 percent better than year-ago results. Net climbed 25 percent for MMM and revenue was up 9.4 percent. Sales rose 9.3 percent, slightly missing analysts' expectations. Looking forward, MMM officials expect third-quarter earnings-per-share results to be flat with the second quarter at 97 cents. The company did, however, boost its fiscal year earnings numbers to $3.72-$3.75 per share from $3.60-$3.70.
Investors sided with the bears, however, and have sent MMM gapping more than five percent lower today. The stock has slipped beneath its 20-week moving average and below the 84 level of earlier consolidation. From a longer-term perspective, the stock is precariously perched on its 10-month moving average, below which MMM has not endured a monthly close since September 2002.

On the sentiment front, the Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) for MMM has been traipsing lower since June expiration to its present reading of 0.68, which is lower than all of the past year's worth of data. This implies a peak in optimistic sentiment among the speculative options community. Optimism, or at least complacency, is also evidenced by the lack of short interest on the stock, representing about one percent of the total float. Analysts are also fairly positive toward MMM. According to Zacks, there are currently nine "buy" ratings on the shares, six "holds" and no outright "sell" ratings at this juncture.