Housing Market Tracker - Housing Industry Stocks Outlook

Housing-Related Stocks

Tupperware Says Business On Track, Upbeat On 2008 "CEO Rick Goings: Business performance at Tupperware Brands Corp (TUP), best known for its food storage containers sold at in-home parties, is on track... Goings said he was optimistic about the year ahead. Despite growing concerns about the threat of recession in the U.S., fundamentals were good. "Through Q3 we said we'd be up 7% plus (on revenues) on the year and up double-digit profits... "I'm optimistic about the time ahead. We have 85% of business outside the U.S. but I'm optimistic about our U.S. business." (Reuters, Jan. 23rd)

Lampert's Move is all About Brands "We know Target has been begging Sears' Eddie Lampert to sell them hundreds of locations. Could the newly separated real estate management arm, rather than selling them, become a landlord to Target? Rather than just closing a Kmart location, rent it to Target. In that respect, that division becomes a REIT to the holding company. With 3,500 locations under it, the options are incredible... If the main brands that account for the majority of the profits are currently licensed and sold through other outlets, the importance of the physical stores are diminished. It also means that Sears now has more options for the marginal stores it may be carrying now." (Todd Sullivan in Seeking Alpha, Jan. 22nd)

Move: Challenging Times "It will take a few quarters for the real estate industry to recover and Move Inc. (MOVE) should use this opportunity to... improve its services so that it is able to capitalize when the real estate market does recover. The fact that real estate ads are moving online will enable it to recover faster than the real estate industry. However, there is no near term trigger for the stock and major media companies such as News Corp. (NWS) or Yahoo (YHOO) could use this opportunity to pick up a stake in the company as it is available at 0.95 times sales. (Sramana Mitra in Seeking Alpha, Jan. 22nd)

ZipRealty: Challenging Times, But "ZipRealty (ZIPR) has a market cap of $122.5 million and even if you pay a premium of 20%, you still end up paying $150M or 1.5 times sales. That’s dirt cheap, and don’t forget that the online real estate industry is expected to be 32.1% of overall real estate ads by 2010 from the current level of 17.7%. The stock is hopelessly undervalued, and a perfect opportunity, especially for Yahoo, who should be stitching up its verticals." (Sramana Mitra in Seeking Alpha, Jan. 21st)

Get Seeking Alpha's housing market coverage by email -- it's free and takes only seconds to sign up.