Shares of Sea shot up to $113.04 during today's morning trading session -- an increase of 16.0% that brings the stock 9.8% over its average analyst target price of $102.95. This may imply limited upside for the Staffing & Employment Services stock, whose analysts give it a consensus rating of buy, and target prices spanning from $69.0 to $135.0 dollars per share.
We can use Sea's short interest as a proxy for determining general market sentiment regarding the stock. The short interest is the percentage of the share float that represents short positions, meaning that the investor believes the stock will decline in the future. Since SE's short interest is 7.2%, the market sentiment is mixed on this stock.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
One way to get an idea of the market sentiment on a stock is to check its rate of institutional ownership. In the case of Sea, institutional investors own 64.2% of the shares. This would indicate a positive sentiment towards the stock among institutions. What does this really tell us?
Institutional investors such as hedge funds, investment firms, and wealth managers devote significant resources to identifying good investments. If they have decided to invest in SE, it probably means they believe it is a solid investment choice. But it could also mean they are buying up shares in an effort to acquire the company or get seats on the board of directors. Also bear in mind that institutions are fallible (just maybe not quite as fallible as the average retail investor), so they may simply be wrong when they think they've found a good stock.
Overall, there is mixed market sentiment on Sea because its an analyst consensus of little upside potential, a buy rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and an average number of institutional investors. Warren Buffett famously said that in the short term, markets are voting mechanisms, but in the long term, they are weighing mechanisms. This means that long term investors should be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
Buffett was one of the fist investors to focus on free cash flow as a yardstick for a company's health. Here are SE's recent cash flows:
| Date Reported | Cash Flow from Operations ($ k) | Capital expenditures ($ k) | Free Cash Flow ($ k) | YoY Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2,079,688 | 241,605 | 1,838,083 | 192.84 |
| 2022 | -1,055,692 | 924,178 | -1,979,870 | -251.33 |
| 2021 | 208,649 | 772,177 | -563,528 | -356.62 |
| 2020 | 555,868 | 336,274 | 219,594 | 229.19 |
| 2019 | 69,865 | 239,844 | -169,979 | 74.73 |
| 2018 | -495,220 | 177,343 | -672,563 |
