Getting to Know The Numbers

1. Price Performance
2. Institutional Ownership
3. Insider Trading
4. Short Interest
5. Price History

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Sentimental Analysis - Price History

The Price History table provides five years' worth of basic trading data regarding the company's stock. We present each year's High Price, Low Price and Closing Price. This provides a sense of whether the stock has charted a reasonably stable trend, or whether it has zigged and zagged within a wide trading range. The latter would be suggestive of higher levels of uncertainty.

Price History
Calendar Year 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994
High Price 39.75 27.44 27.13 24.00 15.69
Low Price 22.31 21.06 20.50 14.31 12.78
Year End Price 38.41 23.88 22.69 22.56 14.63
High P/E 36.04* 23.92 25.16 25.05 19.22
Low P/E 20.23* 18.36 19.02 14.94 15.66
Year End P/E 34.82* 20.82 21.05 23.55 17.92
Dividend Yield 0.46 0.67 0.64 0.58 0.80

We also present High, Low and Annual Closing P/E Ratios. This gives additional insight into investment community sentiment. It shows you how the stock has been valued in slow times when the company may have had depressed earnings (and high P/Es) and how the stock was valued in boom times when earnings were higher (and the P/E lower).

For many companies, especially the newer technology and higher growth companies, you may see very high P/Es. In such cases, the shares may be selling at very high prices even though the are making very little money. That happens when investors focus on the promise of significant future earnings growth. If a company doesn't have five years worth of history, or it wasn't profitable for at least four out of the five years, the table will give a "not meaningful" (NM) value for the high and low P/E value.

The bottom of this table shows five years' worth of Dividend Yield data. Because there's often a tradeoff between higher yields and lesser prospects for growth, a pattern of rising yields can suggest diminishing Wall Street expectations regarding growth prospects. But rising or falling yields can also reflect market conditions (i.e. the overall level of interest rates).

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