SID 0023 Central Garden & Pet - Part 1

In Part 1 of this three-part podcast, we start by presenting some background on Central Garden & Pet, and we discuss management changes over the last few years that have affected the company’s strategy.  We draw comparisons in our analysis to other consumer product firms, and discuss management’s ability to achieve acceptable levels of ROI in its two segments.  After this high-level discussion, we take a detailed tour of many of the businesses in its Pet segment, which depending upon the variation of earnings in the problematic Garden segment, we think generally contain about two-thirds of the earnings power of the company.  GARP Research, which is the producer of Stocks-in-Depth, recently published an over 50-page long initiation report on Central Garden & Pet.  In the following two episodes of Stocks in Depth, we will resume with the Aquatics portion within the Pet segment, cover the Garden segment, and then in Part 3 we will devote considerable time to imparting some of our analysis of the competitive dynamics and market sizes for the plethora of businesses in the Pet and Garden segments.

Om Podcasten

Stocks-in-Depth thoroughly examines the fundamentals of reasonably valued high-quality small and mid-cap growth companies. It is produced by GARP Research, a provider of equity research to institutions including many of the most well-known fund managers for over 20 years. GARP is known for its granular modelling of business lines and in-depth assessment of competition and served markets. Stocks-in-Depth searches for value and growth by researching stocks that may be out of favor, or where a major catalyst to earnings growth is hidden. Our financial models attempt to shed light on trends underneath opaque segment reporting. Stocks in Depth emphasizes balance sheet accounts and profitability margins to determine underlying return on capital, and maintains healthy skepticism regarding pro forma adjustments and undue reliance upon unconventional measures such as EBITDA. We emphasize field visits with managements, industry conferences, non-public competitors and ancillary fields to detect industry dynamics. In our search for the best companies and investment opportunities, we often challenge the consensus view. StocksinDepth forecasts over the long-term, typically over about a three year horizon, and review track records going back for years.