I just have to start laughing to myself - here I have a solid company O'Reilly Automotive (NASDAQ GS:ORLY); it beats by a whopping 7 cents ($0.47 v $0.40) with upside guidance for the year (granted, they only increased it by the amount of this quarter's beat) and the stock does nothing after hours - after being down 3% on the day in an up market. Meanwhile I watch the crumbs of the Earth jumping 10-20-30% on disaster earnings but with magic words of "stabilization" from the CEO (imagined or otherwise). All about expectations - it's buy the flea market junk era.

Much like Fidelity National Financial (FNF) this is not an organic story as a large acquisition is being absorbed so the year over year numbers are not apples to apples. The key story here is a good managment @ ORLY taking over stores from CSK and bringing them up to same efficiency + profitability over the next year or so. So far it seems like the path is excellent. But if one executes in an empty forest I guess it does not matter nowadays. Once more if the consumer was "back" we should not be seeing such great strength in this type of company - they should be fleeing back to the new car lots with their newly furnished house ATM. (Apr 1: Automotive Replacement & Accessories Continues to be a Winning Theme) (Jan 15, 2009: Thesis - Automotive Replacement and Accessories)

With EPS guidance in the $1.92 to $1.96 range the stock is no longer cheap but at 19x forward estimates (with some upside to those full year numbers I bet) its cheaper than many crummy retailers who are shrinking and same store sales falling off a cliff. Contrasted to O'Reilly's +5.7% SSS. A look at results

• Sales for the three months ended March 31, 2009, totaled $1.16 billion, up 80% from $0.65 billion for the same period a year ago. (again not organic growth)
• Gross profit for the first quarter of 2009 increased to $0.54 billion (or 46.6% of sales) from $0.29 billion (or 44.6% of sales) for the first quarter of 2008, representing an increase of 88%. (key here is gross margin expansion of 2% - that's quite impressive)
• Selling, General and Administrative expenses increased to $0.43 billion (or 36.9% of sales) for the first quarter of 2009 from $0.21 billion (or 33.2% of sales) for the first quarter of 2008, representing an increase of 100%. (this is a negative because SGA increased nearly 4% - more cost cutting to do)
• Net income for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009, totaled $63 million, up 36% from $46 million for the same period in 2008.