Arden Group

Here’s another little-known stock with an amazing track record. Arden Group (ARDNA) runs 18 Gelson’s supermarkets in Southern California.
The company has a market value of about $280 million and it’s almost entirely ignored by Wall Street. In fact, it’s not uncommon for Arden to trade a few hundred shares a day.
Twenty-eight years ago, the stock was going for about 84 cents a share. In September 2008, ARDNA reached a high of $199.99 a share. That’s a gain of about 24,000% which easily beat the S&P 500’s gain of about 1,000% over the same period.
The stock has plunged all the way to $88 a share. It reached a new 52-week low last week. For some reason, the company pays a microscopic dividend of 25 cents a quarter.
Here’s Arden’s EPS for the last few years.
Year……….EPS
2000………….$3.41
2001………….$3.79
2002………….$4.14
2003………….$4.90
2004………….$6.70
2005………….$5.87
2006………….$7.16
2007………….$9.24
2008………….$7.80
2009………….$6.84

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on June 8th, 2010 at 11:48 am

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