What happened? JB Hi-Fi Limited (ASX: JBH) followed on from yesterday's surprising performance to rise 3.5% in late trade on Friday after the company released its third-quarter results to the market as part of a presentation to investors.
The release of the Macquarie Australia Conference Presentation, which was not marked as "market sensitive", was responsible for a 4% turnaround in the share price yesterday and today pushed JB's share price to within touching distance of a 12-month high of $20.06.
So What? Well, as my colleague Brendan Lau discussed yesterday, JB Hi-Fi "reported an 8.7% uplift in total sales from its Australian and New Zealand outlets in the March quarter that was fuelled by robust comparable sales growth of 6.9% from its domestic operations".
It appears that JB's has been able to buck the recent trend of retailers struggling to hit market expectations, albeit this trend has been largely confined to general and specialist clothing retailers such as Myer Holdings Ltd (ASX: MYR), OrotonGroup Limited (ASX: ORL) and Kathmandu Holdings Ltd (ASX: KMD).
Pleasingly for investors, JB's management team also confirmed full-year revenue guidance of $3.6 billion and net profit of between $127 million and $131 million.
What Now? Analysts expect that if the company can hit the mid-range of its guidance and maintain its payout ratio of 65%, investors can expect a dividend payout of nearly 85 cents for the year, representing a yield of 4.4% or 6.3% grossed up for franking credits.
The big question now is whether JB's can continue its amazing share price run that's seen shareholders receive a 40% return before dividends in just 7 months. While it certainly represented a great bargain at the low of $14.35 in October last year, it now trades on a forward price to earnings ratio of just over 14 for the 2015 financial year, and 12.5 for the 2016 financial year (assuming nearly 20% earnings per share growth).
