Short-term trend line helping guide Lam Research higher

Since the low at the beginning of June, semiconductor manufacturer Lam Research (Nasdaq: LRCX) has been trending higher and a trend line connects the stock's lows over the last two months. The stock hit the trend line earlier this week and has bounced since then.

We see that the trend line connects the lows from June 17, June 25, and July 8. The series of higher lows has helped the stock move up 16% since the beginning of June and that is considerably better than the 6.76% gain by the S&P 500.

We see that the daily stochastic readings reached an oversold level earlier this week and have since made a bullish crossover. We saw a similar move by the indicators back in March before the stock went on a rally that saw the stock gain 25% in less than two months.

Another potential bullish factor for the stock is the fact that the 50-day moving average is in the same vicinity of the trend line and that could provide a secondary layer of support for the stock.

From a fundamental perspective, Lam Research has performed extremely well in the last few years, but struggled in the most recent quarterly report. The company had managed to grow earnings at a rate of 45% per year over the last three years, but second quarter earnings declined by 32% on a year over year basis.

The revenue numbers tell a similar story with the annual growth rate for the last three years coming in at 25%, but in the second quarter revenues were down 24% from the second quarter of 2018.

Lam Research has some really strong management efficiency ratings with a return on equity of 41.6% and a profit margin of 30.4%.

The Tickeron SMR rating for this company is 37, indicating strong sales and a profitable business model. SMR (Sales, Margin, Return on Equity) rating is based on comparative analysis of weighted Sales, Income Margin and Return on Equity values compared against S&P 500 index constituents. The weighted SMR value is a proprietary formula developed by Tickeron and represents an overall profitability measure for a stock.

The Tickeron Valuation Rating of 20 indicates that the company is slightly undervalued in the industry. A rating of 1 point to the most undervalued stocks, while a rating of 100 points to the most overvalued stocks. This rating compares market capitalization estimated by our proprietary formula with the current market capitalization. 

Turning our attention to the sentiment indicators for Lam Research we see that there are 22 analysts following the stock. Of those 22 analysts, only 12 rate the stock as a “buy” while the other 10 rate the stock as a “hold”. This gives an overall buy percentage of 54.5% and that is well below average.

The short interest ratio is currently at 4.99 and that is slightly higher than the average stock and is indicative of slightly bearish sentiment. There are 8.2 million shares sold short at this time and that is up from 6.2 million in mid-May. At the same time that the number of shares sold short was on the rise, the average daily trading volume was falling from 1.75 million to 1.65 million.

With Lam Research having pretty solid fundamental ratings and seeing the upward trend in the stock, it is somewhat surprising to see the bearish sentiment toward the stock. From a contrarian perspective this could be good for the stock as it can help push the stock higher in the coming weeks.