AutoZone (AZO) reported a 3.1% year-over-year fall in its profit to $236.1 million or $4.43 per share for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year ended August 29, 2009. However, excluding the additional week in last year's fourth quarter results, the profit increased from $227.9 million, or $3.63 per share. The company has also managed to come close to the Zacks Consensus Estimate profit of $4.45 per share. Gross profit as a percentage of sales remained 50.3%, the same as the year-ago level. While gross margin was positively impacted through continued leverage of distribution costs due to improved efficiencies and lower fuel costs, it was offset by a shift in merchandise sales mix to lower margin products. Operating expenses as a percentage of sales increased to 31.6% from 31.4% last year. However, excluding the impact from last year's additional week, operating expenses as a percentage of ...

China Life Insurance (...

China Life Insurance (LFC) is scheduled to release its FY08 financial results on March 26, 2009. 1H08 results were disappointing due to the stock market decline. Despite growing competition as well as volatile capital market, China Life seems to be in a better position than its peers due to the current regulatory environment and its geographical positioning. Further, it has not yet successfully completed its conversion to higher margin products and its current valuation (more so after the recent sell-off) does not fully reflect its growth prospects, which we think have further improved in view of the China's stimulus package, as also the regulator's decision to allow the insurers to invest directly in the infrastructure projects. We maintain our Buy recommendation on the shares. Based on our FY08 earnings estimate per ADS, the company is trading at 29.1x, which is much higher than the ...