Safeway, Inc. (SWY)

More than 9% above its 50-Day Moving Average.

Undervalued, solid management

Defensive play going into Q409 and 2010. S&P is up quite a bit, Safeway is down, plus it pays a dividend.

people gotta eat food Safeway has lots of locations with food. Projecting 50% gain in two year

They've still got good position in the industry, even though they're slowly being pushed out. Hold for no more than 1-2 years

Fundamentally cheap. A little insider buying, no selling. Maybe not a good stock for the current market breakout but I intend to hold for the longer term.

They dropped a bunch on weak earnings. But we already knew that was coming as a result of the economy. The company is probably not going anywhere, so it'll rebound.

Grocery stores are recession proof. People have to eat, and when times get tough, they eat out less and eat in more. Safeway is currently in the progress of updating all their stores and have a good generic brand offering.

I am trying to pick the best companies in their respective industry that also pay a dividend.

Based on my daily survey of retail parking lots, grocery stores seem to be busy - seems like a decent "outperform" pick to me.

This company has a big debt and not enough profits. Marketing is poor. The company decieve customers by having a sale and then backing out of it on the day of the sale and stating to consumers that there was a computer error in prices.

Steve Burd still has the magic .....(and Laree)

Lots of things going for Safeway right now, other then stock price...

p/e very low and much better value than the S&P avg.

Even in a bad economy, you need groceries. Should overperform until market settles.

I worked at a divison of Safeway for years and a combination of top down management and gross incompetence makes this company ripe to be brought down my the current economy.Management tries to run the company from 1000 miles away and has no idea what is really going on in the stores.

coupons

As an ex-employee with more than sufficient "store level" inside information on how this company treats it's workforce and runs it's daily affairs, I forsee nothing but trouble down the road for this stock. They are already overpriced, have significant distribution issues and on top of that they acquired Genuardi's on the East coast and ran it into the ground and chased away thousands of customers with their stubborn used of the "Safeway Select" store brand. They have major problems keeping skilled managers and the union strike in California in 2004/2005 was a complete mess. Higher fuel prices will raise food prices significantly and in turn will send customers running to cheaper outlets and wholesale bulk buy clubs.

The economic distress will only heighten in the months ahead, but people still need to eat. Safeway just recently upped the dividend and their stock buyback plan, as well as trading above their 50 day moving average. It has a good chance at weathering an economic downturn, however long it happens to last.