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I wanted to take a look at the undervalued payday loan sector and see if crunching numbers might reveal something behind the overall state of the sector. So I put the companies side by side and ran some basic calculations. The companies in the sector are First Cash Financial Services (FCFS), EZCorp (EZPW), Cash America (CSH), QC Holdings (QCCO), Dollar Financial (DLLR) and the venerable Advance America (AEA).

There’s obviously many election stories still coming out from Tuesday’s results, but one that I’ve been following has been ballot measures in Arizona and Ohio designed to limit how much interest payday lenders can charge. In Ohio, voters approved Issue 5, which caps interest rates on payday loans at 28% by a 2/3 majority, despite a glitzy website and lots of ads that warned of all sorts of problems if the measure was approved.

There’s obviously many election stories still coming out from Tuesday’s results, but one that I’ve been following has been ballot measures in Arizona and Ohio designed to limit how much interest payday lenders can charge. In Ohio, voters approved Issue 5, which caps interest rates on payday loans at 28% by a 2/3 majority, despite a glitzy website and lots of ads that warned of all sorts of problems if the measure was approved.

This is the second name this week to breakout off of higher guidance; earlier in the week we saw Cash America (CSH) [Jul 7: Missed Opportunity in Cash America] The past 2 days we have an incredible technical breakout (on the chart) of EZCORP (EZPW) on increased guidance. This is despite closing 11 stores in Florida. It looks like a trend, long awaited, has now arrived. 56% year over year growth certainly fits into my wheelhouse.