Operation HomeOwner Phase I: WSTF

I just took my first step in building up enough assets to buy my home. I purchased 500 shares of Westaff (WSTF). The company used to be a running joke where I work now, because a few of us went through their payroll system as contractor's before starting full-time. We didn't know if their name was intended to be pronounced "We Staff" or "West Staff", or if the confusion was intentional.

A few weeks ago I was looking over the San Francisco Chronicle's, "Chronicle 200" list of the S.F. Bay Area's largest companies and Westaff was on it. Initially I just cracked up, but I looked at the company's details anyway. Surprisingly their price to earnings ratio was better than just about every other company on the list. An indicator that the stock might be undervalued. Then I noticed their assets exceeded their liabilities by US$20 million, and they had a lot of cash.

Then, during that time, they sold one of their foreign operations, and their CFO bought US$13,000 in company stock. When the company's finance expert decides to put his own money on the table it's usually a show of confidence in future growth. Smartmoney.com also has a nice little tool called the Price Check Calculator that can determine a company's actual stock value. As of today Westaff's stock is worth nearly three times more than it is currently trading at based on an Earnings Per Share growth rate of zero percent.

All this combined with the fact that a lot of people have been saying that the job market is improving was enough to get me to drop some dough on this temp agency/payroll processor. Hopefully they'll go in the right direction.