M & F Worldwide Corp. (NYSE:MFW.DL)

cornpalace (< 20) Submitted: 11/19/2008 9:10:10 PM : Start Price: $13.55 MFW.DL Score: +29.69

This is a FCF vs. Mkt Cap play right now. The company is generating over 200 mm a year in FCF and earnings are improving because non cash acquisition and restructuring costs are rolling off. The company has a lot of debt, but it has a blended average of around 9%. In this market the company could probably not finance 2.5 billion of debt at all let alone under 15%. Overall this is not a debt pay down story, although buying back some of their bonds that are trading at .50 on the dollar is not a bad idea. Overall the debt is covered and the company has plenty of working capital and FCF. What scares people about this company is it is the largest check printer in the US. Obviously checks are not a growth business. Still checking has become a duopoly between them and DLX, the economics of a duopoly indicate that price increases should be able to partially offset revenue declines. Beyond checks the rest of MFW is comprised of solid businesses. Mafco makes 70% of the worlds licorice extract and has ~30% Op Margins, Scantron now with the acquisition of Pearsons Data Managment unit has dominate position in the educational scannable forms market, and Harland Financial solutions is seeing growth in its risk management software that it market primarily to Credit Unions. What this boils down to for me is 200mm in FCF that should stay around that level for the next few years vs a market cap of 275mm. This cash generation will be used primarily for acquisitions and in this market that will go a long way.