Imation Corp. (NYSE:IMN)

SnowBawl (< 20) Submitted: 2/7/2012 8:41:43 AM : Start Price: $6.18 IMN Score: -1.60

What works on Wall Street.

kahunacfa (65.89) Submitted: 1/26/2012 1:15:44 PM : Start Price: $5.95 IMN Score: +0.56

Imation is a producer of low cost, but cost effective portable data storage products often used by portable digital devices to back-up data and other files. Portable data storage devices are growing rapidly, IMN will particapte in this explosive growth.

Kahuna, CFA
Investment Professional
1994 - Present

hey4ndr3w (96.74) Submitted: 12/1/2011 5:19:37 PM : Start Price: $5.95 IMN Score: -4.18

Currently trading at or below liquidation value. Good M&A target.

btthus (66.20) Submitted: 8/7/2011 2:32:56 PM : Start Price: $7.59 IMN Score: -34.69

Auguest Issue of Ben Graham Net Current Asset Bargains Newsletter. Gurufocus

graffg (83.41) Submitted: 4/28/2011 6:03:11 PM : Start Price: $10.14 IMN Score: -38.62

value now is 80% of stock price, and making changes in needed areas

TMFRisingStars (48.42) Submitted: 11/30/2010 8:55:03 AM : Start Price: $9.43 IMN Score: -49.30

Here's the buy rec:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/11/29/rising-star-buy-imation.aspx

jsgant13 (96.11) Submitted: 9/7/2010 5:39:43 PM : Start Price: $8.68 IMN Score: -52.14

NCAV screen, spinoff, Deej

3ThreeDs (< 20) Submitted: 8/19/2010 9:47:17 AM : Start Price: $9.27 IMN Score: -57.66

Current assets minus total debt is about $2.59 above where it is now. Potential takeover candidate. Deep value speculation.

TMFDeej (99.22) Submitted: 8/2/2010 3:23:57 PM : Start Price: $9.54 IMN Score: -55.23

Imation was spun-off from 3M back in 1996. Traditionally the company has been very heavily involved in magnetic tape storage products, the use of which is unfortunately are being phased out by companies.

While maintaining its leadership in the shrinking magnetic tape sector, IMN is working on expanding its product mix into other forms of data storage, such as optical and flash.

The company appears to be losing money, but that is mainly a result of non-cash charges. It is cash flow positive, as one can easily see from the growth in the cash that it has on its balance sheet from $80 million eight months ago to the $250 million that it has today.

Today Imation has $250 million in cash on its books and a market cap of only $364 million. That's a nice cushion that will likely be returned to shareholders in the form of dividends (which the company used to pay) or share buybacks in the future.

This one's courtesy of Barel Karsan and his great site on Value Investing and the excellent write-up on the company by CAPS player Klog24.

Deej

kpdobe (34.77) Submitted: 5/5/2010 8:52:14 AM : Start Price: $10.59 IMN Score: -57.76

Chart play here for me. Extremely oversold. Earnings not too great lately, but it is owned by value oriented funds so they must see something worthy here. Haven't studied the stock in a while, but based on charts I think it is a good play here.

WorldMoneyRFB53 (28.47) Submitted: 9/25/2009 4:49:15 PM : Start Price: $9.52 IMN Score: -64.30

WorldMoneyRFB53
MYLNP & MYLNG ARE HOT STOCK

Klog24 (53.44) Submitted: 6/18/2009 9:05:43 AM : Start Price: $9.31 IMN Score: -77.90

Imation is a removable data storage media company the market has oversold due to an overreaction to unfavorable industry trends. Imation’s problem and the cause of the selling pressure is two-fold; Imation’s primary and highest margin products are proprietary and semi-proprietary magnetic tape products and the market for these products is slowly deteriorating due to the emergence of new storage formats. Secondly, although demand for data storage is dramatically increasing each year, removable media market size is expected to decline in terms of revenue. One reason for this is open format tape, or non-proprietary tape, continues to gain share against the proprietary legacy formats owned by companies like Imation. The result of this trend is fewer units will be shipped because the new non-proprietary storage formats have higher capacity cartridges, are typically more competitive with lower gross margins, and lead to greater price competition. So despite increased storage demand, revenues will likely decline.

Obviously these are unfavorable industry trends. However, Imation has a viable business model and is transforming their product mix. They are reducing their reliance on the only product they manufacture themselves, magnetic tape for data storage, and expanding their product offerings in optical, flash, and removable HDD. For a sense of the growth opportunity, the magnetic tape business is estimated to be a $1.8B industry, while the optical and flash media industries are estimated to be $3B and $11B, respectively, and removable HDD is still an emerging industry. I think this business is worth something, but the current valuation implies the product lines have almost zero value.

Imation trades at a 22% FCF yield on 2008 numbers and has consistently generated strong free cash flow for the past 10 years. On TTM it trades at a 15% FCF yield and EV/EBITDA is 2.6x using 2008 numbers. Even if EBITDA is cut in half, it will trade at only 5.2x EBITDA. They also have a very strong balance sheet and even when I am extremely conservative, I calculate a liquidation value of roughly $8.00 a share.

The average street estimates imply Imation will do $1.9B in sales in 2009 and $2.2B in sales in 2010. EBITDA margins peaked in 2002 at 13% and in 2008 they hit an all time low of 3.9%. My worst-case scenario estimate for 2009 leads me to believe the stock is too cheap to ignore.

Downside Scenario
- Revenues come in at roughly $1.5B, or 20% below the lowest street estimate out there of $1.87B.
- Margins decline to all time lows of 3%.
- 2009 EBITDA is roughly $45mm (3% EBITDA margin on $1.5B)
- End 2009 with EV/EBITDA multiple of roughly 5x.

That's cheap.

jcmontano (46.13) Submitted: 1/28/2008 10:01:16 AM : Start Price: $39.59 IMN Score: +82.70

I´ve always like this company products, but it seems they lag behind the market developments of its industry... it´s also likely that they still have the 3M internal "mind set"... kind of a paquidermic structure.

NeroSagetrade (93.97) Submitted: 10/11/2007 8:31:21 PM : Start Price: $24.73 IMN Score: -65.93

If Im going to own SanDisk in the flash memory arena I might as well own the most undervalued removable data storage company. Imation is trading at nearly par to book value. They are growing revenues at 25-30% per year but are reeling from a slight reduction in EPS over the last two quarters. Still the company is trading at just 12 times forward earnings and they are clearly growing faster than nearly all other competitors. They are extremely cash heavy as well, with $6 per share in cash with no debt. I'd bet these oversold conditions don't hold for long and I'd be a buyer here.

Nero

Sagetrade