M & F Worldwide Corp. (MFW)

btthus (78.32) Submitted: 11/26/2009 7:32:40 PM : Start Price: $31.84 MFW Score: +0.65

P/E Ratio 4.88

EclecticRecluse (75.45) Submitted: 11/23/2009 2:07:49 PM : Start Price: $33.07 MFW Score: -1.02

High Public Opinion with High Relative Strength

Ak66 (81.22) Submitted: 10/25/2009 5:47:14 PM : Start Price: $23.37 MFW Score: +37.33

These conglomeration of unrelated businesses are hard to value and analyests do not like them because they are hard to describe. Looks like a good small business. Concern about how they treat customers (as posted in this blog). I want to track it for a while.

cornpalace (73.24) Submitted: 11/19/2008 9:10:10 PM : Start Price: $13.55 MFW Score: +98.75

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.

kristm (99.71) Submitted: 4/21/2008 5:14:56 AM : Start Price: $36.31 MFW Score: +7.05

M&F is a taped-together wad of unrelated businesses, but they're all profitable and dominate their respective markets. Check printing business is one of only two significant players in this space, they just merged two competing check printers into one operating unit (leaving one other outside competitor). It throws off mad cash and doesn't require much capital to run. Only issue is the decreasing demand for checks as people move to electronic payments, but check-based payments will never completely go away. Their financial services division isn't much of a factor to the bottom line, and the licorice-producer subsidiary is kinda stupid to tie into everything else, it's small profits need to be sold to some bigger player in the candy space. Also owns Scantron, you should be familiar with them if you've ever taken one of those fill-in-the-dots #2 pencil tests. Strongly embedded in the educational market.

PRJR (< 20) Submitted: 1/17/2008 11:23:58 PM : Start Price: $37.54 MFW Score: -1.53

Management of Mafco are highly unappreciated by their customers and suppliers. Customers are put in a hostage situation and therefore they are willing to frees or even cancel their cooperation with Mafco in the future. This brings in danger the future growth of Mafco. Investors will become aware of this situation and will take the same decision as the customers "leave that company aside".

Stock has hardly no (future) value

ShortCover (26.22) Submitted: 5/31/2007 5:34:55 PM : Start Price: $68.85 MFW Score: -28.24

Cleared prior high after pullback to 50 DMA.

Nitehwk6 (29.43) Submitted: 5/3/2007 7:12:29 PM : Start Price: $63.55 MFW Score: -25.88

Now that the merger between Harland and Clarke American is complete, Harland Clarke will control over 60% of the check market. This will be a strong company that will continue to show revenue growth in a mature market.

soks86 (48.86) Submitted: 4/16/2007 1:04:40 PM : Start Price: $60.25 MFW Score: -25.27

Merger being pushed ahead, the acquisition is much more interesting than the company itself but I'm betting on things going for the best.

janmfarley (30.19) Submitted: 4/6/2007 11:48:07 PM : Start Price: $60.32 MFW Score: -26.39

whatever

provb (< 20) Submitted: 3/17/2007 1:58:33 AM : Start Price: $37.80 MFW Score: -2.50

This is a short term play to the downside. 56.67 within the next 2 weeks.

mutantninjaturtl (63.79) Submitted: 2/6/2007 1:09:04 AM : Start Price: $36.10 MFW Score: +9.50

Cawabonga!!!!

grifway2003 (< 20) Submitted: 1/3/2007 1:50:39 AM : Start Price: $25.88 MFW Score: +43.40

3 Yr Breakout on heavy volume