Disclosure: I am long YRCW. (More...)
The past three-plus years in the market have yielded some tremendous turnaround opportunities for investors. Pier 1 (PIR), Select Comfort (SCSS), Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Sirius (SIRI), and a host of other stocks have yielded huge returns to investors that believed in the turnaround stories. Each one had huge hurdles to jump, whether it was heavy debt loads at LVS or SIRI, or a history of mismanagement at PIR. The market has continued on its bull run for over three years now and while still slow, the economic recovery continues.
Over the past couple of months, I have spent a good deal of time trying to find the next turnaround stories that will be aided by continued economic growth. The two best companies I could find are YRC Worldwide (YRCW) and Nokia (NOK). Both seem like highly unlikely candidates to turn their business around, yet there are enough green shoots to make me think it's worth giving them the benefit of the doubt.
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YRC Worldwide
YRC Worldwide had been on the brink of bankruptcy for three years. After several restructurings, negotiations with lenders, reverse stocks splits and an entire new management team put into place last year, it appears that things are FINALLY on the mend. Consider the following recent developments:
(1) Renegotiated pension obligations - obligations over next few years are significantly lower now after negotiations with Teamsters.
(2) Extended terms with its lenders so there are no obligations until late 2014.
(3) Booked first operating profit in over 4 years.
(4) Regionals are taking market share away from competitors -- regional revs grew close to 10% last quarter.
(5) New management team has focused on better customer service and improved delivery times. To that end, it has improved on time deliveries from the low 60% level to over 80%.
(6) On a pro forma basis after taking into account the Union Pension Cessation and Cash Interest / LC Fees benefit in 2011, adjusted FCF improved by $46.4M last quarter.
(7) S&P recently gave the company's $400 Million ABL Facility a Recovery "1" Rating, the second best possible recovery rating.
(8) EBITDA jumped almost 10% as a result of a focus on higher margin business at YRC Freight and a reduction in overall costs.
(9) New CEO James Welch has the company focused exclusively on the North American LTL operations, and has divested non-core assets like Jiayu, Glen Moore and excess real estate.
As a comparison, take a look at another heavily indebted company that had negative equity / no equity and was losing money: Sirius. SIRI had no equity and about $3 billion in debt in 2009, and was losing over $300 million. However, it had also just turned an operating profit for the first time in a long time in 2009, and right around that time, the stock bottomed out and proceeded to rise 50-fold over the next three years.
While the negative story sounds like the more articulate one with YRCW, the company has already turned an operating profit and CEO Welch maintains that positive net income is coming in 2013. If this happens, the stock could do a quantum leap higher, as it is currently being left for dead. As it stands right now, at a $50 million market cap, the company trades at 0.01 times sales versus an industry average of 0.35.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/890571-yrc-worldwide-and-nokia-huge-potential-turnaround-stories?source=nasdaq
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