Yahoo Finance Should Investors Be Happy About FleetCor Technologies, Inc.’s (NYSE:FLT) Cash Levels?
FleetCor Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FLT) shareholders, and potential investors, need to understand how much cash the business makes from its core operational activities, as well as how much is invested back into the business. After investment, what’s left over is what belongs to you, the investor. This also determines how much the stock is worth. I will take you through FLT’s cash flow health and the risk-return concept based on the stock’s cash flow yield, using the most recent financial data. This will help you think about the company from a cash perspective, which is a crucial factor to investing.
View our latest analysis for FleetCor Technologies
What is FleetCor Technologies’s cash yield?
FleetCor Technologies’s free cash flow (FCF) is the level of cash flow the business generates from its operational activities, after it reinvests in the company as capital expenditure. This type of expense is needed for FleetCor Technologies to continue to grow, or at least, maintain its current operations.
I will be analysing FleetCor Technologies’s FCF by looking at its FCF yield and its operating cash flow growth. The yield will tell us whether the stock is generating enough cash to compensate for the risk investors take on by holding a single stock, which I will compare to the market index. The growth will proxy for sustainability levels of this cash generation.
Free Cash Flow = Operating Cash Flows – Net Capital Expenditure
Free Cash Flow Yield = Free Cash Flow / Enterprise Value
where Enterprise Value = Market Capitalisation + Net Debt
FleetCor Technologies’s yield of 2.72% indicates its sub-standard capacity to generate cash, compared to the stock market index as a whole, accounting for the size differential. This means investors are taking on more concentrated risk on FleetCor Technologies but are not being adequately rewarded for doing so.
Does FleetCor Technologies have a favourable cash flow trend?
Can FLT improve its operating cash production in the future? Let’s take a quick look at the cash flow trend the company is expected to deliver over time. In the next couple of years, the company is expected to grow its cash from operations at a double-digit rate of 64%, ramping up from its current levels of US$800m to US$1.3b in two years’ time. Although this seems impressive, breaking down into year-on-year growth rates, FLT’s operating cash flow growth is expected to decline from a rate of 43% next year, to 15% in the following year. However the overall picture seems encouraging, should capital expenditure levels maintain at an appropriate level.
Next Steps:
Although its positive operating cash flow, and high future growth, is appealing, the low free cash flow yield is unattractive. This is because you would be better compensated in terms of cash yield, by investing in the market index, as well as take on lower diversification risk. However, cash is only one aspect of investing. Keep in mind that cash is only one aspect of investment analysis and there are other important fundamentals to assess. I recommend you continue to research FleetCor Technologies to get a better picture of the company by looking at:
Valuation: What is FLT worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether FLT is currently mispriced by the market.
Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look at who sits on FleetCor Technologies’s board and the CEO’s back ground.
Other High-Performing Stocks: If you believe you should cushion your portfolio with something less risky, scroll through our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
