What happened
Shares of Bellevue, Washington-based third-party logistics provider Radiant Logistics (RLGT 0.61%) are down 19.7% as of 3 p.m. EDT.
So what
This morning, Spruce Point Capital, a "New York-based investment manager founded in 2009," tweeted out a negative opinion on Radiant Logistics, declaring that Radiant stock has "30-50% downside" risk.
The tweet was accompanied by an article on Seeking Alpha Pro that explained how Radiant appeared on public markets via a reverse merger, and is led by a CEO who was allegedly "involved with Stonepath Group, a public company that failed spectacularly 10 years ago when it admitted accounting irregularities tied to revenue overstatement and expense understatement."
As if those associations weren't enough to scare investors away from the stock already, Spruce Point also went on to criticize Radiant's "financial policies, capital management, and accounting," arguing that the company is suffering from "diverging GAAP/Non-GAAP results, plunging cash flow, and guidance suspension."
By this point, one imagines that investors were all well and truly terrified -- and sold off Radiant Logistics stock en masse.
Radiant Logistics stock is crashing. Should you be scared? Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
Should you sell, too? Let's take a quick look. Right off the bat, we can see that Radiant, at $297 million in market capitalization but with only $5.3 million in trailing profit, sells for the princely sum of 56 times earnings. That seems a pretty high price-to-earnings ratio, even for a stock that, according to analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, is likely to grow earnings at 20% annually over the next five years.
On the other hand, Radiant Logistics boasts very strong free cash flow of $13.5 million -- nearly three times its reported earnings -- which appears to contradict Spruce Point's warning about "plunging" cash flow. Far from plunging, cash profits here look quite strong, and yield a ratio of enterprise value to free cash flow of only 22.
That actually looks pretty reasonable to me for a stock with little debt, and pegged for 20% long-term growth. Crazy as it may sound, I wonder if today's sell-off at Radiant might not actually be a buying opportunity.
