Four months ago, financial news powerhouse Thomson Reuters
But first, a caveat: This is not going to be an easy task. As a recently merged entity, Thomson Reuters (TR) leans heavily upon "pro forma" accounting of its results, and will probably continue to do so throughout at least the first year of its existence.
Regardless, in analyzing the results (today and in the future), I'm going to stick as much as possible to the GAAP numbers. Not because I don't trust TR, mind you. Heck, I depend on the company's various divisions to provide accurate data to any number of data sources I use -- McGraw-Hill's
- Sales grew 43%, clocking in at nearly $5 billion.
- TR earned a 10.3% operating margin and a 7.4% net margin on these revenues.
- Which worked out to $0.51 per share, diluted.
Now, $0.51 may not sound like a lot of profit for a $35 stock. If you run-rate that out through the end of the year, you'll find yourself staring at a 34 P/E for a company that most analysts don't expect to grow even 13% per year, long term.
The valuation is actually a bit better than that, though. You see, TR is a veritable cash machine, generating $824 million in cash profits over the past six months -- more than twice its net income. Run-rate the free cash flow out six months, and the stock comes back with a much more reasonable price-to-free cash flow ratio of 18.
Valuation
But even that number is a little rich for my taste, and the reason has only partially to do with the probable growth rate. There's also the fact that TR carries more than $7 billion in net debt. Basically, I just don't see a very big margin of safety in the stock right now, so I'll be sitting on the sidelines for the time being, waiting for TR's price to come down to something a bit more reasonable.