Cheap compounder unduly punished after dividend cut
Updated
Hot take: there's alpha in buying dividend cuts
Here's a contrarian belief I hold: dividend cuts are almost always good, because they extend the life and increase the terminal value of the company.
However, the market almost always punishes companies that cut dividends. There are two reasons for that:
1) A lot of investors don't read financial reports and don't know the financial situation of the company until the dividend cut acts as an information signal.
2) Income/dividend investing tends to be very rules-based, with the main rule being that you should only own "dividend aristocrats" that have steadily increased dividends without a cut.
Thus, there tends to be more sellers than buyers for a while after a dividend cut, because the income investors jump ship faster than the value investors catch on. A dividend cut can therefore present a good buying opportunity for value investors who can time it right.
And there's another factor to consider, too, which is that not every dividend cut is a sign of financial distress. There are two kinds of companies that cut dividends: those that couldn't sustain the payout, and those that see a market opportunity and want to pivot to growth. Uninformed investors often punish both types of dividend cuts identically, even though the meaning of the information signal is quite different in the two cases.
Medifast: an unduly punished compounder
And that brings me to the case of Medifast, a small-cap nutrition and weight-loss company that discontinued its 6.60/share dividend last month. Was this because of financial distress? Actually, no. Medifast had 11.01/share of earnings and 15.57/share of free cash flow over the last 12 months, so it easily could have sustained the dividend. Medifast's explanation for the cut is that it wants to free up capital to pursue a growth strategy. With the recent popularity of GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Medifast wants to add GLP-1s as a core part of its health coaching business and quickly scale the business out. The dividend cut is a sign of distress only in the sense that Medifast earnings and revenue have declined since mid 2022, and the company is moving to arrest that slump and return its trajectory to growth.
How cheap it it really?
Let's look at Medifast's multiples. According to its last financial report, Medifast has zero debt and just $17 million in lease obligations. With a $578 million market cap and $113 million in cash and cash equivalents, that puts Medifast's enterprise value at $482 million.
Over the last twelve months, Medifast generated about $1.2 billion in sales, $119 million in earnings, and $170 million in free cash flow, which gives it the following multiples:
EV/earnings: 4.1
EV/sales: 0.4
EV/FCF: 2.8
That's a 35% trailing twelve months free cash flow yield.
Now, Medifast is definitely more expensive on a price-to-book basis, about 3.0 P/B. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it indicates that Medifast is a capital-light business with a high return on invested capital. If it can get anywhere near the same return on its savings from the dividend cut, then there's a lot of growth potential here.
We do have to be a little cautious about the TTM multiples, because Medifast may have been over-earning during this period. But if we use linear-modeled rather than real numbers, the results aren't dramatically different. The EV/earnings and EV/sales multiples change only negligibly, though EV/FCF rises to 4.0 (free cash flow yield of 25%).
To be sure, analysts' forward estimates paint a more subdued picture, with a forward EV/earnings multiple of about 8.9 and forward EV/sales of about 0.6. But those are still good multiples, and it's important to note that Medifast has a long history of crushing analyst estimates. In the last fours quarters, it beat earnings forecasts by 99%, 92%, 53%, and 67%, with revenue beats ranging from about 1% to 10%. So the analysts may be underrating Medifast's prospects here, and I am looking for earnings at least 40% better than forecast.
Even if they fail to monetize GLP-1s, they can buy back stock
Even if I'm wrong, 8.9 and 0.6 are still really good multiples, making this an attractive value stock. And Medifast's dividend cut should free up capital not only for its growth strategy, but also for opportunistic buybacks while the stock is cheap.
Medifast is my largest single name, at about 5% of my portfolio. There is support at the March 2018 low of $50.11 and the March 2020 low of $41.53. I'm looking for a double, to about $107.
Here's a contrarian belief I hold: dividend cuts are almost always good, because they extend the life and increase the terminal value of the company.
However, the market almost always punishes companies that cut dividends. There are two reasons for that:
1) A lot of investors don't read financial reports and don't know the financial situation of the company until the dividend cut acts as an information signal.
2) Income/dividend investing tends to be very rules-based, with the main rule being that you should only own "dividend aristocrats" that have steadily increased dividends without a cut.
Thus, there tends to be more sellers than buyers for a while after a dividend cut, because the income investors jump ship faster than the value investors catch on. A dividend cut can therefore present a good buying opportunity for value investors who can time it right.
And there's another factor to consider, too, which is that not every dividend cut is a sign of financial distress. There are two kinds of companies that cut dividends: those that couldn't sustain the payout, and those that see a market opportunity and want to pivot to growth. Uninformed investors often punish both types of dividend cuts identically, even though the meaning of the information signal is quite different in the two cases.
Medifast: an unduly punished compounder
And that brings me to the case of Medifast, a small-cap nutrition and weight-loss company that discontinued its 6.60/share dividend last month. Was this because of financial distress? Actually, no. Medifast had 11.01/share of earnings and 15.57/share of free cash flow over the last 12 months, so it easily could have sustained the dividend. Medifast's explanation for the cut is that it wants to free up capital to pursue a growth strategy. With the recent popularity of GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Medifast wants to add GLP-1s as a core part of its health coaching business and quickly scale the business out. The dividend cut is a sign of distress only in the sense that Medifast earnings and revenue have declined since mid 2022, and the company is moving to arrest that slump and return its trajectory to growth.
How cheap it it really?
Let's look at Medifast's multiples. According to its last financial report, Medifast has zero debt and just $17 million in lease obligations. With a $578 million market cap and $113 million in cash and cash equivalents, that puts Medifast's enterprise value at $482 million.
Over the last twelve months, Medifast generated about $1.2 billion in sales, $119 million in earnings, and $170 million in free cash flow, which gives it the following multiples:
EV/earnings: 4.1
EV/sales: 0.4
EV/FCF: 2.8
That's a 35% trailing twelve months free cash flow yield.
Now, Medifast is definitely more expensive on a price-to-book basis, about 3.0 P/B. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it indicates that Medifast is a capital-light business with a high return on invested capital. If it can get anywhere near the same return on its savings from the dividend cut, then there's a lot of growth potential here.
We do have to be a little cautious about the TTM multiples, because Medifast may have been over-earning during this period. But if we use linear-modeled rather than real numbers, the results aren't dramatically different. The EV/earnings and EV/sales multiples change only negligibly, though EV/FCF rises to 4.0 (free cash flow yield of 25%).
To be sure, analysts' forward estimates paint a more subdued picture, with a forward EV/earnings multiple of about 8.9 and forward EV/sales of about 0.6. But those are still good multiples, and it's important to note that Medifast has a long history of crushing analyst estimates. In the last fours quarters, it beat earnings forecasts by 99%, 92%, 53%, and 67%, with revenue beats ranging from about 1% to 10%. So the analysts may be underrating Medifast's prospects here, and I am looking for earnings at least 40% better than forecast.
Even if they fail to monetize GLP-1s, they can buy back stock
Even if I'm wrong, 8.9 and 0.6 are still really good multiples, making this an attractive value stock. And Medifast's dividend cut should free up capital not only for its growth strategy, but also for opportunistic buybacks while the stock is cheap.
Medifast is my largest single name, at about 5% of my portfolio. There is support at the March 2018 low of $50.11 and the March 2020 low of $41.53. I'm looking for a double, to about $107.
Note
Medifast is plumbing my main support level today. It reports earnings Monday. Market does not seem optimistic. I am ready for you to break my heart, Medifast. Let's do this thing. ::dice roll emoji::Note
Earnings beat was just 13% and sales beat was only 3%, so MED got annihilated after market. Completely and totally annihilated. I wasn't the only one looking for a big beat. XDNote
Okay, I'm looking over the financials and listening to the call from yesterday's release, and I can see why the price dropped 12% after-market. They beat expectations on an adjusted basis, but not on a GAAP basis, and traditionally they report GAAP. Also, their guidance for the first quarter came in sharply below market expectations: $0.25-0.95 per share EPS vs. analyst range of $0.83-1.93. So, generally not great.There are a few issues here, but the gist of it is that GLP-1 drugs are disrupting Medifast's business, and they're investing in a new GLP-1 product rollout in collaboration with LifeMD. They spent over a third of this quarter's earnings on those preparations, and in 2024 they expect to spend 2-3% of revenues to market the new product as they roll it out. This is obviously gonna put pressure on margins, and it's impossible to know how successful the rollout will be.
Still, the news isn't all bad! With the overnight price drop and Medifast's increase in book value this quarter, it now trades at about 2.3 P/B. I calculate this morning's EV/EBIT ratio at 3.1, EV/sales at 0.37, and EV/FCF at 3.23, for a free cash flow yield of approximately 31%.
Note
Wowie zowie! Looks like we may go all the way down to $37 per share, which would be just below 2 P/B!Note
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess this was the bottom.
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