About Me 0072: Making Money Cash

Ikenna Njoku, 28, was thrilled when he bought his first home with the help of the homebuyer tax credit.

“I was really excited. For the first time, I actually got to buy a lawn mower, mow my lawn and everything,” he told King5 News in Seattle.

As a construction worker in the post-housing bubble Njoku was grateful that he qualified for the first time home buyer tax credit on his tax return. But when he went to cash the JP Morgan Chase check at Chase Bank, the teller told him the check "looked fake," took Njoku's ID and called Bank Support.

After waiting another 15 minutes, Njoku told Chase he needed to take off and run an errand. When he came back the bank was closed and when he called customer service they told him to come back the following day.

He did, but instead of the money the police were waiting for him. “They just threw me in jail. They called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.

He was charged with felony forgery on Thursday. “I was like - you’re making a mistake, you’re making a mistake, don’t take me to jail, I got work tomorrow. I can’t afford to miss work,” he said.

On Friday, Chase Special Investigations recognized the check as legitimate and rather than call a 24 hour number, they called the detective in charge of the arrest and left a message that wasn't heard until Monday morning.

By that time Njoku's car was towed from the bank's lot, he'd lost his job by not showing up and his check had been seized as evidence. Because he couldn't access his money his car was then auctioned off.

Almost a year later, Njoku has yet to receive an apology from the bank. Last week a Seattle attorney offered to help and sent the bank a three-page letter demanding reparations.

King5 News tried contacting Chase and a week later received this two line email from Darcy Donoahoe-Wilmot at Chase Media Relations: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

Check out the King5 story below:

New to the investing game and interested in learning some metrics that can help you analyze a company’s prospects? If so, this can be a great place to start your education.

To create the list of stocks below we have pulled together several financial analyst metrics to find companies with bullish indicators. Each term is defined in detail to help you perform your own analysis.

In making this list we focused on cash flow growth - arguably one of the most important considerations in the financial analysis of a company. While earnings and net worth are subject to management estimates, cash flow is very difficult to alter.

We wanted to search for companies exhibiting positive trends in cash flow growth. We began by screening for those companies that also had a high compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in free operating cash flow (above 20%) for the past 3 years. We then focused on the names that remain significantly undervalued to their mean analyst target price.

These companies also have higher earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) than debt for the last year. Lastly, we narrowed down our list by those experiencing significant increases in institutional buying over the current quarter.

Don’t fully understand these terms? Let’s take a look at what each of these metrics mean and why they are important:

Compound Annual Growth Rate - CAGR
This is the year-over-year growth rate of an investment over a given time. In this article, we used CAGR with Free Operating Cash flow (see below). When a company has a high Free OCF growth rate, it means the company has become increasingly efficient in generating cash from the running its business.

Free Operating Cash Flow
Free operating cash flow (FOCF) is the total operating cash flow minus all operating expenditures, such as wages, repairs, and depreciation. Strong free cash flow signals a company's ability to pay debt, dividends, and invest in their business growth.

Institutional Buying
Institutional investors are also known as "big money" investors or managers. They represent big pools of money such as investment banks, pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, endowment funds, etc. When they invest in stocks, they can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars or more at one time.

Regular investors pay attention to what institutional investors do because it is easy enough to assume that the big money managers know what they are doing -- or at the very least know more than the average investor. This is why these investors are also sometimes referred to as "smart money.” Note, investors should never blindly trust analysts or institutional investors or anybody else. Use information on institutional investing with other research before making any investing decisions.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA)
This is an indicator of financial performance calculated as: Revenue – Expenses (excluding tax, interest, depreciation and amortization). Usually it is used as a proxy for what is available to pay interest. It is useful to compare EBITDA to debt, as EBITDA is earnings available before paying off interest on debt.

Target Price
Analyst target prices can be very useful guides for investors. The target price is a price level set by analysts that, based on their data and estimates, represents their predictions for that company in the upcoming year. Because analysts often have different opinions, we use the average analyst target price.
Although target price is upwardly biased, a steep discount from this number can indicate an undervalued opportunity.

Given the data points, do you think these companies are undervalued? Are institutions making the right moves? Use the list below as a starting-off point for your own analysis.

Analyze These Ideas (Tools Will Open In A New Window)
1. Access a thorough description of all companies mentioned
2. Compare analyst ratings for all stocks mentioned below
3. Visualize annual returns for all stocks mentioned

1. Zumiez Inc. (ZUMZ): Services Industry. Market cap $797.63M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 3.2M, representing 14.76% of the 21.68M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 75.70%. Last year EBITDA at $53.76M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $25.73 vs. target price at $30.88 (implies a potential upside of 20.02%).

2. Synaptics, Incorporated (SYNA): Technology Industry. Market cap $887.42M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 4.3M, representing 12.66% of the 33.96M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 72.34%. Last year EBITDA at $70.36M vs. total debt at $2.3M. Current price at $25.91 vs. target price at $32.68 (implies a potential upside of 26.14%).

3. Ebix, Inc. (EBIX): Technology Industry. Market cap $762.17M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 3.7M, representing 10.87% of the 34.03M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 56.61%. Last year EBITDA at $58.54M vs. total debt at $35.57M. Current price at $19.31 vs. target price at $29.50 (implies a potential upside of 52.77%).

4. LogMeIn, Inc. (LOGM): Technology Industry. Market cap $901.88M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 2.0M, representing 9.81% of the 20.38M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 165.17%. Last year EBITDA at $21.91M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $37.5 vs. target price at $50.43 (implies a potential upside of 34.48%).

5. KongZhong Corporation (ADR) (KONG): Services Industry. Market cap $191.87M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 530.4K, representing 9.4% of the 5.64M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 159.85%. Last year EBITDA at $10.16M vs. total debt at $3.55M. Current price at $5.08 vs. target price at $10.00 (implies a potential upside of 96.85%).

6. Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO): Services Industry. Market cap $1108.25M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 517.8K, representing 9.35% of the 5.54M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 34.87%. Last year EBITDA at $25.86M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $67.33 vs. target price at $109.40 (implies a potential upside of 62.48%).

7. OpenTable Inc. (OPEN): Technology Industry. Market cap $1943.46M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 2.0M, representing 9.11% of the 21.95M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 61.46%. Last year EBITDA at $25.48M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $82.56 vs. target price at $104.70 (implies a potential upside of 26.82%).

8. LHC Group, Inc. (LHCG): Healthcare Industry. Market cap $440.8M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 1.4M, representing 8.91% of the 15.72M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 90.95%. Last year EBITDA at $103.15M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $23.61 vs. target price at $28.70 (implies a potential upside of 21.56%).

9. AsiaInfo-Linkage, Inc. (ASIA): Technology Industry. Market cap $1245.54M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 4.0M, representing 8.86% of the 45.15M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 21.01%. Last year EBITDA at $84.95M vs. total debt at $0. Current price at $16.96 vs. target price at $26.92 (implies a potential upside of 58.72%).

10. ION Geophysical Corporation (IO): Energy Industry. Market cap $1533.94M. Net institutional shares purchased over the current quarter at 8.9M, representing 7.78% of the 114.35M share float. 3-year CAGR of free operating cash flow at 55.92%. Last year EBITDA at $180.43M vs. total debt at $108.66M. Current price at $9.89 vs. target price at $14.00 (implies a potential upside of 41.56%).

(List compiled by Becca Lipman)

About Me 0072

Monday, August 1, 2011

Making Money Cash

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