On September 5, Meredith (MDP) issued weak guidance for the year ahead. The company's leverage profile and payout ratio will now remain elevated for longer than we expected, and execution risk has also increased. As a result, we downgraded Meredith's Dividend Safety Score from Safe to Borderline Safe. Meredith's dividend still seems unlikely to be cut for now and the [...]
Meredith (MDP) is one of the nation's oldest media and publishing companies, having been founded in 1902 as an agricultural publisher. At its core, Meredith provides consumers with content by leveraging print, digital, mobile, video, and broadcast TV media platforms. Nationally, the firm reaches over 180 million American consumers. Advertising accounts for a little over [...]
Earlier this year, we published a note reviewing Macy's dividend safety profile and struggles turning around its brick-and-mortar retail business. In the note, we said that Macy's Borderline Safe Dividend Safety Score was predicated in part on the company's turnaround efforts not stalling more than they already have. Unfortunately, Macy's turnaround efforts have appeared to do just that. Despite [...]
In December 2015, Dow (DOW) and DuPont (DD) announced plans to merge, then break up into three independent companies. The idea was to create larger, more focused businesses by combining the areas of overlap in their complementary portfolios. Here's a look at each company's 2015 revenue mix. As you can see, Dow and DuPont each had large [...]
Philip Morris International (PM) surprised investors last week when the firm confirmed it was in discussions with Altria (MO) about a potential all-stock, merger of equals. After all, these two tobacco giants had separated just over a decade ago when Altria spun off Philip Morris International in 2008. The idea of a potential reunion has not been received well [...]
Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) was founded in 1855 and is one of North America's largest banks. The firm's revenue is fairly balanced between net interest income, or lending businesses (57% of sales), and non-interest income operations (43% of revenue is from non-lending businesses such as insurance policies, card services, service charges, asset management, credit fees, brokerage [...]
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (CBRL) has been in business since 1969 and operates a chain of more than 650 company-owned restaurants located throughout the U.S. Cracker Barrel's country-themed, full-service restaurants offer diners a variety of breakfast (24% of sales), lunch (39%), and dinner (37%) foods with meals costing about $10 on average. Each restaurant [...]