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Case 35: Stock Repurchase Program Recommendation Essay

Decent Essays

Memo
To: Rajat Singh, managing director at Hudson Bancorp
From:
Date: 08/01/2002
Re: Stock Repurchase Program Recommendation

The purpose of this memo is to examine whether Deluxe Corporation should increase borrowings to buyback stocks. After considerable analysis of the company’s financial position, we recommend that Deluxe Corp. to borrow up to $1.023 billion to buy back 34,175 shares. In order to achieve this, Deluxe will need to lower its bond rating from A rating to BBB , which results in a decrease in WACC from 11.47% to 9.95%. By doing this, Deluxe ’s WACC is minimized, yet the bond rating is still at investment –grade rating; plus, the firm will have a financial flexibility of $872 million, and an increase in its equity …show more content…

We estimate the terminal value growth rate to be at -2%; we make this assumption by taking the average of the industry’s annual decline growth rate between 1% and 3%. The free cash flows for 2002-2006 are taken from the company’s Financial Forecast; and, to calculate the terminal year’s free cash flows, we grow it by -2% and divide it by the difference between the WACC and the long term growth rate. Since August 1st is our evaluation date, there is still 5 months left for 2002, the cash flow to be received for 2002 is calculated by taking the total cash flow times 5/12, and for the remaining years, the cash flow to be received is equal to the total cash flows. And, finally, for the midyear factor ,we also take same caution that t are 5 months left to receive cash flows, and payments are made semiannually . Thus, our mid-year factor for 2002 is 5 over 24, and (5+6) over 12 for 2003, and for the remaining years we add 1 to the prior year’s midyear factor.
Flexibility by rating
Our analysis of the flexibility in allowed debt under each bond rating provided us the maximum allowable unused debt for each rating. We calculated this figure by considering both the interest coverage ratio as well as the leverage ratio, and then using the smaller of the two figures. We calculated the maximum allowable debt using the leverage ratio by

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