Thursday, March 29, 2012

Is a YRC Worldwide Turnaround In Sight?


YRC Worldwide has been on the financial operating table for nearly half a decade now, and is currently trading at its 52-week low.

Like any such emergency patient, the nation's second-largest trucking firm has lost a lot of financial blood.  It's one-half the size it once was. It nearly perished twice, in 2009 and again last year. Needless to say its financials are a horror show. How about losing $409 million last year on revenues of $4.87 billion. Ouch.

Yet there is hope. CEO James L. Welch, who has been on the job just nine months, knows the company well having started with it in 1978 when it was called Yellow Transportation, and he's been busy chopping down big expenses. Over the last several months, the company has gotten out of China, gotten out of overnight delivery and has been dumping a number of c-level executives who are no longer needed.

Despite this, Welch is not out of the woods. YRCW is expected to lose another $68.9 million this quarter, Credit Default Swaps (CDS) taken out on the company show an 87% chance of default, and Goldman Sachs, which was credited by former CEO Bill Zollars with helping it stay solvent last year before he left, is no longer making a market. Even its auditor has expressed "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue."  Full Story........

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