Stocks

The Western Union Company (WU)

This Month’s Stock:

The Western Union Company | (WU) | http://www.westernunion.com/

In a Nutshell:

Founded in 1851, Western Union is a provider of money transfer services, such as sending money around the world, paying bills and purchasing money orders. The Company operates through two segments: consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-business. In the consumer-to-consumer segment the Company provides its third-party agents with its multi-currency, real-time money transfer processing systems used to originate and pay money transfers. This service is very popular with immigrants who regularly send money to their family in their home country. In the consumer-to-business segment the Company offers consumers options to make payments electronically over the telephone or the Internet, and to make cash payments in person at an agent location. It processes electronic payments using the consumer’s credit card, debit card or bank account.

The Numbers:

Revenue has been increasing steadily from $3.1 Billion in 2003 to $4.5 Billion in 2006 although Net Income stayed steady for the last two years.

Estimated earnings per share for 2007 and 2008 are $1.11 and $1.26 respectively

Enterprise Value: $18.8B
Free Cash Flow: $942M
Estimated Growth (5 years): 12.13%
Return on Equity: N/A

P/E Ratio: 21.1. It’s much lower than the industry average of 54.3

Revenue per employee: $807,500 is significantly higher than the industry average of $100,000.

Income Statement | Balance Sheet | Cash Flow

Interesting Facts:

- The company became independent from First Data corporation in September 2006.
- The company recently announced that it would buy back $1 Billion worth of shares.
- Western Union is a preferred method of money transfer by online scammers because it is very hard to trace back to the offender.

Noteworthy Competitor:

CheckFree Corp (CKFR)

Rate this stock (WU) and add your comments:

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading …

The author of this post does not own shares of either WU or CKFR.