What Hasbro Does With Its Cash

In the quest to find great investments, most investors focus on earnings to gauge a company's financial strength. This is a good start, but earnings can be misleading and incomplete. To get a clearer understanding of a company's ability to earn money and reward you, the shareholder, it's often better to focus on cash flow. In this series, we tear apart a company's cash flow statement to see how much money is truly being earned, and more importantly, what management is doing with that cash.

Step on up, Hasbro (NYSE: HAS  ) .

The first step in analyzing cash flow is to look at net income. Hasbro's net income over the last five years has been impressive:

�	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007
Normalized Net Income	$313 million	$313 million	$330 million	$276 million	$323 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Next, we add back in a few noncash expenses like the depreciation of assets, and adjust net income for changes in inventory, accounts receivable, and accounts payable -- changes in cash levels that reflect a company either paying its bills, or being paid by customers. This yields a figure called cash from operating activities -- the amount of cash a company generates from doing everyday business.

From there, we subtract capital expenditures, or the amount a company spends acquiring or fixing physical assets. This yields one version of a figure called free cash flow, or the true amount of cash a company has left over for its investors after doing business:

�	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007
Free Cash Flow	$297 million	$255 million	$161 million	$476 million	$510 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Now we know how much cash Hasbro is really pulling in each year. Next question: What is it doing with that cash?

There are two ways a company can use free cash flow to directly reward shareholders: dividends and share repurchases. Cash not returned to shareholders can be stashed in the bank, used to invest in other companies and assets, or to pay off debt.

Here's how much Hasbro has returned to shareholders in recent years:

�	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007
Dividends	$154 million	$133 million	$111 million	$107 million	$94 million
Share Repurchases	$423 million	$640 million	$88 million	$360 million	$584 million
Total Returned to Shareholders	$577 million	$773 million	$200 million	$467 million	$678 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

As you can see, the company has repurchased a decent amount of its own stock. That's caused shares outstanding to fall:

�	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007
Shares Outstanding (millions)	134	139	139	141	156

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Now, companies tend to be fairly poor at repurchasing their own shares, buying feverishly when shares are expensive and backing away when they're cheap. Does Hasbro fall into this trap? Let's take a look:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

This is a mixed bag. Most of Hasbro's buybacks are fairly consistent regardless of share price, except for one period: 2009, when shares plunged. Management's record of buybacks is better than most, but not particularly inspiring.

Finally, I like to look at how dividends have added to total shareholder returns:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Shares returned 39% over the last five years, which drops to 22% without dividends -- a nice boost to top off already decent performance.

To gauge how well a company is doing, keep an eye on the cash. How much a company earns is not as important as how much cash is actually coming in the door, and how much cash is coming in the door isn't as important as what management actually does with that cash. Remember, you, the shareholder, own the company. Are you happy with the way management has used Hasbro's cash? Sound off in the comment section below.

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