Are Investors Missing the Boat on This $7 Shipping Stock?

It’s not every day you come across a stock that looks as deeply undervalued as Teekay (NYSE: TK).

The marine shipping company has been one of my favorite under-the-radar value plays for a while now. And given its stock chart, I’m sure its shareholders have felt much the same way.

After a more than threefold rise from mid-2022 to February of this year, the stock has come down about 20% from its high. Even so, I’m more convinced than ever that the market is missing the boat here.

Let me explain.

To start, consider Teekay’s valuation. The company currently trades at an enterprise value-to-net asset value (EV/NAV) ratio of just 0.74. To put that in perspective, the average EV/NAV for similar companies – companies with positive net assets and four consecutive quarters of positive free cash flows – is 6.8. That makes Teekay exceptionally cheap.

In simpler terms, if you wanted to acquire Teekay and all of its ships and other assets today, you’d have to pay only $0.74 on the dollar, whereas its most comparable peers would cost you more than nine times as much.

But a cheap price alone doesn’t make a stock a screaming buy. After all, plenty of lousy businesses trade at steep discounts to book value. The real key is finding a company that’s both inexpensive and consistently generating cash.

And Teekay fits the bill.

Over the past four quarters, the company’s free cash flow averaged a whopping 9.8% of its net assets. The average for companies with four straight quarters of positive free cash flow was just 8.6%.

So not only is Teekay dirt cheap… it’s also consistently generating cash flows at a higher clip than average.

How is Teekay pulling this off while many of its shipping peers tread water? Two words: Teekay Tankers.

Teekay Tankers (NYSE: TNK), of which Teekay is the majority stakeholder, has proven to be a gold mine amid the recent tanker market boom. With spot fleet rates for its Suezmax and Aframax tankers soaring in Q4 to $37,000 and $45,000 per day, respectively, Teekay Tankers saw its revenue jump 10% over the previous quarter to $313.3 million, while net income surged 37% to a record $111.7 million.

Teekay, the parent company, has been milking this cash cow to line its own coffers. It received $2.4 million in cash distributions from Teekay Tankers in Q4 alone and $17 million for the full year.

As a result, its own bottom line has been fattening up quite a bit.

And management sees plenty more good times ahead for the tanker trade. Due to several factors in the macro environment, including the rebound in Chinese oil demand, further worries about regional conflict in the Middle East and ongoing supply constraints as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, oil prices could get a huge boost.

If the tanker boom stays on course, Teekay could have massive upside. And even if revenues cool off, you’re still paying a bargain-basement price for a business that gushes cash.

To top it off, Teekay continues to focus on returning capital to shareholders. In Q4, the company repurchased $4 million worth of its stock, bringing the total value of its buybacks since August 2022 to a hefty $65.8 million.

That’s a serious vote of confidence from management that these dirt-cheap shares are worth scooping up. And I couldn’t agree more.

The Value Meter rates Teekay as being “Extremely Undervalued.”

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