Mario Gabelli’s Potential Takeover Candidate (Part 2): Boulder Brands Inc (BDBD)

Peers Comparison

At the current trading price of $13.60 per share, the total market cap is nearly $808.5 million. It has a quite high valuation at 28.76x EV/EBITDA. Hain Celestial is a much larger company, with $2.67 billion in market cap. The market is valuing Hain at 16.25x EV/EBITDA. The WhiteWave Foods Co (NYSE:WWAV), the spinoff of Dean Foods Company (NYSE:DF), has the cheapest valuation among the three. With the total market cap of $2.9 billion, the market is valuing WhiteWave at 12.88x EV/EBITDA. Despite the difficult economic environment in Europe, WhiteWave still had double-digit growth in both plant-based food & beverage and coffee creamer segments. Among the three Boulder Brands is the most leveraged with 0.7x D/E, while both WhiteWave and Hain have 0.4x debt-equity ratio. In terms of operating performance, Hain had the highest LTM operating margin at 10.5%. The operating margin of Boulder Brands is the lowest at 7.24%, while WhiteWave had 8.25% operating margin.

Foolish Takeaway

CEO Stephen Huges has a great record of turning around food companies by restructuring the brand portfolio. He has been doing the right thing for Boulder Brands with the acquisition of gluten-free food makers. With the fast growing gluten-free brands portfolio, I personally think that Boulder Brands is a decent potential takeover candidate.

The article Mario Gabelli’s Potential Takeover Candidate (Part 2) originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Anh HOANG.

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