Good time to buy ShawCor

Article Excerpt

SHAWCOR LTD. $41 (Toronto symbol SCL; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 58.8 million; Market cap: $2.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 1.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.shawcor.com) has completed its plan to convert its class A (one vote per share) and class B (10 votes per share) shares into a single class of common shares (one vote per share). Under the plan, each class A share became one common share. Class B shareholders had the option of receiving 1.1 common shares or $43.43 in cash for each share they held (the company capped the cash portion at 90% of the total compensation). ShawCor will also pay a special dividend of $1.00 a share to all shareholders on April 19, 2013. The total cost of buying back the class B shares and the special dividend is roughly $580 million. To help pay for this, ShawCor has borrowed $350 million U.S. That pushed up its total debt to…