Spinoff spotlight: Fortrea Holding Inc.

Article Excerpt

FORTREA HOLDINGS INC. $29 is still a spinoff buy. The company (Nasdaq symbol FTRE; Manufacturing sector; Shares outstanding: 88.8 million; Market cap: $2.6 billion; No dividend paid; Takeover Target Rating: Medium; www.fortrea.com) is a contract research organization (CRO) that provides clinical drug trial management to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. On June 30, 2023, Laboratory Corp. of America (New York symbol LH) spun off Fortrea as a separate firm. Shareholders received one Fortrea share for each Labcorp share they held. Shares of the new company are down about 10% since the spinoff. That’s partly due to concerns over its long-term debt of $1.58 billion (as of June 30, 2023). The amount represents a high 61% of Fortrea’s market cap. It also held cash of $114.3 million. Despite its high debt, company’s long-term outlook remains bright as pharmaceutical firms continue to ramp up spending on the development of new drugs. As well, Fortrea’s order backlog of $7.0 billion is equal to 2.3 times its annual revenue of $3.05 billion. That…