This carveout sets you up for gains

Article Excerpt

ALLIANCE DATA SYSTEMS CORP. $100 is a spinoff buy. The company (New York symbol ADS; Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 49.7 million; Market cap: $5.0 billion; Dividend yield: 0.9%; Takeover Target Rating: Medium; www.alliancedata.com) has two main businesses: Card Services (83% of 2020 revenue) operates private-label credit card programs on behalf of retailers including Express and ULTA Beauty; and LoyaltyOne (17%) operates customer loyalty reward plans such as Air Miles in Canada and BrandLoyalty (The Netherlands). Alliance Data now plans to split its two businesses into separate, U.S.-based companies. Investors will not be liable for capital gains taxes until they sell their new shares. The company will first hand out 81% of its shares in LoyaltyOne to its investors as a special dividend and then sell the remaining 19%. That two-step spinoff is called a carveout. The share sale and a dividend from LoyaltyOne, as part of the carveout, will let Alliance pay down its long-term debt of $4.66 billion. Note, that equals…