Should Investors Be Happy About Toromont Industries Ltd.’s (TSE:TIH) Cash Levels?

Toromont Industries Ltd. (TSE:TIH) shareholders, and potential investors, need to understand how much cash the business makes from its core operational activities, as well as how much is invested back into the business. What is left after investment, determines the value of the stock since this cash flow technically belongs to investors of the company. I will take you through Toromont Industries’s cash flow health and the risk-return concept based on the stock’s cash flow yield, using the most recent financial data. This will help you think about the company from a cash perspective, which is a crucial factor to investing.

Check out our latest analysis for Toromont Industries

What is Toromont Industries's cash yield?

Toromont Industries generates cash through its day-to-day business, which needs to be reinvested into the company in order for it to continue operating. What remains after this expenditure, is known as its free cash flow, or FCF, for short.

I will be analysing Toromont Industries’s FCF by looking at its FCF yield and its operating cash flow growth. The yield will tell us whether the stock is generating enough cash to compensate for the risk investors take on by holding a single stock, which I will compare to the market index. The growth will proxy for sustainability levels of this cash generation.

Toromont Industries’s yield of 7.8% last year indicates its ability to produce cash at the same rate as the market index, taking into account the company’s size. However, given that the risk for holding single-stock Toromont Industries is higher, this may mean inadequate compensation above and beyond merely investing in the whole market.

Is Toromont Industries's yield sustainable?

Another important consideration is whether this return is likely to be maintained over the next couple of years. We can gauge this by looking at Toromont Industries’s expected operating cash flows. In the next few years, expected growth for Toromont Industries’s operating cash is negative. This is unfavourable to its future outlook, especially if capital expenditure heads the opposite direction. Below is a table of Toromont Industries’s operating cash flow in the past year, as well as the anticipated level going forward.

	Current	+1 year	+2 year
Operating Cash Flow (OCF)	CA$506m	CA$419m	CA$436m
OCF Growth Year-On-Year		-17%	4.2%
OCF Growth From Current Year			-14%

Next Steps:

The company’s average yield compared to the market index means you are taking on more risk holding the single-stock Toromont Industries as opposed to the diversified market portfolio. In addition to this, the negative growth outlook for operating cash flows is discouraging. Keep in mind that cash is only one aspect of investment analysis and there are other important fundamentals to assess. I recommend you continue to research Toromont Industries to get a better picture of the company by looking at:

1. Valuation: What is TIH worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether TIH is currently mispriced by the market.
2. Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look at who sits on Toromont Industries’s board and the CEO’s back ground.
3. Other High-Performing Stocks: If you believe you should cushion your portfolio with something less risky, scroll through our free list of these great stocks here.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.