Free Cash Flow and Shareholder Yield New Priorities for the Global Investor

The Case for Shareholder Yield looks to first define what shareholder yield is and what it can do for both the institutional and individual investor. The authors define shareholder yield as a concept that uses an analysis of free cash flow deployment to gauge the investment worthiness of a company. Free cash flow analysis allows a company to decide how it wants to spend its "free cash," either through cash dividends, share repurchases, debt pay downs, internal re-investment projects, or acquisitions. The authors argue that today cash, and the way in which companies choose to spend it, provides the most meaningful gauge of a company's financial and operational health. In fact, few investors realize that cash flow has eclipsed earnings as the most useful benchmark for security selection and business management. The Case for Shareholder Yield aims to show investors the importance of both Shareholder Yield and free cash flow, especially in the context of rising interest rates and globalization (with the introduction of new global players such as China, India and Russia).

William W. Priest, cfa, cpa, has forty years of experience in the investment management industry, almost all of it as an investment analyst and portfolio manager. Before forming Epoch Investment Partners with three associates in 2004, he spent most of his career at Credit Suisse Asset Management-Americas, and its predecessor firm, BEA Associates, where he was a cofounder in the early 1970's. Priest served as chairman, CEO, and portfolio manager of CSAM-Americas, and CEO and portfolio manager of BEA. He is a CFA, a CPA, and a graduate of both Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Graduate School of Business. Priest is the author of several published articles on investing and finance including the book, The Financial Reality of Pension Funding Under ERISA.

Lindsay Hatton Mcclelland was an investment banking analyst in Merrill Lynch's Retail and Consumer Products Group and an associate vice president at Financial Dynamics, where she specialized in corporate communications and investor relations. She is a graduate of Williams College and received her MFA from New York University's Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences.