Atmel's total free cash flow for the
months ended in Dec. 2015 was
$6 Mil.
Its total free cash flow for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ended in Dec. 2015 was $75 Mil.
Atmel's Free Cash Flow per Share for the
months ended in Dec. 2015 was $0.01.
Its free cash flow per share for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ended in Dec. 2015 was $0.18.
The historical data trend for Atmel's Free Cash Flow can be seen below:
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
Free Cash Flow is considered one of the most important parameters to measure a company's earnings power by value investors because it is not subject to estimates of Depreciation, Depletion and Amortization (DDA). However, when we look at the Free Cash Flow, we should look from a long term perspective, because any year's Free Cash Flow can be drastically affected by the spending on Property, Plant, & Equipment (PPE) of the business in that year. Over the long term, Free Cash Flow should give pretty good picture on the real earnings power of the company.
Atmel's Free Cash Flow for the fiscal year that ended in Dec. 2015 is calculated as
Free Cash Flow for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ended in Dec. 2015 adds up the quarterly data reported by the company within the most recent 12 months, which was $75 Mil.
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
Atmel (NAS:ATML) Free Cash Flow Explanation
Free Cash Flow is very close to Warren Buffett's definition of Owner's Earnings, except that in Warren Buffett's Owner's Earnings, the spending for Property, Plant, and Equipment is only for maintenance (replacement), while in the Free Cash Flow calculation, the cost of new Property, Plant, and Equipment due to business expansion is also deducted. There, Free Cash Flow is more conservative than Owner's Earnings.
In Don Yacktman's calculation of forward rate of return, he uses Free Cash Flow for the calculation. Yacktman explained the forward rate of return concept in detail in his interview with GuruFocus. Yacktman defines forward rate of return as the normalized free cash flow yield plus real growth plus inflation.
This is what Yacktman said in his March 2012 interview - when the S&P 500 was at 1400:
If the business is stable, this calculation is fairly straightforward. For instance, on the S&P 500 we would normalize earnings. We would then calculate what percentage of those earnings are not reinvested in the underlying businesses and are therefore free. Historically, for the S&P 500, this has been just under 50% of earnings. Currently, we expect the S&P to earn about 70 on a normalized basis, a number which is far below reported earnings due to our adjusting for record high profit margins. $70 X ½ / 1400 gives you a normalized free cash flow yield of approximately 2.5%.
The historical real growth rate of the S&P 500 (companies) is about 1.5%. Assuming an inflation rate of 2.5%, the forward rate of return on an investment in the S&P 500 is about 6.5% today (2.5% free cash flow yield plus 1.5% real growth plus 2.5% inflation).
For the growth part of the Forward Rate of Return calculation, GuruFocus uses the 5-year average growth rate of EBITDA per share as the growth rate, and the growth rate is always capped at 20%. For the Free Cash Flow we use per share data averaged over seven years. The reason we use seven years is because research shows that seven years is the length of the typical business cycle.
* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD. * For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.
Be Aware
Free Cash Flow within a report period can be affected by management's decisions of capital spending. Therefore, it is important to look at long term when it comes to Free Cash Flow.
Atmel Free Cash Flow Related Terms
Thank you for viewing the detailed overview of Atmel's Free Cash Flow provided by GuruFocus.com. Please click on the following links to see related term pages.
Atmel Corp was originally incorporated in California on December 5, 1984 and was reincorporated in Delaware in October 1999. The Company designs, develops and supplies microcontrollers, which are self-contained computers-on-a-chip. It organizes its business into four reportable operating segments; Microcontrollers, Nonvolatile Memories, Radio Frequency, and Application Specific Integrated Circuits. Its Microcontrollers segment includes Atmel's maXTouch capacitive touch product families and its general purpose microcontroller and microprocessor families, AVR 8-bit and 32-bit products, ARM based products, Atmel's 8051 8-bit products, designated commercial wireless products, including low power radio and SOC products that meet Zigbee and Wi-Fi specifications and optimized products for mobile sensor hub, smart energy, touch button and LED lighting applications. Its Nonvolatile Memories segment includes electrically erasable programmable read-only "EEPROM" and erasable programmable read-only memory "EPROM" devices. Its Radio Frequency and Automotive segment includes automotive electronics, wireless and wired devices for industrial, consumer and automotive applications and foundry services. Its Application Specific Integrated Circuits segment includes custom application specific integrated circuits designed to meet specialized single-customer requirements for its high performance devices, including products that provide hardware security for embedded digital systems, products with military and aerospace applications and application specific standard products for space applications, power management and secure cryptographic memory products. The Company markets its products in various countries to a diverse base of OEMs serving commercial markets. It also sells its products to OEM accounts through its direct sales force, using manufacturers' representatives or through national and regional distributors. It sells its products in United States, Asia and Europe. Throughout its product line, the Company competes with a number of semiconductor manufacturers, such as Cypress, Freescale, Infineon, Intel, Microchip, NXP Semiconductors, ON Semiconductor, Renesas, Samsung, Silicon Labs, Spansion, STMicroelectronics, Synaptics, and Texas Instruments. The Company relies on patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, as well as nondisclosure agreements and other methods to protect its proprietary technologies and processes.
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