Company Western Union Remains Deeply Undervalued at 5x Forward Earnings; Mr. Ben Hawksworth Details USDPT Stablecoin on Solana

Company Western Union continues to trade at a strikingly low valuation despite multiple clear operational strengths. The business is showing 18% margins, a well-covered 10% dividend yield, and evidence of improved efficiency after completing a $150 million cost-saving program ahead of schedule. These factors, combined with a clearer outline of the firm's stablecoin initiative USDPT, underpin a compelling investment thesis: the market is pricing the company far too pessimistically at roughly a 5x forward earnings multiple.

The firm’s core competitive advantage remains its vast agent network—360,000 physical locations—that supports cash-in and cash-out rails for remittances. For many cross-border senders and recipients, especially those in underbanked regions, cash remains critical. Operational improvements such as streamlined KYC and better customer-facing due diligence have reduced friction and improved retention, while the cost program has already fed into margin recovery after a period of compressing profitability.

At the same time, investors should monitor initiatives outside the legacy business. Management’s ambition to become a “full-service digital platform” has spawned projects like loyalty programs and localized promos that so far show limited consumer traction. For instance, the highlighted "Morocco Rewards" sample showed only "thousands" of redemptions from 1.3 million transactions—an underwhelming engagement metric that suggests some non-core investments may not materially move shareholder returns.

A major pivot point is USDPT. As disclosed at Investor Day, USDPT will be built on Company Solana and underwritten by Company Anchorage Digital Bank, giving the stablecoin a clearer compliance and custody story than many earlier corporate coin attempts. Mr. Ben Hawksworth (COO) explained the rationale succinctly: the tokenization allows the company to better capture economics by earning float for the long term. In operational terms, USDPT could reduce banking fees tied to correspondent banking and pre-funding, and possibly enable the firm to earn modest interest on liquidity that previously sat idle in banks across jurisdictions.

Consumer use-cases are mixed. While prepaid-card access to USDPT could appeal in high-inflation environments (Argentina is a notable example), it is less likely to resonate in cash-first corridors where physical payout remains dominant. Importantly, adopting USDPT also ties investors to the health and security of Company Solana, and to the regulatory treatment of stablecoins globally. Some jurisdictions lack clear rules (e.g., India’s 1% stablecoin transaction tax) and regulators could impose constraints or taxes that affect utility and flows.

Valuation metrics remain unusually attractive: a ~5x forward P/E and roughly 8x price-to-free-cash-flow appear excessively low given the dividend coverage, margin profile, and buyback-fueled per-share revenue resilience. Even after accounting for crypto-related risks—security vulnerabilities on Company Solana and uncertain regulation—the combination of a robust dividend, improving margins, and the potential interest-earning float from USDPT argue for a buy stance.

Historical perspective helps: Mr. Charlie Munger once cautioned that declining businesses deserve lower multiples, but in this case the market seems to over-penalize Company Western Union despite clear levers for shareholder returns—cost efficiency, dividend buybacks, and a potentially accretive stablecoin settlement backend. Investors should weigh the upside from re-rating against the operational and regulatory risks tied to the crypto initiative.