The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, Jan. 7, edition that Canaccord Genuity analyst Luke Hannan, calling Richards Group "a compelling value story" and touting its "dominant share in a defensive category," commenced coverage with a "buy" rating and a $42 share target. The Globe's David Leeder writes in the Eye On Equities column that analysts on average target the shares at $54.76. Mr. Hannan says in a note: "Richards Group is a business with a dominant share in North American rigid packaging distribution, affording it higher ROIC and EBITDA-to-FCF conversion versus publicly traded peers. That said, Richards Group is in the midst of a transformation, substantially increasing its mix of revenue to higher-margin healthcare-related products (and medical device OEM revenues in particular) as opposed to food and beverage and cosmetics. Additionally, the company's recent conversion from an income fund to a corporation opens the door for share buybacks, which we believe would be substantially accretive on an EPS basis and somewhat neutral on a distributable cash flow basis, given the company's earnings yield and dividend yield are both in excess of its after-tax cost of debt."