Category Archives: Accounting

the A&P bankruptcy

July 21, 2015 By in Industry Analysis, Retail, supermarkets, working capital Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

a Chapter 11 filing

The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  According to the radio reports I heard yesterday, this is the second time in three years and the fifth overall bankruptcy filing for the venerable supermarket chain.

A&P said it did so in order to preserve the flow of fresh produce and other perishables into its stores.

In one sense, it’s not surprising that supermarket chains might be in trouble, given the relentless expansion of Wal-Mart into grocery over the past couple of decades, the rise of Whole Foods et al, and the change in lifestyle and consumption habits being spearheaded by Millennials.

A&P as a useful template for investors

A&P, however, is also an important illustration of how creditworthiness can deteriorate in ways investors seldom suspect.

the key:  trade creditors’ bankruptcy standing

The key to understanding what is going on is to realize that in Chapter 11, trade creditors go to the bottom of the list of who gets repaid.  They rank ahead only of equity holders, who as a general rule are wiped out completely.  Trade creditors usually fare little better, if at all.The amounts involved can be substantial.  In the A&P case, for example, McKesson is listed as a major unsecured creditor, owed $39+ million.

trade creditors defending themselves

Knowing that any outstanding bills will likely be voided by a bankruptcy court, suppliers of inventory and services watch the creditworthiness of their customers very carefully.  They hire third-party credit services to provide periodic reports, and they monitor any differences in customer payment patterns very carefully.

If a customer shows A&P-like symptoms (according to Bloomberg, A&P had been having net cash outflows of $14.5 million monthly during fiscal 2015), a vendor can take several related actions to lower its risk:

–it can send less merchandise on credit to the worrisome customer

–it can send lower-value or lower-quality merchandise, or only items that have an extremely short sales cycle

–it can refuse to extend credit; it will demand payment in advance.  This is a lot more serious than it sounds, since the customer may be depending on being able to use the cash from a sale for a week before paying the vendor.

(An aside:  I’ve even seen instances where a trade creditor has sued the customer for payment, knowing that a favorable judgment will force bankruptcy.  The idea is that some third party who doesn’t want a Chapter 11 filing–a bank or other long-term debt holder, or an equity holder–will settle the debt while the case in court.)

Of course, none of this is good for the cash-strapped concern.

reversal of form

Once the firm is in bankruptcy, the situation reverses completely.  Suppliers no longer have to worry about having unpaid bills nullified.  And the bankruptcy judge will ensure that trade creditors are put at the front of the line to be repaid.  So just as the flow of new merchandise into a cash-short enterprise slows down as Chapter 11 becomes a realistic possibility, it speeds up again once the company has filed.

 

 

growth vs. value test: my answers

June 23, 2015 By in book value, cash flow/share vs. earnings/share, from growth to value: the life cycle, growth vs value, mean reversion, return on equity, return on equity vs. return on capital, two flavors of value Tags: , , 2 Comments

The growth stock investor’s answer:  Joe’s, of course.  Why?  I pay $18 for the stock now.  At the end of five years, earnings per share will likely be $2.70.  Assuming the stock keeps the same p/e multiple, its price will be $48 and I will have almost tripled my money.

Look at Bill’s in contrast.  I pay $10 for the stock.  At the end of five years, eps will be up 61% and I will have collected $2.50 in dividends (which I may have to pay tax on, but let’s not count that here).  Assuming the stock keeps the same multiple, it will be trading at $16.10.  Add in the dividends and the total is $18.60.  That’s a return of 86%, or about half what I would get from holding Joe’s.

One more thing.  Maybe in five years, people will start to worry about whether Joe’s can continue to expand at its current rate.  As a result, the p/e multiple could begin to contract.  Maybe that will happen, maybe not.  But even if it does, the multiple will have to drop from 18 to 12! before I would be better off with Bill’s.

The value stock investor’s answer:  It’s obviously Bill’s.  Joe’s has a much more aggressive  growth strategy.  Maybe it will work, maybe not.  I don’t see why I have to decide.  A lot of the potential reward for success is already built into Joe’s current stock price.  And if Joe’s strategy is unsuccessful, the stock has a very long way to fall.

If Joe’s strategy doesn’t work, then I’m much better off with Bill’s.  On the other hand, suppose it really is the way to go.  In that case, either Bill’s management will see the light and adopt a more aggressive stance itself, or the board or activist shareholders or a potential predator (Joe’s?) will force a change.  And the stock will skyrocket.  While it may take a little more time, I’ll enjoy all the rewards of backing the winning strategy without taking on the higher risk of holding Joe’s.

It’s a question of temperament.  A conversation between the growth and value sides could have several more rounds before it degenerated into name-calling, but you have the basic idea already.

Maybe the most salient points to be made about each answer are:

–not that many companies grow so rapidly as Joe’s without any hiccups;

–wresting control from an entrenched management is not that easy (look at the sorry history of  Western-style value investing in Japan–or most places in Continental Europe, for that matter–for confirmation).  It may not be possible, and could be a long and arduous process in any event.

contribution margin

April 15, 2015 By in contribution margin, three sets of books Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

three sets of books

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about the three sets of accounts that a publicly traded company maintains:

–tax books, where the objective is to pay the smallest amount of tax legally possible–in other words, to fool the IRS,

–financial reporting books, where a more liberal view of when and how revenues and expense occur allow a company to put its best foot forward with owners–in other words, to fool shareholders, and

–management control books, also called cost accounting books, which the company uses to actually run its operations.

contribution margin

Contribution margin is a cost accounting concept.

The first thing to note is that despite its name it’s not really a margin–that is, it’s not a percentage.

Instead, it’s the amount by which an activity or a  line of business exceeds its own direct costs and makes a contribution to corporate overhead.  This isn’t the same as making a standalone profit, meaning after covering total costs.

Take a restaurant that’s now open for lunch and dinner and makes money doing so.

Should it open for breakfast, as well?

In the simplest case, the question is whether the restaurant can generate enough revenue to offset the cost of paying for the food and the staff.  If so, it makes a positive contribution margin.  If we were to allocate, say, 20% of the restaurant’s total expense for rent, electricity and depreciation of equipment,  breakfast might be bleeding red ink.  But those costs are there anyway, whether breakfast is or not.  As long as the contribution margin is positive, the firm is better off with breakfast than without.  (Yes, the actual situation is more complicated   …is the wear and tear higher because of breakfast?   …does breakfast cannibalize the other meals?   But I’m keeping it simple to illustrate a point.)

Another case.   Some lines of business may never have been intended to create growing profits, or may no longer be capable of doing so, even if they once were.  A manufacturer may make precision components in-house.  The component division will typically be run as a cost center, not a profit center.  It’s mission will be to provide high quality parts at the lowest price, not to maximize profits.  Its managers will be evaluated by their ability to provide output more cheaply than third-party alternatives can.  Again, the division may not be profitable after allocation of its share of corporate overhead.  Still, it may be very valuable.  Its value will be measured by contribution margin, defined as the difference between in-house and third-party component costs.

Why is this important?

It’s a mindset thing.  Not every part of a company may be intended to grow.  Rising stars may eventually turn into cash cows as businesses evolve.  It’s important both for company management and investors to understand the role an activity should be playing in the overall enterprise.

 

 

oil at $80 a barrel–a Saudi plot?

October 24, 2014 By in Accounting, Capital-intensive firms, capitalizing vs. expensing, cash flow, cash flow/share vs. earnings/share, deferred tax, depreciation, Energy, Industry Analysis, shale oil, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I don’t think so  …and if the Saudis are trying to keep oil prices low in order to drive American shale oil out of business, it’s a pretty pathetic one  (Tom Randall of Bloomberg, for example, recently wrote an otherwise excellent article in which he supports the plot view).

Here’s why:

Any oil project starts with geology work to locate prospective acreage for drilling.  The oil firm then purchases mineral rights from the owner of the land where it intends to drill.  Next comes the actual drilling, which can cost $5 million – $10 million a well.  The driller also needs some way of getting output to market, which may entail building a spur to the nearest pipeline, or at least paving the local roads so that trucks he hires can get to the wellsite.

All that outlay comes before the exploration company can collect a penny from the oil or gas that comes to the surface.

In other words, the project costs are significantly front-end loaded.  This is important.  It means the economics of the situation change dramatically according to whether you’ve already made the up-front investment or not.

An example:

I took a quick look at the latest 10-Q for EOG Resources, a shale oil driller.

Over the first six months of the year, EOG took in $6.5 billion from selling oil and gas, and had net income of $1.4 billion.  That’s a net margin of 21.5%.  At first blush, it looks like a 20% drop in prices would put EOG in big trouble.

Look at the cash flow statement, however, and a different picture emerges.  The $1.4 billion in net comes after a provision of $1.9 billion for depreciation of some of those upfront expenses and after another provision of $479 million for deferred (that is, not actually paid yet) income taxes.  So the actual cash that came into EOG’s hands during the period was $3.8 billion.  That’s a margin of 58.4%–meaning that prices could be more than cut in half and EOG would still be getting money by continuing to operate existing wells.

Yes, at $70 a barrel, new shale oil projects are probably not sure-fire winners.  But oil companies will continue to operate oil share wells, even at prices below this in order to recover capital investments they have already made.  The right time for Saudi Arabia to throw a monkey wrench in to the shale oil works would have been three or four years ago, not today.

The wider point:  once a new entrant has made a big capital investment to get into any industry, it’s very hard to get the newcomer out.  Even if incumbents make the new firm’s position untenable, the latter’s goal just shifts away from making money to minimizing its mistake by extracting as much of its capital as it can.  It will be willing to destroy the industry pricing structure if necessary to do so.

 

 

 

failing toll roads in the US-why?

September 25, 2014 By in distressed assets, project accounting, Transport Tags: , , , Leave a comment

I’m convinced that studying the behavior of Millennials –and in particular how it differs from previous generations’–will ultimately produce a treasure trove of equity investment ideas.

So my ears perked up when I began noticing recent reports of continuing failure of toll road investment projects that had been in vogue ten years or so.  Many were packaged by Australian investment bank Macquarie and/or Spain’s Ferrovial.

Chapter 11 filings have been attributed in the media to a sharp slowdown in total miles driven by Americans since 2007 (“…largest decline since World War II,” said one article).  Millennials’ aversion to autos and the suburbs are the supposed causes.

A quick check shows that’s not exactly right.

The Federal Highway Administration’s monthly Traffic Volumes Trends indicates that total miles driven by Americans has fallen from the peak of 3.03 trillion miles in 2007.  But the present level is still 2.98 trillion, a seven-year decline that totals only 1.65%.  Yes, this is a change from the pretty steady rise of just over 1% annually during the prior couple of decades.  But it’s hard to image that worst-case planning didn’t allow for a flattening out of traffic volume.

Two other characteristics of these deals stand out to my, admittedly cursory, glance, as being much more important:

–they’re very highly financially leveraged, and

–they contained a ton of derivative protection against rising interest rates–which backfired horribly, adding significantly to the already-high debt burden.

The deals also appear to have suffered from wildly overoptimistic projections of future road usage, although these were likely less linked to project survival and more to the possibility of above-average gains.

In any event, my main point is that this is not a story of differing Millennial behavior.  It’s all about bad project design and mistaken derivatives overlays.

 

 

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