Month: July 2013 (Page 4)

Stock buybacks, in which companies take their own shares off the market by buying out the investing public don’t always pay off for shareholders.

Companies must find ways to put their excess cash to use. When the market price of a company’s stock is lower than the “intrinsic value” of its business—the present worth of the cash it will generate in the future—then the company should buy back all the shares it can.

But buybacks are far from an exact science. At their worst, buybacks can be a form of corporate cannibalism. Often the unspoken motive is to use extra cash to boost earnings per share by reducing the number of shares among which the company’s profits are divided. But that can be a slippery slope.

But are investors better off? Imagine two companies, each with $100 in cash and 10 shares of stock. The intrinsic value of each is $10 a share. But the stock market undervalues one company’s shares at $5 apiece and overvalues the other at $20. Each company decides to buy back $10 worth of stock. The undervalued company gets to buy back two shares at $5 each, leaving $90 in assets spread across eight shares. That raises the intrinsic value of each share to $11.25. The overvalued company uses $10 to buy back half a share, leaving the same $90 in assets spread across 9½ shares. That lowers the intrinsic value of each remaining share to $9.47.

So how can you spot a bad buyback? Here is a red flag: If cash is dwindling as buybacks are growing, the firm may be starving future growth to pay off present shareholders. That is fine if you sell into the buyback. But it is bad if you hang onto your shares. Owning a bigger piece of a corporate cannibal may leave you hungry in the long run.

After a quick check to ensure that the company is currently profitable, the growth of the company’s sales is probably the single most critical metric to judge the quality of a company. In fact, the sales growth metric will drive the other metrics. It is not unusual for a company to do well with sales growth and then also attain the highest rating in the other metrics. Conversely, it is rare that a company can have a low score here but still do extremely well in other metrics. When this happens, the Confident Investor should question what other events have happened to cause this peculiarity.

The sales growth metric indicates the company’s ability to grow sales consistently. Few metrics are more valuable than sales, and many executives correctly joke, “Revenue cures all ills.” If a company continues to grow revenue, the managers of the company can usually overcome other challenges. Also, consistent revenue growth will force some efficiency into the organization.

More importantly, a company that consistently grows revenue can take more chances on entering new markets or expanding existing ones. It can also afford to pay its employees better, which tends to attract the best and the brightest employees.

It is delightful when you find a company that grows revenue at ten percent annually. In many cases, a slightly slower growth of eight or nine percent is acceptable if all of the other metrics get a satisfactory grade. I discuss how to do this in my book when I combine all the metrics into an overall grade, the Confident Investor Rating (CIR). This is the grade that I give to stocks on this site when I review them. The end result is a Poor, Fair, or Good company. The goal is to invest in Good Companies which often will make it to my Watch List.

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