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MoF Issue 3
MoF Issue 3
Moving up in a downturn 9
Smart incumbents and challengers alike build advantage during slack times.
McKinsey & Company is an international management consulting firm ser ving corporate and government
institutions from 85 of fices in 44 countries.
Editorial Board: Marc Goedhar t, Bill Javetski, Timothy Koller, Michelle Soudier, Dennis Swinford
Editorial Contact: McKinsey_on_Finance@McKinsey.com
Editor: Dennis Swinford
Managing Editor: Michelle Soudier
Design and Layout: Kim Bar tko
Copyright © 2002 McKinsey & Company. All rights reser ved.
Cover images, left to right: © Eyewire Collection; © Jonathan Evans/Ar tville; © Ken Or vidas/Ar tville;
© Eyewire Collection; © Rob Colvin/Ar tville.
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McKinsey & Company.
Beyond focus: Diversifying for value
Companies that manage scope effectively deliver superior returns.
300
Focused
Excess
Diversified CAGR returns
250
Moderately 236% 13%
diversified
200
150
107% 8%
100
50
48% 4%
0
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
single business entity, but finds itself in a strengths to take advantage of existing or
rapidly maturing space with growth rates emerging external discontinuities, such as
tailing off. As it reaches this point of developments in technology, changes in
inflection on its industry S-curve, such a legislation, or changes in competitive
company faces a set of choices to maximize landscape, to develop a strong position on
value from the “legacy” business as it emerging or early-stage business life cycles.
matures, to reinvigorate growth expectations Such successful diversification is typically into
and to create a more sustainable entity in the either somewhat related industries or into new
longer term. This typically involves trade-offs business arenas where there are clear
among strategies to maximize short-term cash opportunities to leverage developed or
flow, to retain customers and ensure the value emerging capabilities.
of a business well into its maturity, and to
leverage customer relationships to build new Consider Broadwing. Broadwing began life as
businesses. the Cincinnati Bell local telephone company,
but recognized in the 1980s that as a stand-
Corporations that have successfully carried out alone and somewhat regulated entity its
this strategy have moderately diversified and growth prospects were not highly attractive.
leveraged existing strengths. They use these Through an exploration of its existing
Liberate business
units where
net synergies
are exhausted
Enter new
businesses • Moderate diversification
where allows companies to
capabilities place several bets on
match future potential growth
discontinuities opportunities
Transition
Focus to build
Moderately Reshuffle business mix through
capabilities and
diversify to grow active trading of portfolio
meet expectations
capabilities the company recognized its Naturally, companies can also add value by
strengths in certain telephony-related systems (re)imposing a greater degree of focus to
and services including customer care, billing, transform overly diversified portfolios to a
and telemarketing. In addition, management moderately diversified or focused position.
realized that increasing market demand for Such corporations have refocused their
third-party provision of such services portfolios around related businesses to create
represented an opportunity. Broadwing built a an attractive balance between growth and
significant new business to provide call-center more mature businesses to more effectively
and back-office services to third parties that leverage capabilities and telegraph their
by the late 1990s was larger in terms of growth potential to the markets. Ivax, for
revenue than its traditional fixed-line local example, was diversified across five businesses
telephony business. In 1998 it spun off the for most of the 1990s; its portfolio included
operation as Convergys, a business with generic pharmaceuticals, intravenous products,
approximately $1 billion in revenue. Over that branded pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and
period the excess returns to the original specialty chemicals. Recognizing that
shareholders, who by 1998 held both embedded long-term growth prospects were
Broadwing and Convergys stock, were poor in many of these industries, Ivax
significant. undertook a bold move to focus its business
Moving up in a downturn | 9
Exhibit 1. Strategies of successful leaders relative to their unsuccessful peers
Asset efficiency • Significantly reduced and focused capex • Somewhat lower capex
• Higher fixed assets and working capital • Similar fixed assets and working capital
productivity productivity
Cost efficiency • SG&A expenditure refocused rather than • Lean SG&A expenditure management
cut back • Higher employee productivity
• Higher employee productivity • Similar level of R&D expenditure
• Higher R&D expenditure • Somewhat lower adver tising
• Higher adver tising
Financing capacity • Significantly higher debt financing • Similar debt financing capacity
capacity
• Cautious use of excess cash
recession and 75 percent less activity outside Great Lakes Chemical, for example,
the recession than did their unsuccessful peers. a leader in the specialty chemicals industry,
used the recession to reinforce its position
The suggestion: successful top-quartile through a series of M&A transactions,
incumbents benefit from opportunistically projecting itself to a top ranking in the
picking up failing competitors at knock-down industry.4 The company made ten
prices or by making surgical acquisitions of acquisitions in the 1990 to 1992 period
specific desired assets. Deals completed during alone, which contributed to its compound
the recession averaged only $85 million, an annual sales growth rate of 18 percent.
almost 90 percent decrease from their At the same time, Great Lakes Chemical
prerecession average of $645 million. This averaged a return on invested capital of
pattern should not come as a surprise, given 28 percent. To achieve this M&A-driven
the disproportionate management attention growth, the company exploited its under-
and integration effort that large M&A deals leveraged balance sheet and already high level
require. Leaders in a recession focus on of operational performance. As a result, in
protecting and improving their existing terms of total return to shareholders (TRS)
businesses; they are less likely to risk shifting Great Lakes Chemical outperformed the S&P
management focus from the recession to chemicals index by almost 270 percent
executing and integrating a major acquisition. between 1988 and 1993.
Cost efficiency • Significant cut-back on SG&A expenditure • Similar level of SG&A expenditure
• SIgnificant cut-back on R&D • Significantly higher R&D
• Significant cut-back on adver tising • Somewhat higher adver tising
Financing capacity • Significantly higher debt financing • Significantly higher debt financing
capacity capacity
• Aggressive use of excess cash
Moving up in a downturn | 11
industry leaders had capital expenditures
Successful leaders spent 22 percent nearly 10 percent below the average of their
industries during both the recession and the
more on R&D during the recession period of economic growth. There is some
than their unsuccessful peers. evidence, however, that many of the
challengers that were successful during the
recession had excess capacity at the start—
collectively, successful challengers had a
Asset efficiency
median depreciation/sales ratio 6 percent
During the last recession, leaders that above the industry median—and were able to
remained leaders stood out as efficient users transform their capacity advantage into
of assets. Over the period their capital market share advantage.
expenditure (capex) and depreciation5 were
29 percent and 25 percent lower than those Dell Computer is one example of a good
of their unsuccessful peers. This compares execution of this aggressive approach. Dell
with non-recession periods, when the started investing significantly before the
successful leaders spent just 10 percent less on recession and continued expanding its capital
capex than their peers, and show similar base despite the downturn. Dell’s invested
depreciation/sales ratios to them. Of course, capital grew by 20 percent in 1989 and by
such an attitude to assets did not preclude more than 60 percent per year from 1990 to
aggressive expansion. 1991. The results are well known: Dell’s
market share quadrupled from less than 1
Duke Power, for example, successfully percent in 1989 to almost 4 percent in 1992.
defended its leadership status during the last Between 1988 and 1993 Dell Computer
recession, accelerating the development of a outperformed the S&P IT hardware index by
series of alliances to expand its capabilities in more than 520 percent in terms of TRS.
nonregulated areas ranging from engineering
to nuclear waste to trading. The use of
Efficiency, but with an eye
alliances during the recession provided an
to the future
excellent way to obtain a foothold in new
markets with limited capex and prepared the Leaders that remained leaders typically
way for a subsequent program of acquisitions. enjoyed sound employee efficiency, but
Between 1988 and 1993 Duke Power during the last recession this particularly
outperformed the S&P utilities index by distinguished them from their unsuccessful
almost 60 percent in terms of TRS. Moreover, peers: the employee/sales ratio versus the
the recent acquisition of Westcoast Energy is a average of their industry was 27 percent lower
further example of Duke Power’s sustained for leaders that maintained their top-quartile
capacity to successfully execute M&A even in status than it was for leaders that did not.
the current time of uncertainty.
This is not to say that the leaders that
Challengers that succeeded had a similar succeeded during the recession were those that
approach to asset productivity in and out of religiously cut costs across the board. Indeed,
recession: those that moved up to become successful leaders actually spent 14 percent
Moving up in a downturn | 13
important low leverage can be during a challengers to reposition themselves. Leaders,
recession. Similarly, successful challengers had too, had to rethink and refine strategies to
28 percent lower interest during the recession successfully defend their positions. While no
compared with 22 percent in nonrecession two recessions are identical, corporate leaders
periods, underlining the importance of lower in today’s environment would do well to heed
leverage both in recessions and expansions. the lessons of the past. MoF
Those leaders and challengers that entered the
recession with significantly lower leverage than Richard Dobbs (Richard_Dobbs@McKinsey.com)
their peers were typically more successful, is a principal and Rob Jesudason (Rober t_Jesudason
possibly because their lower leverage gave them @McKinsey.com) is an associate principal in
much higher flexibility for opportunistic McKinsey’s London office. Francis Malige
M&A, or to build for the future. The implica- (Francis_Malige@McKinsey.com) is a consultant
tion for highly leveraged companies is that they in the Paris office. Copyright © 2002 McKinsey &
may need to focus their business portfolios Company. All rights reser ved.
through disposals. Unfortunately, a recession is
generally a singularly bad time for this activity. The authors wish to thank Tomas Karakolev for
developing the methodology used in this research.
A source of significant difference among They would also like to thank Francois-Xavier
successful leaders and challengers was their Delenclos, Gillian Evans, Tim Koller, Stefan Loesch,
ability and willingness to use excess cash to Irfan Mian, James Roycroft, James Walmsley and
finance acquisitions and expansions. While the Richard Woolhouse for their contribution to this
leaders that remained successful protected the ar ticle.
excess cash on their balance sheet and their
ratio of excess cash to total assets fluctuated 1
In our research project, we defined industr y leaders as those
around the average of their industry, in the top quar tile of their industries. Challengers are those
companies in the other quar tiles as well as new entrants to
successful challengers used their excess cash in the sample.
their aggressive expansion. These challengers’ 2
Preceded by a long period of growth and characterized by
excess cash/total assets dropped from a level low inflation, the 1990 to 1991 US recession is arguably the
6 percent less than their industries most appropriate comparison for the current global
slowdown.
prerecession to 41 percent below in 1990, and
3
Measured by an index of acquired asset value to total
30 percent below in 1991. At the same time,
assets versus the average of their industries.
unsuccessful challengers entered the recession
4
According to our ranking method based on MVA (market
with significant excess cash balances and they value added) and ROIC (return on invested capital).
continued to accumulate excess cash 5
We have used depreciation as a surrogate for asset intensity
throughout the recession. The same measure as it is not impacted by the age of the asset unlike net
for them stood at 19 percent above the asset value; capex and depreciation were compared as a
ratio of sales and versus the average of their industr y.
industry in 1989 and reached 39 percent
above the industry in 1991. Sales, general, and administrative, measured by an index of
6
1. Dispersed ownership: Although the presence 8. Independent directors: At least half of the non-
of a large or majority blockholder is not necessarily executive directors should be independent outsiders.
a negative governance issue, a more dispersed
9. Written board guidelines: A company should
ownership normally tends to be more attractive to
have its own written corporate governance rules that
investors. Most impor tant, a company should have
clearly describe its vision, value system, and board
no single shareholder or group of shareholders who
responsibilities. Based on the rules, directors and
have privileged access to the business or excessive
executives should be fairly remunerated and
influence over the decision-making process.
motivated to ensure the success of the company.
2. Transparent ownership: A company’s actual
10. Board committees: The board of a company
ownership structure should be transparent,
should also appoint independent committees to carr y
providing adequate public information on breakdown
out critical functions such as auditing, internal
of shareholdings, identification of substantial/
controls, and top management compensation and
majority holders, disclosure on director share-
development.
holdings, cross and pyramid holdings, and
management shareholdings. 11. Disclosure: Frequent and credible disclosure and
transparency. At a minimum, a company should provide
3. One share/one vote: A company should offer one
disclosure on financial and operating performance;
share/one vote to all of its shareholders, and have
business operations and competitive position;
only one class of shares. All shareholders should
corporate char ter, bylaws, and corporate mission; and
receive equal financial treatment, including the
board member backgrounds and basis of remuneration.
receipt of equitable share of profits.
4. Antitakeover defenses: The company should not 12. Accounting standards: A company should use an
have any share-, capital-, or board-related anti- internationally recognized accounting standard (US
takeover defenses. GAAP, UK GAAP, or IAS) for both annual and quar terly
repor ting.
5. Meeting notification: Shareholders should be
notified at least 28 days prior to each general 13. Independent audit: A company should perform an
shareholder meeting to allow overseas investors to annual audit using an independent and reputable
Source: Derived from OECO Principles of Corporate Governance, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1999.
Adopting sound corporate governance Jeffrey Kuster, and Andrew Sellgren. Tim Koller and
practices can also help companies leapfrog Mark Watson also provided valuable insights and