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Calculating The Return On Incremental Capital Investments - Saber Capital Management
Calculating The Return On Incremental Capital Investments - Saber Capital Management
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“Leaving the question of price aside, the best business to own is one that
over an extended period can employ large amounts of incremental capital at
very high rates of return.” – Warren Buffett, 1992 Shareholder Letter
I think a lot of people were looking for a specific formula that they could
easily calculate. I think the concept that Connor laid out is what is most
important. I think his examples did a nice job of demonstrating the power of
the math behind the concept. His write-up also demonstrated why Buffett
said those words in the 1992 shareholder letter that I quoted at the top of the
post.
So the concept here is what needs to be seared in. In terms of calculating the
returns on capital, each business is different and has unique capex
requirements, cash flow generating ability, reinvestment opportunities,
advertising costs, R&D requirements, etc… Different business models should
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It’s simple to calculate ROIC: some use earnings (or some measure of bottom
line cash flow) divided by total debt and equity. Some, like Joel Greenblatt,
want to know how much tangible capital a business uses, so they define
ROIC as earnings (or sometimes pretax earnings before interest payments)
divided by the working capital plus net fixed assets (which is basically the
same as adding the debt and equity and subtracting out goodwill and
intangible assets). Usually we’ll want to subtract excess cash from the capital
calculation as well, as we want to know how much capital a business
actually needs to finance its operations.
But however we precisely measure ROIC, it usually only tells us the rate of
return the company is generating on capital that has already been invested
(sometimes many years ago). Obviously, a company that produces high
returns on capital is a good business, but what we want to know is how
much money the company can generate going forward on future capital
investments. The first step in determining this is to look at the rate of return
the company has generated on incremental investments recently.
Using that incremental $35 billion they were able to grow earnings by about
$3.5 billion (earnings grew from $11.2 billion in 2006 to around $14.7 billion
in 2016). So in the past 10 years, Walmart has seen a rather mediocre return
of about 10% on the capital that it has invested during that time.
Note: I’m simply defining total capital invested as the sum of the debt
(including capitalized leases) and equity capital less the goodwill (so I’m
estimating the tangible capital Walmart is operating with). I’ve previously
referenced Joel Greenblatt’s book where he uses a different formula
(working capital + net fixed assets), but this is just using a different route to
arrive at the same basic figure for tangible capital.
There are numerous ways to calculate both the numerator and denominator
in the ROIC calculation, but for now, stay out of the weeds and just focus on
the concept: how much cash can be generated from a given amount of
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capital that is invested in the business? That’s really what any business
owner would want to know before making any decision to spend money.
Reinvestment Rate
We can also look at the last 10 years and see that Walmart has reinvested
roughly 23% of its earnings back in the business (the balance has been
primarily used for buybacks and dividends). How do I arrive at this
estimate? I simply used the amount of incremental capital that Walmart has
invested over the past 10 years ($35 billion) and divide it by the total
earnings that Walmart has generated during that period (about $148 billion
of cumulative earnings).
As I’ve mentioned before, a company will see its intrinsic value will
compound at a rate that roughly equals the product of its ROIC and its
reinvestment rate (leaving aside capital allocation, which can increase or
decrease value per share as well).
There are other factors that can create higher earnings (pricing power is one
big example), but this simple formula is helpful to keep in mind as a rough
measure of a firm’s compounding ability.
So if Walmart can retain 25% of its capital and reinvest that capital at a 10%
return, we’d expect the value of the company to grow at a rate of around
2.5% per year (10% x 25%). Stockholders will likely see higher per-share
returns than that because of dividends and buybacks, but the total value of
the enterprise will likely compound at roughly that rate. And over time, the
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change in value of the stock price tends to mirror the change in value of the
enterprise plus any value added from capital allocation decisions.
Not surprisingly, Walmart’s stock price is only about 45% higher (not
including dividends) than it was 10 years ago. So unless you are banking on
an increase in P/E ratios, you’re unlikely to achieve a great result buying a
business that can only invest a quarter of its earnings at a 10% return.
Let’s use the same principles to very briefly take a look at Chipotle, which is
a business that has been able to reinvest its earnings at very high rates of
returns over the past decade.
For Chipotle, we’ll look at the last 9 years of operating results starting at the
end of 2006, which was the first year that Chipotle operated as a standalone
company (McDonald’s spun it off in mid-2006).
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Chipotle has great unit economics. In 2015, it cost $805,000 to build out the
average restaurant which, when up and running, produces around $2.4
million in revenue and better than 25% restaurant-level margins. So an
$800k initial investment produces around $600k of yearly cash flow. In
other words, the average Chipotle restaurant has achieved an incredible 75%
cash on cash return (this is restaurant-level ROI before corporate G&A
expenses and taxes).
Over the past 9 years, Chipotle has grown from 581 restaurants to just over
2,000. They’ve invested a total of $1.25 billion to build out these
restaurants which has increased its earnings by around $435 million. In
other words, Chipotle saw around a 35% after-tax return on the capital it
reinvested back into the business:
Chipotle was able to invest over half of its earnings at 35% returns, and using
the formula described above to approximate intrinsic value growth, 57%
reinvestment rate times 35% returns equals about a 20% increase in earning
power.
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The result is that the stock price has compounded at over 20% annually,
very much in line with Chipotle’s intrinsic value.
That’s a good strategy, and there are probably more opportunities that Mr.
Market offers in this particular category. But an investor should realize that
these investments are not going to result in big compounding results.
Lynch’s famous 10-baggers came from the rare companies that could retain
their earnings and plow them back into the business at high rates of return
for many years. The former is much more common and actionable, but it’s
still worth hunting for stocks in the latter category in my opinion. You only
need a few to make a career.
To Sum It Up
What you really want to know is this: At the end of the year, the company
will have made a certain amount of money. Out of that pile of cash, you
want to know:
How much can the company reinvest into the business?, and,
What the return will be on that investment?
If Walmart makes $16 billion, they might spend $4 billion on building out
new stores. How much additional cash flow will come from that $4 billion
investment?
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This is a really rough measure of how to think about return on capital, but
it’s generally how I think about it.
Of course, there are different ways to measure returns (you might use
operating income, net income, free cash flow, etc…) and there are many
ways to measure the capital that is employed. There are also “investments”
that don’t always get categorized as capital investments but run through the
income statement—things like advertising expenses or research and
development (R&D) costs. To be accurate, you’d want to know what portion
of advertising is needed to maintain current earning power (akin to
“maintenance capex”). The portion above that number would be similar to
“growth capex”, which could be included when thinking about return on
capital. R&D could be thought of the same way.
But hopefully this is a helpful example from a very general point of view on
how to think about the concept. As a business owner, you want to know
where you can reinvest your company’s excess cash flow and what rate of
return you can get from those investments. The answers to those two main
categories will in part determine how fast your business grows its earning
power and increases its value.
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