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? Capital Allocation - Compounding Quality
? Capital Allocation - Compounding Quality
? Capital Allocation - Compounding Quality
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Capital allocation is what follows after a company generated cash. It’s the decision
about what the company will do with the money it earned.
Management should put cash back to work at the most attractive rate of return. It’s
their moral duty towards shareholders.
This means that most CEOs have no practical capital allocation experience at all
when they get promoted to the CEO role.
As an investor it’s important to seek for companies which clearly define how they
allocate capital.
Here’s a great example of Visa which shows you how it should be done:
You want to invest solely in companies where management has a great capital
allocation track record.
If you select companies managed by great capital allocators, you’ll end up with very
good investment results.
Capital allocation options
In general, a company has 4 capital allocation options:
1. Organic growth
3. M&A
1. Organic growth
Organic growth is the most preferred capital allocation choice.
You want to invest in companies which can reinvest a lot of their earnings in future
growth opportunities at attractive rates of return.
It’s essential that the company has a high and stable ROIC when it reinvests a lot in
organic growth.
Why? Because something magical happens when a company has a high ROIC in
combination with plenty of reinvestment opportunities.
ROIC = 5%
Quality Inc.
ROIC = 25%
Reinvests all its earnings to grow organically
When both companies reinvest all their earnings at a ROIC of 5% and 25%
respectively, the evolution of their net profit looks as follows:
As you can see, after 10 years the net profit of Quality Inc. is 5.7x as high as the one
of Not So Quality Inc.!
Year 0:
Net profit Not So Quality Inc. in year 0 = 5%*$100 million = $5 million
Net profit Quality Inc. in year 0 = 25%*$20 million = $5 million
In year 1, invested capital increases with the net profit of year 0 as both companies reinvest
all their earnings in organic growth
Year 1:
Net profit Not So Quality Inc. in year 1 = 5%* $105 million = $5,25 million
Net profit Quality Inc. in year 1 = 25%*$25 million = $6,25 million
The example above beautifully shows you why a company with a high ROIC active in
an industry with a clear secular trend creates a compounding machine.
This is especially an attractive option when the company is in bad financial shape.
Just take Microsoft for example where Bill Gates insisted that Microsoft should
always keep enough cash in its bank account to keep the company alive for 12
months when Microsoft would generate no revenue at all.
3. M&A
Research has proven that 60-90% (!) of all acquisitions destroy value.
That’s why you should always be cautious when a company announces a big
acquisition.
In general, it’s very hard to predict which M&A activities will create value and which
won’t.
Managers can also have their personal agenda as acquisitions result in more revenue
and more employees. This usually translates into a higher salary and more prestige
for the CEO.
In general, I am not very enthusiastic about acquisitions for the reasons mentioned
above.
For me personally, large M&A activities only make sense when 2 criteria are met:
Management has skin in the game: when the acquisition destroys value, this
also has negative implications for management
The company has proven to be a successful (serial) acquirer in the past: these
kind of companies often have an unique culture
A company usually returns capital back to shareholders when they don’t have any
other attractive growth opportunities.
When a company pays out a dividend, always look at the dividend yield and the
payout ratio of the company. Dividend aristocrats are stocks that increased their
dividend every year for at least 25 years.
Regarding share buybacks, it’s important to underline that share buybacks only
create value when the stock is undervalued.
This is very logical as buying back your own shares can be seen as an investment in
your own company. As an investor you also only want to buy stocks when they are
undervalued.
Let’s say Company A and Company B both have 1 million shares outstanding and you
own 1% of both.
Company A:
P/E: 5x
P/E: 25x
When Company A buys back shares for $3 million, it can buy back 300,000 shares. As
a result the number of outstanding shares decreases to 700,000 and your stake
increase from 1% to 1,42%.
When Company B buys back shares for $3 million, it can only buy back 60,000 shares.
As a result the number of outstanding shares decreases to 940,000 and your stake
increase from 1% to 1,06%.
The example above shows that the more cheaply valued the stock, the more value
share buybacks create for you as a shareholder.
Do you want to learn more about stocks which are heavily buying back their own
shares? In this article you can find 15 examples.
Conclusion
That’s it for today.
William Thorndike’s excellent book The Outsiders is a must read. His book gives
examples of 8 CEOs that managed to outperform the S&P500 by a wide margin
thanks to their excellent capital allocation skills.
Last but not least, I want to share this great capital allocation visual with you. It was
made by Vishal Khandelwal.
The end
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