“Retail Carnage (Part 3) – Sorry Wall Street, Balance Sheets Do Matter

<<Read Part I: Retail Carnage – Perception Vs Reality

<<Read Part II: Retail Carnage – Shopping Center Landlords Evolve Their Properties

Can you name a retailer then has gone out of business without having any debt on their balance sheet? The common characteristic of the recent retailing bankruptcy announcements is highly leveraged balance sheets. In more cases than not, private equity firms took over the companies, loaded them up with debt, and the interest payments became too much to handle as sales and profits declined due to excessive competition and the “race to the bottom” in terms of discounting full price merchandise. Recent examples include Sports Authority (2006 private equity deal), Limited Stores (2010 private equity deal), Payless Shoes (2012 private equity deal), and J Crew (2011 private equity deal), which has been fighting to avoid bankruptcy recently.

It may seem overly simplistic to simply equate lots of debt with bankruptcy and vice versa, but in today’s investment world where folks opt to trade exchange traded funds and computerized algorithms treat all retail stocks as if they are identical, it seems clear that strong balance sheets are being undervalued by investors.

Put another way, if a retailing company has no debt and generates positive free cash flow, it should not trade at a similar valuation to a competitor with lots of debt. The challenge for companies with strong balance sheets is not survival, but rather growth (or in many cases merely maintaining their existing market share).

To illustrate how Wall Street appears to be getting it wrong with regard to balance sheet analysis (or lack of interest), consider two retail stocks that recently reported first quarter results below analyst expectations and saw their stocks crater; Express (EXPR) and Francesca’s (FRAN).

Express:
$6.68 per share, 78.5 million shares = $525 million equity value
No debt, $191 million cash onhand = $334 million enterprise value
2016 financials: $2.19B revenue, EBITDA $187M, free cash flow $88M
Valuation: 2x EV/EBITDA, 6x FCF