What makes a "good" balance sheet?

As a result of my post on bull markets I've had a few emails and comments asking my thoughts on what makes a good balance sheet.  I want to take a few moments in this post to walk through the elements of a good balance sheet, and discuss how it differs from a bad one.  I realize this post will probably seem too elementary for some readers, but I think it does provide a good thought lesson.  Words like "good", "stable", "bad", and thrown around when discussing balance sheets, but there is no firm definition associated with them.  What is a good balance sheet to one investor or company might be a poor for another.

The best starting point for this discussion is to take a step back and consider what the balance sheet even is.  A balance sheet is a point in time snapshot of a company's accounts.  If a company finalized their financial statements on August 1st that would be the day the balance sheet captures.  It's very likely that if the company were to make a second balance sheet on August 2nd that it would be slightly different.  Accounts payable might differ due to vendor bills received, or cash due to slight amounts of overnight interest.

Over time a balance sheet should be relatively stable.  The last thing an investor wants to see are wildly differing amounts for each reporting period.  To see an example of this take a look at a random pink sheet company that spams OTCMarkets with news about significant finds, or notices that the 'books are closed'.  These companies will go from having $37 in their bank account to having $200k then back to $109.

A good balance sheet is one comprised of assets that have realizable value and few liabilities, where assets outweigh liabilities.  In the course of business all businesses will incur liabilities ranging from accounts payable to potentially the obligation to repay borrowed money.  Liabilities aren't something to be feared, they are a byproduct business itself.  Investors should try to avoid liabilities that have the potential to wipe out a shareholder's investment, or put the company at risk.

The first liability that comes to mind for most investors is debt, both short term financing and long term debt.  But I would argue that any liability that has the potential to disrupt a company's operations is one to be avoided.  In some cases the worst liabilities aren't on the balance sheets.  An example of this might be a joint venture that has high ongoing capital needs that the owners fund out of cash flow.  Another liability to watch out for are contingent liabilities.  These liabilities appear in footnotes (not on the balance sheet!) and can have no impact on the business for years until one day they're triggered.  The worst potential liability to watch out for are lawsuits.  These are similar to contingent liabilities, a company will usually incur no cost outside of legal fees and then suddenly they owe millions or billions for a settlement or ruling.

There's an implicit assumption in accounting that assets are good and liabilities are bad.  This is because liabilities are subtracted from assets, and when we subtract we take something away.  Usually we want to take away bad things, but this isn't always the case.  Sometimes we subtract junk food from our diet, that's a good subtraction.  Or we subtract debt from our personal balance sheet, another good subtraction.  In the world of finance some liabilities are good such as deferred revenue, or a permanent deferred tax liability. Just like there are good liabilities there are also bad assets.

Not all assets are created equal, and not everything should be taken at face value.  Most investors when evaluating a balance sheet make similar discounts to assets, they reduce receivables and inventory by some amount and fixed assets by an even greater amount.

I try to value assets by their potential salability.  Marty Whitman discusses this in a video where he comments on Graham's NCAV calculations.  Whitman claims that sometimes a fixed asset such as an occupied apartment building has more value than inventory or receivables because it can be sold quickly to almost any buyer.

I would extend Whitman's thinking with some slight modifications.  Anything that a company owns that can be sold quickly in any market condition should be valued at face value.  In Whitman's example a fully occupied apartment building is worth more than inventory.  The caveat I'd say to that is the apartment building could only be sold in an average or above average market.  In a credit crunch where a buyer needs to line up financing it might be hard to unload the apartment building.  Depending on the nature of inventory it might be easy to unload it.  A manufacturing company could have a hard time selling drill presses, but a textile company should have no problem selling commodity fabric.

During the credit crisis many companies realized that what they thought was cash in the form of auction rate securities turned out to be something far different.  A month before the crisis any investor looking at a balance sheet would have counted the auction rate securities as cash, but a month into the crisis they would have been discounted 30-50-90% to reflect that these securities couldn't be sold at any price.

The most valuable assets are ones that hold their value.  An apartment building, or auction rate securities can be valuable depending on the market they're being sold into.  The same could be said for receivables or inventory.  Cash in the form of Treasuries or CDs can always be considered worth 100%.  An investment in a business that generates cash in all market conditions is also valuable.

If there's a rule about valuing balance sheets it's that there are no rules.  What might be good for one company is bad for another.  I try to shy away from mechanical formulas, they can be misapplied.  It's better to think logically about each company.  Is it good for a holiday goods company to have a lot of cash on hand?  Yes, to survive the seasonality of their business.  For a holiday goods company debt financing might not be bad, they operate from debt for most of the year and then pay back the financing from their seasonal sales.

Excess cash is usually viewed as a good asset, yet in the hands of an acquisitive management team it could be a bad asset.  The management team could squander cash on a business that generates losses or incurs significant liabilities.  While thinking about excess cash an example came to mind.  I was talking to a friend of mine who's a lawyer, we were discussing companies with asbestos liabilities.  He told me a story of a local company that purchased another company in the 70s or 80s.  The acquiring company closed the deal, and as the deal closed they learned the acquired company had significant asbestos exposure.  The acquirer immediately disposed of the newly acquired company, but the asbestos claims hung around.  They owned the company laden with asbestos claims for less than 100 hours, and 30-40 years later they're still paying out on legal liabilities.

Like all of investing I don't believe simple mechanical rules are good enough.  I think one needs to look at each company and think over potential situations and scenarios.  Rules miss a lot, cash is good, debt is bad, except in cases x, y or z.  Instead a better way to approach a balance sheet is to keep in mind that assets that are readily salable and hold value in any market are valuable, and anything that bleeds cash, or anything that puts the company in a bad financial position is bad.

But even the best balance sheet can be squandered by a poor management or a deteriorating business climate. To see a full outline of my strategy for finding Oddball Stocks, go here.

Bull market thinking

In 1999 I was in college, I had the world at my finger tips.  I was studying computer science, which was a perfect degree for the time.  I had stars in my eyes, some friends who were graduating said it was easy to snag a $60k a year job where everyone sat on giant exercise balls, played foosball and built the new economy.  There was palpable excitement in the air.

In 2001 I was looking to change my major, I considered either psychology or a business degree.  I wanted something with a job attached to it when I graduated, which tech didn't have at the time.  I eventually decided to completed my initial degree but added a minor in sociology.  I also got to work at a startup, right out of school.  Except that instead of the heady optimism of the 90s everyone had a bunker mentality.  No one was concerned about IPO-ing, or stock options.  We wanted to generate revenue, earn a profit and stay in business.

Sentiment in the market changes quickly.  Sentiment in the workplace takes longer to change, but when it does it's abrupt.

In a bull market it's hard to differentiate skill verses luck.  The market rewards those with guts, anyone who had the cash and a iron stomach who invested in the fall of 2008, or in March of 2009 has been rewarded with significant gains.  In the midst of a market bottom and recovery academic finance seems to make sense, those who took on the most risk realized the biggest rewards.  Investors in index funds or blue chip companies might only have doubled their money, but those who had fortunate timing and bought highly levered companies on the verge of bankruptcy earned many multiples of their money in 2009 and 2010.

A strong market can lead one to faulty conclusions.  I recently received a comment on a post that buying any company with a high ROE, even at a high multiple is a recipe for investment success.  Maybe that's true, but how did those Nifty Fifty companies work out for investors in the end?  When the market is soaring buying anything and holding seems to work well.

The problem isn't figuring out how to make money, it's figuring out how to keep it.  If an investor is up 80% one year and then down 65% the next it requires a 25% gain just to break even.  I know that in the past five years it seems like 25% or 30% gains are par for the course, but in the context of history gains like that are extremely hard to achieve, especially repeatedly.

In my view the secret to investing isn't hitting grand slams, it's avoiding large losses.  An investor who never has incredible returns can still do very well if they keep their losses to a minimum.  An investor who has outsized gains and outsized losses is really no different from a streaky gambler.  It might be an enjoyable wild ride, but in the end they'd probably be better off investing in an index fund.

Most investors fixate on success.  They want to know what makes a successful investor, or why a company was successful.  Then they work to replicate that success, either with the investments they choose, or how they invest.  Success is multi-faceted and usually due to a variety of factors, most of which are situational and not repeatable.  For every entrepreneur who credits their success to hard work there are five entrepreneurs who worked just as hard and failed.  The same is true of any factor of success.

Unlike success failure is easily replicated.  Whereas hard work isn't always a formula for success a company with high leverage that ignores customers in a downturn is a recipe for failure.  Failure is so repeatable there are failure patterns that can be spotted in companies and in people.  If you spot a failure pattern at an investment it's worth considering whether it's time to sell.  If you spot a failure pattern at your own company it's either time to try to correct it or find another job.

Strong earnings alone are no safeguard against losses in a downturn.  I was discussing this with someone a few months back within the context of banks and he said "There were many banks with 15% ROE's until the day they failed in 2008."  In the investment world returns aren't strongly linked to one specific factor.  Great earnings and a high ROE can sometimes mean a stock appreciates, but not always.  A bad balance sheet will always have the potential for failure.  A company with sizable reserves can weather a severe drop in revenue for a prolonged period of time.  A highly levered company operating in the same environment will either fail, or will be hunting for credit at loan shark rates.

A company's balance sheet is what determines whether they survive or fail in a market downturn.  Earnings come and go, but the strength of the company resides in their balance sheet.  A company with a strong balance sheet can take advantage of a downturn by purchasing distressed competitors and bargain prices.  They can use their strength to attract customers who are scared of losing a valuable service.

When the market is racing higher not many investors are thinking about balance sheets.  But downturns happen quickly.  What was a roaring market one day is a correction the next.  By the time the market is starting to correct it's too late to be thinking about safety.  An investor needs to keep the safety and strength of a company in the back of their mind during the entire bull market run. One never knows when the wind will change and a portfolio's result will be determined by the strength of each holding's balance sheet rather than their earning power.

Hammond Manufacturing revisited, still cheap at 54% of BV and 6.2x earnings

If I have one weakness on this blog it's the failure to follow up on companies I've previously posted about.  To readers my process appears to be the following: research a company, write them up, never mention them again.  I tend to keep up with most of the companies I post about, if not intimately at least from a distance.  The shame about my lack of updates is that many companies remain attractive far after I've posted about them, and unless someone reads the initial post or searches the blog they would ever know.  I plan to change that today with a post on Hammond Manufacturing.

The last time I wrote about Hammond Manufacturing (HMM.A:TSX) was in September of 2013 when the company was trading for 88% of NCAV, and 44% of book value.  At the time they had a book value of $2.71 per share, and had earned $.15 per share in 2012.  I made the case that the company was worth at least NCAV, but more likely book value.

The company is located outside of Toronto and manufactures industrial electrical box enclosures.  Earnings have been volatile ranging from $0 in 2009 to $.20 per share in 2013.

In the last 10 months the shares were flat did mostly nothing until recently.  Hammond Manufacturing released results of a great second quarter and the stock started to move.  Even with the recent move up the company remains cheap.  In the past 10 months book value has increased from $2.71 per share to $3.10 per share.  The last time I wrote about them they were selling for 44% of book value, with the run up they're now at 54% of book value, hardly overvalued.

Besides the discount to book the company has shown considerable earning potential in the past year.  On a trailing twelve month basis they earned $.27 per share, giving them a P/E ratio of 6.2.  Management noted in their second quarter letter that sales are finally showing signs of recovery, which could indicate that their quarterly EPS of $.10 run-rate could continue.

Given Hammond Manufacturing's valuation there are only two scenarios I can think of, either I'm wrong, or the market's wrong.  As an investor in the company I clearly think the market's wrong, but I want to put that aside for a minute and consider what I could be missing, let's look at the company's negatives.

The company finances their inventory with debt, they have about $10.6m in debt outstanding, their debt is a negative, but not large enough for their valuation discount.  They also have two classes of stock, the publicly traded A shares, and the privately held B shares.  The controlling family owns the B shares and controls the stock through these shares.  Markets don't like controlled companies, especially ones that have so much control that an activist (theoretically) can't take the company over.

There is also an issue of a potential environmental liability.  The company had a suit filed against them in 2013 alleging that contaminants from a property they once owned have leaked onto a nearby, but not adjoining property.  The company isn't sure whether the contaminants were from their property or somewhere else.  They note that a scenario exists where they need to pay $2m to have a barrier erected between the properties.  If the company lost the lawsuit and were required to pay the full $2m their book value would be reduced to $2.92 a share from $3.10.  While a legal loss and resulting environmental remedy is not ideal it hardly justifies the valuation.

The comments on my last post give additional insight as to why investors, and the market think this company should be cheap.  Someone thought that a company that doesn't generate at least a 10% ROE shouldn't be worth book value.  Someone else claims that the closely held nature is the reason for the discount.  Another claimed if they paid a dividend they would be worthy of a higher valuation; the company did pay out a dividend and shares barely budged.  Lastly, my favorite response is someone who said the stock has always been cheap and it should remain that way.

In a market where investors are claiming there is no value to be found I would tout Hammond Manufacturing as the exception to that rule.  This is a profitable company with recovering earnings selling for 54% of book value.  Maybe they're only worth 80% of book value, but if that were the case investors would still earn an acceptable return from this investment.  For myself I voted with my cash and have been holding onto my position.

Disclosure: Long Hammond Manufacturing

Valuing community banks

Most investors are familiar with the valuation techniques used to value non-financial companies.  A number of different models are used from relative valuation, to discounted cash flows,  multiples comparison, dividend yield, and others.  To a beginning investor these techniques seem foreign and complicated, but after some use they become accepted and familiar.

For a reason I don't understand investors are comfortable with industrials, but not financials.  Often banks are lumped into the "too hard" pile.  An investor might feel comfortable investing in an industrial who's product they can't explain or understand, yet will avoid investing in a bank whose product is used daily and whose business model is both simple and straight forward.  If I were to summarize banking in a few sentence it would read as follows:

"A bank takes money from depositors and lends it to borrowers. The bank makes a spread between the rate borrowers pay the bank and what depositors are paid.  Out of their spread they pay their operating expenses, taxes and are left with net income."

Investors are willing to put their money in IBM, an extremely complex business, but avoid banks, a very simple business.  I would love to see a survey of IBM's investors answering the following question: "Why would a customer choose WebSphere over Weblogic?"  I would put a question like this on the same level as "What's the difference between a McDonald's hamburger and a Burger King hamburger?"  Imagine trying to summarize IBM, or Medtronic in a few sentences like above, I'm not sure it's possible.

I've made a case in the past that banks are a portion of the market that investors can't ignore.  Of the 14,077 stocks in the US 5,628 are classified as financials.  Of those classified as financials 1,200 are banks.  To disregard financials completely is throwing away 1/3 of the stocks in the US.

Let me share some stats I shared with my newsletter readers regarding community banks.  There are 6,739 banks in the US, of which 5,734 have less than $1b in assets and are profitable.  There are only 275 traded banks with more than $1b in assets.  This means of the 1,200 or so traded banks almost 1,000 are below $1b in assets, the magic threshold where most of Wall Street tunes out.  I spoke with an analyst recently who said that anything below $10b in assets is considered too small to consider.  His fund has limited themselves to looking at about 70 banks, I'm sure they're not alone in this view.

 Maybe I've convinced you that it's worth looking at community banks as an investment.  The next question is how do you value a community bank?  I recently read a PDF by David Moore where he detailed his approach on valuing community banks.  I agree with his methodology and have summarized it below.  There isn't one way to value a community bank, but multiple ways.  Each way could yield a different value, but ultimate all methods of valuation should somewhat agree on a potential value.

Relative Valuation

This is the most common valuation technique and the one most accepted by the market.  The technique is simple, a bank is compared to a set of their peers across a number of financial metrics. If their peers are trading at 1.5x book and they're at 90% of book it's reasonable to assume they are undervalued.  Moore contents that the market is driven by relative valuations in the short term.  That is if you're looking at a 2-3 year window for investing in a bank relative valuations are paramount.  The key to determining if a bank is relatively undervalued is getting the correct peer group.  What constitutes a correct peer group could be up for endless debate.  The FDIC sets arbitrary peer group classification by asset size.

In my view a good peer group is one that's composed of banks competing in a similar market that are similar sizes.  The First Bank of Tennessee shouldn't be compared against Regions Financial, even if they have branches in the same area.  Just because Wells Fargo and Bank of America have blanketed the country with branches doesn't mean they are automatically peers to every other bank in the US.

Moore posits that in the short term relative valuation rules the market.  Over a 2-3 time period a bank should trade in line with their peers.

Discount Dividend Valuation

Much of the market disregards dividend discount models as too simplistic but Moore makes the case that over the long term the dividend discount model (DDM) value of a bank will approximate its long term shareholder return.

The dividend discount model is the present value of future dividends the bank is expected to pay over a specified period of time.  If one can accurately predict earnings growth, as well as the future dividend payout ratio and discount rate this method of valuation can be accurate.  In my view the problem with a DDM model is there are too many assumptions taken into account.  A difference between a 9% and a 12% discount rate can result in a dramatically different terminal value.  The same could be said about earnings growth or a bank's payout ratio.

Along with the DDM value another potential forecasted value is the deposit premium of the bank.  This can be calculated by taking the spread between the bank's borrowing cost and their deposit cost discounted at the 10-year Treasury rate.  This future value of the bank's deposit premium could be added to either book value, or checked against peers to evaluate whether the bank is trading at a premium to their deposits or a discount to their deposits.

Take-out Valuation

A bank's take-out value is my preferred way to value a bank.  Moore is somewhat dismissive of this model.  He states that he's heard rumors of bank sales that have never come to fruition, and betting on a bank merger can be foolish.  While I agree that it's foolish to speculate on potential mergers I disagree that this value has no merit.  I believe that a bank's take-out value is ultimately what a well informed private buyer might pay for the bank.  I also believe that stocks are mean reverting with the mean being the private market value of businesses.  This means that the anchor of value for banks should float around the take-out values of similar banks.

To estimate the take-out valuation of a bank one needs to look at a bank and estimate the expenses that could be eliminated in an acquisition as well as the potential improvement to earnings for a potential acquirer.  Many barely profitable one branch banks can suddenly become attractive acquisition candidates if executive pay were eliminated.  Consider a bank barely scraping by with earnings of $30k.  If acquired the acquiring bank might eliminate the CEO/CFO/COO and other redundant personal resulting in a $500k or more savings a year.  Earnings could jump 10x in an acquisition by retiring the executive team alone.  Other potential cost savings could be realized by economies of scale too.

Liquidation Valuation

The last valuation model discussed in the paper is one I'm very familiar with, but also one that's extremely rare in the banking world, liquidation value.  Banking is a regulated industry and if a bank finds themselves in trouble the FDIC will step in and force an orderly liquidation or acquisition.  It's very rare that a bank enters liquidation proceedings willingly and without FDIC meddling.

The liquidation value for a bank is calculated in a similar way to how one might calculate it for a non-financial company.  A bank's liabilities are viewed as being worth 100% of their stated value whereas their assets are discounted based on an investor estimate of quality.  Cash and certain securities are given full value, loans are discounted based on the type and quality.  Other assets are discounted as well.

A bank's liquidation value should be viewed as the lower bounds of potential value unless the bank is living under the shadow of a potential FDIC takeover.

Conclusion

There is no single correct way to value any company.  A company's valuation can change depending on market circumstances, management circumstances, or owner circumstances.  A company that is attractive when long term rates are 4% might not be attractive when rates are at 8%.

A bank investor should use as many valuation tools as they see reasonable to determine a range of values for a community bank.  If a bank's price is at enough of a discount to the range of values it should be considered for a portfolio.  The idea of using multiple valuation techniques is because each model uses different assumptions, and the combination of varying assumptions should flush out any faulty assumptions an investor might be making about a company.

The truth about asset investing

Issue 2 of the Oddball Stocks Newsletter has been published and sent to subscribers.  If you're not a subscriber and would like to learn more visit the Oddball Stocks Newsletter website.  If you are a subscriber and didn't receive this issue please send me an email.

Did you ever play the game of telephone when you were a kid?  The game where everyone sits in a line and passes a message along by whispering it to their neighbor.  It didn't matter how many kids were participating, after a few passes a message like "The Indians will win the World Series" would morph into "My aunt Tilda said the world is near us."  My feeling is that the modern value investing view of asset investing is something like the game of telephone.  Between what Benjamin Graham initially wrote in Security Analysis and what we're telling ourselves today something has been lost.

Asset based investing is commonly referred to as cigar butt investing where investors gamble that a depressed stock has 'one last puff'.  The idea is that down and out stocks selling for less than their asset value will sometimes experience what amounts to a dead cat bounce.  Investors are supposed to watch their basket of depressed stocks like a hawk and trade opportunistically to reap the gains.

I've read countless blog posts that describe a company who's assets are melting away like an ice cube  as a Graham-type value play.  The gross mis-characterization of Graham's asset plays has always bothered me.  I realize that Security Analysis is considered a classic text, which means that everyone is aware of it, but no one has read it.  In response to seeing this mis-characterization recently I went back to Security Analysis (6th edition) and re-read a few of the chapters on asset based investing.  I believe a lot could be learned by investors from just reading these few chapters.

Because I know most of my readers won't be reading Security Analysis I've decided to provide a few quotes that illustrate what asset investing should be.

First a definition of liquidation value:

"Liquidating Value.  By the liquidating value of an enterprise we mean the money that the owners could get out of it if they wanted to give it up.  They might sell all or part of it to some one else, on a going-concern basis.  Or else they might turn the various kinds of assets into cash, in piecemeal fashion, taking whatever time is needed to obtain the best realization from each." (p559)

A common complaint about stocks trading at a discount to their asset value is that they have poor earnings, don't cover their cost of capital.

"Common stocks in this category practically always have an unsatisfactory trend of earnings." (p564)

Graham discusses that stocks selling below NCAV have many potential catalysts that could result in value being unlocked including, general industry improvement, a change in operating policies, a sale or merger, complete liquidation, or a partial liquidation.

Finally Graham discusses that even though many of these types of stocks are cheap they need to be approached with caution:

"Nevertheless, the securities analyst should exercise as much discrimination as possible in the choice of issues falling within this category [below NCAV].  He will lean toward those for which he sees a fairly imminent prospect of some one of the favorable developments listed above.  Or else he will be partial to such as reveal other attractive statistical features besides their liquid-asset position, e.g., satisfactory current earnings and dividends or a high average earning power in the past.  The analyst will avoid issues that have been losing their current assets at a rapid rate and show no definite signs of ceasing to do so." (p568-569)

What can we learn from this?  A company's liquidation value is a rough approximation of what value might be realized if management either sold the company entirely or broke it apart.  Many companies that trade for less than their liquidation value are not great companies, if they were they wouldn't be selling that cheap.  Investors should prefer companies at less than NCAV where NCAV is at least stable, if not growing.  Preference should be given to companies that are growing both earnings and asset value.

Instead of speculating on last cigar puffs the texts from Security Analysis paint quite a different picture.  They show an investor carefully examining a stock like a business and making a purchase if the business is of at least average quality and selling at a reasonable discount.

I recognize that asset based investing isn't for everyone.  Some investors aren't comfortable investing like this.  That's perfectly fine, there isn't one correct way to invest.  But for those who have heard, or read about asset based investing I wanted to clarify some of the misconceptions surrounding it.

Disclosure: I receive a small commission if you purchase anything through Amazon.com.

Enterprise Bank, a case study in the potential pitfalls of bank investing

A general misconception I've sensed is that value investors who aren't buying Buffett-type companies are usually lumped into a distressed turnaround category.  Our investments are the proverbial one foot  in a hole and one foot on a banana peel.  A mistake or two away from a complete loss.  I know I've been placed in this category many times, and I think many readers believe I'll buy anything as long as it's cheap.  It might be a surprise to some, but that's not the case.  I prefer to buy undervalued companies that don't run the risk of going out of business.  Sure, the occasional good company at a cheap price might find its place into my portfolio, but more often it's an average company at an excellent price.

Enterprise Financial Services Group (EFSG) is a great example to show that not everything that's cheap is an attractive purchase.  The company has a market cap of $5.7m against a book value of $18m.  Their P/B ratio is 32%, and P/TBV is 44%.  The bank is profitable and trades with a P/E of about 8x.  The bank is undeniably cheap, they are trading at a low valuation of both earnings and their book value, both tangible and otherwise.

Purchasing a company at 44% of TBV should in theory give an investor a margin of safety.  This is the buffer between their current market price, and an investors estimate of fair value.  The concept of the margin of safety is to allow for investor mistakes and errors and still enable an investor to profit.  In most cases a company at 44% of TBV and 6x earnings would indeed have a considerable margin of safety.  But Enterprise Financial Services Group isn't a normal company, it's a bank, and in banking there are other factors that need to be considered as well.

Enterprise Bank is a small one branch bank located a few miles north of me in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.  Their branch is fairly unique, it's a plain office building located next to a heavy equipment rental, and a kids play facility (giant inflatables, indoor playground).  If it weren't for the tiny sign announcing their presence most people wouldn't even know it were a bank.

Enterprise Bank is a great example of potential pitfalls that can trip up a bank investor.  The bank specializes in small business lending.  The bank has $217m loans, of which $20m are for 1-4 family loans, typical single family mortgages.  The rest of their loans are for commercial real estate and commercial ventures.  The bank describes itself as a specialized lend for turnaround financing and startup financing, both categories of risky lending.  For the risk the bank takes on their loans they earn comparatively low rates.  Their yield on earning assets was 4.66% as of Q1 2014.  This is much lower than I'd expect for a company that specializes in lending to borrowers whose future ability to repay loans is suspect.

The bank's funding isn't the more common low cost and stable consumer deposits, but rather wholesale funding via brokered CDs.  The wholesale market is problematic for two reasons.  The first is the funding costs are much higher than what could be achieved via a sticky retail deposit base.  Enterprise Bank is paying .93% for their deposits.  The average funding cost across all banks in the US was .31% as of the last quarter.  Enterprise Bank is paying almost three times more for access to funds compare to the rest of the US banking industry.

The second reason that wholesale deposits are problematic is because they aren't sticky.  Investors putting money into brokered CDs shop for the highest rate.  When a bank's rates aren't competitive they have trouble attracting deposits.  Banks relying on hot money for funding end up in a vicious cycle where they are continually fighting to attract consumers with higher rates, which are costly to the bank.  The types of customers the bank attracts are not the ones a bank would want.  These customers purchased the product for the rate, and when the bank's rate lags competitor's rates many customers cash in their CDs early and move their money.  Wholesale deposits are not a cheap or stable funding source.

If the bank only had a poor deposit base, and a concentrated commercial loan portfolio then their valuation could be potentially attractive.  While the commercial concentration and wholesale funding are not ideal those aspects alone don't merit a 70% discount to book value.  What does merit such a discount is the quality of their loans.

Banks are highly levered companies, and with leverage comes risk.  Enterprise Financial Services Group has a TE/TA (tangible equity/tangible assets) ratio of 5%.  In layman terms this means the company is leveraged 20:1.  The bank's Tier 1 capital ratio is 10.7% and total capital 11%.  The bank's Tier 1 capital also includes their preferred stock as well as loan loss reserves.  Note the difference between the holding company's leverage and the underlying bank's leverage.

The bank's holding company owns a real estate broker, a machinery rental company, an IT consulting firm, a CFO consulting practice, and an insurance brokerage as well as the bank.  From a regulatory standpoint the underlying bank looks alright, although not ideal.  The company doesn't break out the financials for their other businesses, but based on the bank and the holding company information we can surmise that their other companies don't have much in the way of assets, or earnings, but do have debt related to their operations.

Leverage can cut both ways for a bank, when times are good it can allow them to earn outsized profits.  When the environment changes a small percentage of loans gone bad means shareholders can loser their investment.

Enterprise Bank reports that 5.29% of their loans are non-current, which is about $11.4m in nominal terms.  The bank has $2.3m reserved for loan losses.  All things considered their loan losses aren't terrible given that the bank is engaged in speculative venture stage and turnaround lending.

The company's absolute level of loan losses is concerning, but there's something a bit more subtle that's even more concerning.  The company makes mention in their 2013 annual report of an accounting change that their regulator, the FDIC forced them to make.  The change is that the bank is now forced to classify their loans after interest hasn't been paid after 90 days rather than wait for an impairment.

Banks are required to classify loans into different categories quarterly (or more frequently) based on the probability of repayment.  Most loans are classified as satisfactory, this means the loan is current and interest is being paid.  For most banks in the US if borrower fails to make a payment on a loan after 30 days the loan moves from current to non-current and is classified.  Banks bucket loans into 30-90 days past due, 90 days past due, and non-accruing.

Enterprise Bank wasn't classifying loans until the bank had considered them impaired.  In the past the bank would consider a loan performing until all hope was lost and they finally impaired it.  Loans that hadn't paid interest for months might be considered current.  It worries me that in the past the bank was only considering a loan classified when it was impaired.

The last item that the bank mentioned that helps justify their valuation is the impact of Basel III.  The bank said they will be about 10% short on Basel III capital requirements.  Instead of raising capital they suspended the dividend and instituted a pay freeze.

The fact that the bank is so close to capital inadequacy under Basel III, and that they had previously been lax in classifying loans is what made me pass on this bank as an investment.  Maybe everything will go well in the future and this is a good value.  But I don't invest based on rosy scenarios, I want to make sure companies I invest in can weather a storm or two, and a potentially bad storm.  I'm not convinced that Enterprise Bank can weather a strong storm.  So even though the bank is trading for a very low valuation this doesn't look like a safe investment to me.

Disclosure: No position

Selling cheap to buy cheaper

I apologize for the lack of recent posts, in many ways it' a bit unusual.  I started this blog in 2010 and became serious about blogging during 2011.  Since then I set a goal of posting twice a week.  If you look at my post history you can see a giant gap over the last few weeks.  We took a nice long summer vacation and I decided to abstain from posting while away.

We drove from Pittsburgh down to New Orleans to visit my brother, his wife and our new nephew. Then we headed over to Pensacola for some time at the beach.  Before this trip I hadn't spent any time in the Deep South.  It was really nice, we had a great experience.  We had some good food, relaxing days, and I was even able to meet up with a reader for coffee, which was awesome.  While away my inbox filled up and I kept my eyes off the market.

Now that I'm back I want to get back into my two posts a week routine; here's to starting!

A friend emailed me recently musing about buying when the market is falling.  It might sound like a strange topic to discuss when markets are soaring higher, but it's always good to be prepared.  My friend asked my thoughts on selling cheap stocks to buy cheaper stocks in the midst of a downturn.  In his view this is the ultimate act of a investor.  The ability to ignore emotions and sell stocks that at other times would be considered extremely attractive for stocks that one deems are even cheaper.

If an investor wants to have the ability to sell a cheap stock and purchase a cheaper one they must have some sense of potential value.  Is a stock at 50% of book value cheaper than a stock at 60% of book value?  Not necessarily.

Some investors (the disciplined ones) keep spreadsheets of all of their holdings and what they feel is the discount to intrinsic value of each holding.  The investing cowboys, of which I am one, tend to play it a bit more loose.  No spreadsheets are necessary, just a rough gut feel of when a stock is getting a bit frothy.  My own process works as follows.  I will initially research a stock and often will write a post about the stock.  The purpose of the post is to help formulate my thoughts on an idea, and to preserve a record of my initial thinking.  If I like the stock I make a purchase and usually forget that I even own it.  I don't follow the news for stocks, or set alerts.  I will check my entire portfolio on  a semi-regular basis.  I check each stock for news or activity and then go back on ignore mode.  If during my check I notice a stock that's run up significantly I will look for news, and evaluate if I need to sell out of the position.

When considering my investments against each other I like to look at what I consider their potential value.  This is the stock's undervaluation plus their business value.  In Security Analysis Benjamin Graham discusses selling a stock after three to five years if it hadn't reached intrinsic value.  I want to walk through an example of how I calculate potential value.  Let's take a stock at 60% of book value that's earning 3% on equity.  Many readers bash stocks I pick with low returns on equity, but maybe understanding how I view things will help to clarify why some of these low ROE companies can be good investments.

Take the example of a stock that has a book value of $10 and is selling for $6.  The company earns $.30 a year, or 3% on equity.  If the stock reaches its intrinsic value in five years, our maximum holding period, the investor would earn 19% a year.  Between year one and five the company grew their equity at a paltry 3% a year.  Five years of 3% book value growth equals $11.59 in book value at the terminal date.  If an investor held the entire five years, and the stock rose to book value they'd realize a gain of 93%, or 19% a year over their holding period.

The above example shows how even poor companies that don't earn their cost of capital can result in significant gains if the company's market price eventually reverts to intrinsic value.  Of course nothing is guaranteed, and not all investments drift up to what a reasonable investor might consider intrinsic value ever.  At times management is directly opposed to shareholders and works to keep the value of the company low.  Other times there are structural factors that keep the value of a company low forever.

If one believes in the concept of mean reversion then this theory holds.  The key variables to the equation are the company's intrinsic value, and the time period of the holding.  If a short time period is used then potential returns increase.  If a longer period is used then potential returns decrease.  There are a few investments I hold where I've figured that even with a 10-15 year holding period my potential returns could be well above 15% a year.  It's situations like that where I'll potentially hold a stock for a decade or more.

So what does the idea of potential valuation have to do with selling cheap stocks to buy cheaper stocks?  It's the only way I can think of that one can rationally rank investments in a way that lets them compare two potentially cheap investments.  I mentioned above that a company at 50% of book value might not be cheaper than one at 60% of book value.  If the company at 60% of book value is earning 8% on equity and the one at 50% is earning 2% the company selling at the initially higher price is cheaper overall over the same holding period.

When a stock appreciates towards what I might consider a fair value I will go through this exercise to determine out what the potential return is for the stock going forward.  My personal hurdle rate is 10-15% a year.  My hurdle probably seems low for most readers, but if I can earn between 10-15% a year for the next 30 years I'd be extremely satisfied.

In a downturn an investor could use the above system to classify all of their investments.  Then evaluate new investments against the set of current investments.  A company with a potential return of 20% a year could be sold to purchase a company with a potential return of 30% a year.

The caveat with this system is that in a downturn it's hard to know what past numbers could be repeated in the future, and secondly you need to invest in companies that will survive.

I want to come full circle and answer my friend's question.  I agree that selling what's cheap to buy what's cheaper is the ultimate test of emotions.  An investor in that situation is facing a portfolio that's  losing value, and they are out of cash if they're in this situation.  They need to ignore their gut and trust the numbers, sell companies with low expected returns and purchase ones with higher expected returns.  I don't know what different in potential return is meaningful, but I think it's an individual preference.  Based on the potential error from estimated time ranges I wouldn't be exchanging stocks for a few percentage point differences in potential returns.  But I would exchange something with a 15% potential annual return for something with a 30% potential annual return.

In my own portfolio I like to keep 5-10% in cash at all times.  I feel this gives me the ability to act quickly on a new investment idea should I come across something attractive.  I haven't found my cash levels to be correlated with the market levels in generate.  I'm currently floating closer to the lower end of my cash cushion, whereas a year or two ago I was closer to 15% in cash.  As opportunities become available I take positions.  And if the opportunity has a potential annual return of 10-15% I will seriously consider a place for them in my portfolio.