Your Business – From a Buyer’s Point of View

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_8865-001

When you sell your business, you want to do everything possible to get the right price. That often means forgetting about how you have run the business, and looking at it from the buyer’s point of view.

What the Buyer is Buying

Generally speaking, a buyer will be willing to pay a price that is a multiple of the company’s annual cash flow. The multiple varies widely depending on the industry, the economy and many other factors. The price the buyer pays, though, will be a multiple of his expected cash flow – not yours.

The harsh fact is that the buyer doesn’t care how you ran the business. Certainly, he will keep what he sees as the best practices and procedures, and will probably keep most of your people, but his ideas on executive compensation, business development, human resources, inventory control, and a host of other subjects will probably differ from yours.

I actually saw a deal fall apart because the seller insisted on dictating how the business would be operated AFTER he was gone.

The trick is to know what the buyer believes he is buying.

Normalizing Results

It’s a useful exercise to adjust historical earnings for unique, unusual or non-recurring items, so future cash flow projections reflect the results the buyer is likely to achieve. This is called “normalizing” cash flow. Depending on how you’ve been operating the business, this process may identify certain assets or liabilities that should be valued separately.

Here are some examples:

Owner’s Compensation

A homebuilder’s owner paid himself a salary that was much higher than the CEO of any similar company would normally receive. It was his decision as to whether he wanted to receive the funds as salary or as a draw against earnings, but it did cause widespread resentment within the company, especially during lean times.

The important point here, though, is that by adding back the excess owner’s compensation into the cash flow projections, the company’s value increased by a multiple of say, 6 or 7 times that amount.

Below-Market Rents

A retailer had been in business for many years, and was such a desirable tenant that it could drive a very hard bargain with landlords. It was common to find 20 year leases at below-market rates, with 10-year extensions. A careful reading of the lease on the ideally-located head office revealed that it ran in perpetuity.

The low rents increased the company’s cash flow, and would have been taken into account if the company had been valued strictly on a multiple of that cash flow. Valuing leases uses much the same arithmetic as arriving at a multiple of earnings, but the terms of these leases were so unusual that we saw the need to evaluate them as a separate asset.

Ultimately, we prepared cash flow projections using much higher market-rate rents. This reduced the amount a buyer would pay for the company based on its projected cash flows, but it was more than made up by the higher value assigned to the leases as a separate asset.

Unusual Expenses

The owner of another company had a unique set of personal beliefs, and insisted that all of his employees and vendors share or participate in them – at considerable cost. Everyone was required to attend expensive week-long seminars by a California-based consultant who taught them how to deal with their personal fears. Another consultant was flown in from San Francisco for a week to realign the chakras of the executive staff. The owner catered lunches several times a week, so the entire staff would attend his meditation sessions. The company sponsored a project in which meditation experts gathered in Sedona to effect world peace.

It was highly unlikely that a buyer would continue these human resource policies, so we added back their cost to normalized cash flow, and substantially increased the asking price of the company.

Historic Land Values

A land developer and homebuilder had been in business for many years, and owned properties it had purchased up to 30 years previously. The profit margins on the houses it sold were significantly higher than they would have been if the land were acquired more recently.

There had been talk within the company of separating the land component of the business from the homebuilding component, in order to clearly see where the profit and returns on investment really came from, but the initiative never got off the ground.

The low historic land values were reflected in profits, but not in the actual operating cash flows, so a valuation based on a multiple of cash flow didn’t make sense. We prepared normalized cash flow projections for the homebuilding business based on market prices for the land, and did a separate valuation of the land reserves, based on those same market prices.

Non-Recurring Costs

Most companies have expenses they needed to incur a single time, or for a limited period. Examples I have seen include legal fees and settlement costs for lawsuits, discretionary bonuses for unusual personal or company performance and employee termination costs. I worked with a company that had incurred huge expenses trying to start a new line of business that was never realized. Another committed to a year-long sponsorship of a local sports team in a marketing effort that was judged a failure.

None of these costs can be expected to be repeated by a buyer of the company, and so should be added back to the normalized historic earnings, and to the cash flow projections used to place a value on the company.

Does your CFO understand the value of normalizing your cash flows from a buyer’s point of view?

Advertisement

Losing Perspective

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_1047-001

The story is that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If you put it into a pot of cool water, however, then turn on the heat, the frog won’t notice the temperature change, and will eventually die when it gets too hot. Who knows if it’s true, but it’s a great metaphor, and we see it happening everywhere.

It’s easy to lose perspective.

We Are the Best

I worked on the conversion of a newly-acquired retailer’s systems to those of the acquiring parent company. Although the new system was much more sophisticated and comprehensive, fundamental accounting controls were missing, and it was so difficult to acquire, verify or reconcile certain information that we had lingering doubts over its overall integrity.

The parent company had a unique corporate culture based on the belief that they were the best – had the best stores, the best products, the best people, the best systems, etc. – and there was no room for discussion of improvements. The corporate controller explained to me that the systems were terrible before he joined the company, but they were great now. He listed examples of how bad they used to be, and every one of the deficiencies still existed… but they were the best.

Years later, there was an accounting scandal that hinged, among many other things, on the system’s inability to properly account for cost of goods sold.

They refused to look at their systems with a critical eye, and they lost perspective.

Director’s Cut

A well-known filmmaker invited me to see his new film while it was still a work in progress. He had been editing it for weeks, and was ready to show a rough version of the finished product. It was a demanding film, with dense dialog requiring concentration, and a limited budget for production values, and I was drained by the end of the screening. I looked at my watch several times during the film, so I was very aware of the fact that it was well over 2 hours long.

Called on for comments, I sincerely praised the film for its merits – a respected film critic eventually included it in his annual “Top Ten” list – but I felt the length of the film undermined its overall success. Surprised, the filmmaker responded: “You should have seen it when it was 4 hours long.” I attended the screening of the final film, and still found it much too long.

Art is subjective, of course, but I believe he lost perspective.

Competing Systems

A homebuilder developed an elaborate and advanced construction management system, and its reporting mechanism was tied to an accounting package. For reasons lost in history, they also continued to customize the primary general ledger system that had been in use since the 1970s. The result was that there were two very complex systems, but the reported results were often materially different.

Each member of the management team had his own favorite reports from both systems, and every meeting started with an argument over whose report was correct. One member of senior management knew how to reconcile the results, and he spent more than half his time doing so. By the time the reports were reconciled, the meetings were often over. Important business issues were never addressed, and the managers made their decisions based on different information.

This was one of the first issues I raised when asked for my observations on the company and its operations. The CEO, early in his career, personally directed the customization of the ledger system, and he wouldn’t listen to any criticism. He and his managers had developed the construction system, and were so proud of it that they invited homebuilders from around the country to show it off. There wasn’t going to be any discussion of problems there, either. When I tried to address the gap between the systems, the response was: “It’s great now – up until 6 months ago, all the computer terminals had green screens.” I hadn’t seen a monochrome screen in over 20 years.

The company went bankrupt. They had lost perspective.

Hey, What’re You Gonna Do?

Another retailer was very dependent on its highly complex systems. The nature of the business is that there is a high rate of turnover among line managers, and the corporate training systems placed more emphasis on sales and marketing than on administration. Unfortunately, the systems, while comprehensive, were not user-friendly, and there were constant problems requiring many long telephone calls to explain and resolve issues.

There was constant finger-pointing and redirection. A manager would direct associates to call the technical support hotline, only to be directed to the regional office, who might then send it back to the original manager. Certain employees became known for their ability to resolve certain types of problems, and everyone had a favorite go-to fixer.

Frustration abounded, but there was no feeling at the field level that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the systems. The company had been in existence for a long time. There was no problem with customer service, but the amount of employee time wasted by awkward systems was huge. When I asked why nobody complained up the corporate ladder, they just shrugged and said it wouldn’t do any good.

They had lost perspective.

That’s How it Should Be

In a construction company, it was highly unusual for accounting reports to tie out to the general ledger. It was a constant problem, and drove me crazy, because I could never trust that I was working with reliable information. We were involved in huge projects and equally huge financings, and acting on wrong information could have major consequences.

The CFO and IT director had been with the company for many years, and together had implemented most of the systems in use at the time. They knew them so well that they could tell me how to do elaborate reconciliations of the reports, which would often involve writing special programs. Their default question would typically be: “What do you need that for?” This exercise turned up problems with the original reports often enough that we had the battle many times.

When I pressed the CFO to set up a task force to streamline and clean up the accounting systems, he would argue that the systems were good, and that the reports actually shouldn’t tie out. “That’s how we designed them.”

They had lost perspective.

Does your CFO encourage taking a fresh look at long-established systems and methods?

Cap Rate … What is it?

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_1224-005

For every commercial real estate opportunity, someone is going to tell you the Cap Rate. We all know that the Cap Rate, when divided into Net Operating Income (NOI) gives you the purchase price. We also know that the Cap Rate roughly represents the return for one year on a commercial real estate investment. But does that mean it’s the right rate for you?

It’s useful to break down the Cap Rate between the mortgage component and the equity component. Here’s an example:

What We Know

The things we know (or should know) when we’re contemplating a real estate purchase include:

Net Operating Income (NOI) – $1,000,000 annually. Remember that a property’s NOI does not include debt service – principal or interest payments. This isn’t the time for a lengthy discussion, but be sure to do your due diligence to prevent unpleasant surprises.

Mortgage rate – 5.0%

Mortgage term – 25 years

Loan to value ratio (LTV) – 75% of purchase price

Mortgage Component – Calculate the Mortgage Constant

The mortgage constant is the annual payment, or debt service, expressed as a fraction of the total mortgage. From the bank’s point of view, this is the Cap Rate on their investment in the loan.

In this example, the annual payment on a $100,000 mortgage (any amount will give the same result) at 5.0% amortized over 25 years is $7,015.08. This is the portion of NOI that goes to make debt payments.

Annual debt service of $7,015.08 is 7.0158% of the $100,000 mortgage in this example, so the mortgage constant is .0701508

Equity Component – Calculate the Equity Constant

How much do you want to make on your equity investment? Let’s say you’re looking for a 15% cash on cash return.

Your return is 15% of your equity investment, so the equity constant is .15.

Calculate the Cap Rate

Mortgage component of the Cap Rate:

Mortgage constant (.0701508) x LTV (75%) = 5.26%

Equity portion of the Cap Rate:

Equity constant (.15) x Equity contribution (25%) = 3.75%

Cap Rate:
Mortgage component (5.26%) + Equity component (3.75%) = 9.01%

Calculate the Purchase Price

Net Operating Income ($1,000,000) ÷ Cap Rate (9.01%) = $11,097,165

If you pay more than $11,095,165 for the property, you won’t make your target return. This may limit you to certain types of property investments, so you may want to adjust your expectations. If you are willing to accept a 12% return on your equity investment in this example, your Cap Rate would drop to 8.26%, and you could pay $12,104,617 for the property.

Capital Appreciation

Of course, 101 other questions arise when you are contemplating this sort of decision. Foremost among them is how you view capital appreciation. With a 75% mortgage, if the property value increases by 1% a year, you gain 4% on your invested funds. If you build appreciation and/or rent increases into your projections, you can pay a lot more for the same property and still make your target return. That’s how high quality properties can sell at a 4% or 5% cap rate.

Do you know who to call to discuss Cap Rates?

Profit Improvement – Delay of Expenditures

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_0968-002

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Delay of Expenditures

Time is money. Delaying expenditures until absolutely necessary reduces interest, storage and other carrying costs, reduces pressure on borrowing limits and has a positive impact on return on investment. Speeding the receipt of funds has the same impact.

Financial Review

A land developer traditionally let marketing decide when certain tracts would be made available for sale to builders. The sites they selected appeared to be random throughout the communities, and they professed no particular strategy. I proposed marketing contiguous tracts to delay the outlay on roads and other infrastructure costs. As a result, we delayed the spending of tens of millions of dollars, and there wasn’t a grumble from marketing.

Looking Around

A retailer’s distribution center was designed to service a fixed number of stores, and the time was upon us to start construction on a new, larger center. The limiting factor was the number of boxes that would fit on the conveyors that passed in front of the merchandise pickers. I observed that if we simply changed the shape of the boxes, we could serve up to 50% more stores without incurring the multi-million dollar capital expenditure.

Process Review

Homebuilders often sell their model homes to investors, and lease them back until the community is sold out. The process is rather complex, involving the buyer, various attorneys, appraisers, the construction and marketing departments, accounting and treasury, among others. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on interest and carrying costs until the transaction is completed. I led a Six Sigma team to look into speeding the inflow of cash. We flow-charted the process, identified bottlenecks and delays, and established a standard timetable to be followed on all future transactions. We reduced the cycle time by three weeks, and calculated annual savings at $400,000.

Does your CFO get involved in planning your major expenditures?

Thinking About Year-End? … You Should Be

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_0270-001

Year-end is almost upon us again. Now is the time to get your house in order – it will take a huge amount of stress off the closing process a couple of months from now.

Being truly ready for the auditors can save audit time and fees, reduce stress on your staff during the audit, and maybe make your financials available for lenders and investors a little earlier. Equally importantly, audit-readiness is a good indication that your accounting department is organized and up to date. How many other ways do you really have to determine that? Here are a few things you should consider:

Preparation of Financial Statements

Do the auditors historically require that you make embarrassing changes to the financials? What has been done to avoid that this year?

–          Does your accounting department prepare the financials, including notes?

–          Have you questioned any balances or accounts that seem surprising or unusual?

–          Did you do anything different this year? Are you sure it is accounted for correctly? Now is the time to sort that out, not during the audit.

–          Have any changes in accounting rules affected your business? Are there any changes not yet required that you could implement early?

Reconciliations

Reconciliations provide explanations for changes in Balance Sheet and P&L accounts, and your accounting department should be able to show them to you every month.

–          Do you know exactly what is in every balance sheet account?

–          Can you explain every change in the balance sheet?

–          Have expenses been calculated consistently every month?

–          Can you show how cost of goods sold affected inventory every month?

If you can say yes to all of these items, updating to year-end should be a piece of cake.

Updated Estimates

Where your monthly accruals and amortization calculations are based on volume or other estimates, have they been updated to be sure the year-end balances are correct? Again, a 2 month update at the end of the year is a lot easier than doing it for the entire year.

Variance Analysis

Has there been a thorough analysis documenting all significant P&L and Balance Sheet variances from last year? Are the explanations reasonable, and the underlying facts correct?

Documentation of Procedures

–          Are the fundamental internal control procedures properly documented?

–          The auditors typically make recommendations for improvements in procedures and controls if they find any deficiencies. Were last year’s recommendations fully implemented?

–          Have changes in staffing or procedures resulted in changes to the control environment? Now is the time to correct them.

Not sure if you’re going to be ready for year-end? Do you know who to call?

Hmmm… Didn’t Think of That

Posted on by
1

IMG_0543-001

There are executives who rely on their ability to move quickly. They are often the ones who loudly declare that if we sit around analyzing things to death, we’ll never get anything done. Sometimes, they’re also the ones who are willing to bet the farm before the analysis has been thoroughly completed.

I love working with these high-velocity types, but they often need someone like me watching their back. Someone with a strong business sense and analytical capability who doesn’t slow down the process.

Here are some examples of how things can go wrong:

Catalogue Stores

A well-known retailer operated discount department stores nation-wide. To reach a wider customer base, they also operated a successful chain of catalogue stores in communities too small to support a full-service store. A customer would place his order at a catalogue store, and the item would be delivered within a week.

Meanwhile, changes in technology and inventory management techniques had resulted in a substantial reduction of inventory carried in the full-service stores. These were large stores, so quite a lot of physical space was freed up.

A senior executive came up with the idea to put catalogue stores in the available space in the full-service stores. His analysis showed that not only would the new catalogue stores add substantial revenue and profit to the existing outlets, but they could easily be placed in the least desirable selling areas, often in store basements.

There was much fanfare as the project was launched. The executive in charge even ran afoul of his boss and colleagues when newspaper articles praised his brilliance beyond their comfort level. Then the catalogue stores were abruptly shut down as a disastrous failure. Why would a customer walk through the store, passing by the merchandise he wants to buy, only to order it in a dark basement for delivery a week later? Hmmm… didn’t think of that.

Paper Shortage

A young warehouse worker at a large office supplies distributor showed such ability and intelligence that he was rapidly promoted to be the company’s purchasing agent. This was a long time ago, in the mid-1970s, when the oil crisis resulted in chronic shortages of a surprising range of products.

One day, the purchasing agent called to place a routine order of reams of 8 ½ x 11 inch printer paper. “6 months’ delivery” he was told, and he realized he would be unable to fulfill his customer orders for much of that time.

He was a smart kid, so it didn’t take long to figure out that when the shipment did arrive, he could be looking at another 6 months for the next delivery. Of course he didn’t ask for advice. He started placing orders every couple of weeks, based on historical usage, fully expecting to be back on his regular schedule at the end of the 6 months. Yes, he was a smart kid.

The only problem is that it was a big company, and after a while, the orders accumulated into a quantity large enough to justify an entire separate mill-run by the manufacturer. There were delivery trucks at the door for days on end, and you had to walk sideways through the warehouse to get past the stacks of paper. Hmmm… didn’t think of that.

Demographics

A retailer launched a new business based largely on demographics. It was the early 1980s, and the Baby Boomers were just starting to have children of their own. It was the beginning of a huge increase in births that the industry was calling the Echo Boom. What better time to start a chain of stores specializing in children’s apparel?

After establishing a solid base in California, the plan was to follow the demographic projections that showed high percentage population growth in the southern states. The company made an aggressive move into Texas, and suffered from an economic downturn and some bad real estate decisions, resulting in the prompt closure of about half of the new stores. Still, the roll-out through the south remained the CEO’s plan.

This is the only example in this article in which I was able to play a part, so of course, I’m the hero of this story. I pointed out that the southern states were in fact projected to grow at high percentage rates, but the population density was insufficient to achieve the economies resulting from tight clustering of stores. After all, 10% of nothing is still nothing. Hmmm… didn’t think of that.

The management team listened to my presentation, and we headed instead to the northeast, where large populations were already in place. Our strategy shifted to taking business away from the department stores.

Does your CFO sit in on strategy meetings and tactical problem-solving sessions? He might just bring an important new perspective.

A Part-Time CFO

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_8646-001

At certain stages of growth, many companies find themselves in the awkward situation of needing the services of an experienced CFO, but feel they can’t afford to hire one.

Yes, a good CFO with the depth of knowledge and experience you need can come at a steep price. And – no offense intended – there may not even be enough to keep a good CFO challenged and interested on a full-time basis at this stage of the company’s growth. So what are the options?

The Options

Try to hire a CFO who may or may not find the job satisfying and lucrative enough to stick around for a while.

Hire a slightly stronger accountant at a slightly higher salary, and hope that he or she can rise to the challenge of a job far beyond his or her education and experience level.

Redirect your attention away from running and growing your business to focus on the CFO role yourself.

Ignore the financial needs of the company, and hope for the best.

Divide up the CFO role and ask your other executives to take care of it in their spare time.

OR…

Hire a part-time CFO at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO.

What Will a CFO Do for You?

In collaboration with you and your management team, an experienced CFO will quickly assess the company’s finance, accounting and control needs, and lay them out in order of priority. Areas that he or she will be considering include:

Project the future needs of the company based on achievable growth plans – resources, facilities, and the associated costs.

Identify and quantify financing needs to achieve the business plan – both short term and long term.

Develop relationships with financing sources – debt and equity – that are important to the company’s ability to operate and grow today, as well as to support long term growth and development.

Evaluate and make recommendations regarding the strength of the existing accounting staff.

Evaluate and make recommendations on accounting and information systems.

Oversee the preparation of financial statements, ensuring that the best professionals are chosen to provide auditing, tax and other outside services.

Lead the preparation of operating budgets to keep the company on track to achieve its short term goals.

Introduce the management disciplines and internal control structure necessary for the next level of growth.

Advise on the most appropriate methods and rates of growth – including acquisitions.

Conduct due diligence on acquisitions, and satisfy due diligence requirements of investors and lenders.

Lead programs and efforts to contain and reduce costs while still fostering growth.

Strategize on potential exit strategies – sale of the business for example – and help attract investors and buyers.

What to Look For

The more experience a CFO brings to the table, the more widely that experience is likely to vary among the candidates you speak with. All the more reason to have an idea of the qualities that are most important to you and your business. Here are a few thoughts:

Do you feel comfortable talking to the CFO? We all work better with people we like and trust.

Does the CFO seem to find your business interesting? Of course you find it interesting, but you can’t just assume that others do too.

Is a CPA important? Yes, it probably is. It demonstrates a minimum intellectual standard and level of accounting knowledge, and like the top business schools, the top accounting firms tend (with clear exceptions) to attract the best talent.

Does the CFO have a wide variety of experience in which he or she had to show resourcefulness and flexibility, as well as the willingness to learn on the job? How has he or she performed in situations similar to those likely to arise in your company? References come in handy here.

Has the CFO worked with companies similar in size to yours? I can tell you that working for a Fortune 100 company is very different from the environment of an owner-operated entrepreneurial venture. If you are planning to grow rapidly, does the CFO have rapid growth experience?

How about industry experience? Unless you are in a wildly specialized business like banking or insurance, industry experience is probably not critical. CFOs and CPAs are famous for their transferrable skills, and should be expected to learn your business quickly. On the other hand, some businesses like real estate have a steep learning curve, and some prior experience can make a big difference.

Why would a CFO want a part-time position? If this is a temporary move while he or she is looking for a full-time job, it doesn’t have much long-term potential. On the other hand, there are plenty of financial executives who like the flexibility of a part-time situation, and who enjoy working with a variety of interesting clients, each with its own challenges and rewards.

As the company grows in size and complexity, would the CFO potentially be interested in turning a part-time arrangement into a full-time position?

Do you know who to call to discuss hiring a part-time CFO?

Profit Improvement – Allocation of Resources

Posted on by
Reply

021-001

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Allocation of Resources

Where a company chooses to invest its resources has an important effect on its profitability and ROI. This can be managed at the time of the initial investment, but ongoing investment needs to be reviewed with a critical eye.

Profit maximization – A land developer and builder was very disciplined in its due diligence on land acquisitions. Land development is a surprisingly complex process involving massive investment, and is subject to a seemingly endless list of restrictions and costly requirements from all levels of government. So choosing between land investment opportunities is a painstaking process, but often subject to emotional responses. We built a linear programming model to maximize the profitability of our land use plans based on our budgets and timing, as well as the attendant marketing and government constraints. This removed much of the emotion from the land acquisition process.

Unprofitable operations – A homebuilder was focused on entry-level housing, and suffered from tight margins and the need for economies of scale and tight discipline in that sector of the business. At the same time, its land entitlement and development business was generating high margins and even higher returns on investment. With 80% of the company’s overhead, but only a small percentage of profits coming from homebuilding, we weighed the investment required to operate a full-scale builder in a higher price category against the potential return, and decided to walk away from the business entirely. Overhead was drastically reduced, and capital was redirected to the more profitable business of land development.

More profit with lower investment – A retailer was famous for the department stores it had operated for many years. Over time, though, these stores had lost ground to competitors, and capital investment had been cut back in proportion to declining profits. The company also operated a number of successful specialty store formats. A time of reckoning came, and the company realized it could make management changes and invest heavily in its department stores, possibly reaching the level of success, for example, of Target Stores. After an intense review, though, they recognized that specialty stores had a higher potential return, a relatively lower investment, lower risk and correspondingly low barriers to entry in niche specialty markets. Relying on its depth of experience, the company closed its famous department stores, and reallocated its funds and energies toward rapid growth in specialty retailing. It became one of the top-performing companies on the New York Stock Exchange.

Drawing on strengths – Another homebuilder operated in a single market, selling low margin homes during a downturn in the housing market. Recognizing its strength in efficient, low cost construction, it started looking for new opportunities. We focused on selling houses at full margin for rental by investment partnerships, expanding regionally into new markets through joint ventures, construction for hire of military housing and multifamily construction.

Does your CFO lead your management team in constant evaluation of your resource allocation process?

Overhead… Who Cares?

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_6295-002

You probably couldn’t stop your accountants from allocating overhead to your operating profit centers, even if you tried. I’m not a business historian, but somewhere along the line, accountants everywhere became convinced that allocating overhead to operating unit P&Ls results in a better understanding of profitability. That may or may not be true, but let’s not use an accounting concept for making business decisions.

What is Overhead?

Overhead has a different meaning in every company, and its calculation varies widely. Generally speaking, though, it is considered to be the cost of running a head office, including centralized costs such as executive salaries, office rent, computer systems, etc. When the accountants allocate overhead, it is often in the form of a percentage of gross revenue. If a company has a division that contributes 10% profit, and another that contributes 8%, a 4% overhead allocation would reduce these results to 6% and 4%.

In this example, it would appear that the first division is 50% more profitable than the second, and management might be tempted to allocate resources accordingly. But its contribution margin is only 25% higher, so the result could be misleading.

If you can’t tell if your operations generate enough profit to cover overhead, you might consider looking for a different occupation. For the record, I’m sure many intelligent people disagree with me.

Don’t include Overhead in your business decisions

In my experience, many accountants don’t really appreciate that accounting conventions have no place in business decision-making, and operating executives often don’t feel confident enough to challenge the accountants on their own turf. Some things to remember:

Overhead is just an accounting concept
Overhead does not affect cash flow
Overhead allocations do not affect total company profitability
Overhead is calculated differently in every company

I have seen some dysfunctional results arise from trying to shoe-horn an accounting concept into business decisions.

A Retailer

A retailer had several stores that were not only losing money, but had a negative cash flow. That is, their operating loss was greater than their depreciation and amortization. The stores clearly needed to be closed to stop the damage.

The CEO, however, had done his math. If he closed the failing stores, the overhead allocated to those stores would have to be redistributed to the remaining stores, reducing their accounting profit after overhead. The CEO could not be persuaded that closing the losing stores would improve the company’s total profitability.

The failing stores continued to lose cash flow, and the overhead was allocated to all stores… until the CEO was replaced.

A Homebuilder

A homebuilder had a target IRR for new community construction projects. IRR is a measure of cash flow that calculates the return realized on a cash investment. The CFO, an accountant by training, insisted that all cash flow projections include a 3% charge for overhead, despite the fact that overhead has nothing to do with the incremental cash flow generated by a new construction project. He argued that when the project was under way, overhead would be allocated for accounting purposes, so the pro formas should reflect that. The pro formas then became just a forecast of the accounting records, and IRR, the real reason for making the investment, was calculated incorrectly.

At least the pro formas were conservative as a result of this allocation, but the company probably missed out on some good opportunities whose IRR projections fell below the hurdle rate. As it happened, the company’s actual overhead was not even 3% at all.

Another Retailer

Some retailers charge the cost of their distribution centers directly to expense, in the manner of unallocated overhead, while others include it in the cost of their merchandise, charging it directly to operations.

In a year when earnings were tight, I was encouraged as division CFO to find ways to increase reported profit, so I capitalized the distribution center costs. This resulted in a large transfer of costs from expense to inventory, substantially increasing reported earnings. The parent company paid senior management large bonuses that year, regardless of the fact that nearly all our profit came from an accounting change.

Although we reported more profit, the actual economic impact on the company was a negative cash flow in the amount of the bonuses that were paid. Was the accounting technically correct? Yes. Was it the most appropriate accounting under the circumstances? Maybe not. Would I do it again? … Well, I did like that bonus.

A Land Developer

When a land developer sold finished and partially finished lots to homebuilders, they did a land residual calculation to arrive at the asking price. That is, they estimated all the builder’s costs and revenues, and priced the lots so the builder could achieve a specified percentage profit margin. But one of the costs included in the analysis was 3% – again 3% – for overhead. If they didn’t include the overhead, they could have started with a higher asking price, and maybe sold the lots for a higher price.

Does your CFO take a practical view of Overhead?

What (Not!) To Do In Troubled Times – Part 2

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_6270-002

Regrettably, I’ve seen my share of companies in troubled times. Some CEOs step up and take effective action, but others are less effective. Here are some unfortunately common behaviors that have led to failure. This group of behaviors falls under the category:

General Confusion

Change plans constantly, and don’t inform all of your mangers of the changes – There is always the fear that plans aren’t working, or aren’t working fast enough. Plans need to be carefully thought through and executed at all levels of the organization if they are going to succeed. A rapid succession of poorly conceived plans is worse than no plan at all.

Make radical decisions, then reverse them without explanation – Wild decisions such as cutting the price of your flagship product by 50% (it’s a fictitious example, but just barely) are not the only way to increase business. Everyone, including you, knows it’s not going to work, and abruptly changing your mind a few weeks later will only make you look more foolish.

Find reasons why managers who don’t always agree with you should be absent from meetings – It’s nice to hear from people who agree with you, but you need to hear every point of view, especially in troubled times.

Constantly reshuffle management responsibilities – Sure, you sometimes wish your managers had stronger or different capabilities. But you hired and promoted them for their expertise, experience and judgment in certain areas of the business, and they are the ones who are going to help you through the rough patches. Juggling responsibilities just causes confusion and resentment, and after a while, you’ll be the only one who knows what is going on… maybe.

Appoint capable managers to lead new initiatives, but don’t let them actually do anything – Is this really the time for bold new initiatives? Or are your senior managers more effectively used to improve the core business? Don’t waste your most valuable resources on projects that you will probably never green-light.

Think about it. Does any of this feel familiar? … Really think about it.