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Legendary fund manager Li Lu (who Charlie Munger backed) once said, 'The biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital. When we think about how risky a company is, we always like to look at its use of debt, since debt overload can lead to ruin. We note that CTI Logistics Limited (ASX:CLX) does have debt on its balance sheet. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?
When Is Debt A Problem?
Debt is a tool to help businesses grow, but if a business is incapable of paying off its lenders, then it exists at their mercy. Ultimately, if the company can't fulfill its legal obligations to repay debt, shareholders could walk away with nothing. However, a more common (but still painful) scenario is that it has to raise new equity capital at a low price, thus permanently diluting shareholders. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. When we think about a company's use of debt, we first look at cash and debt together.
Check out our latest analysis for CTI Logistics
What Is CTI Logistics's Net Debt?
As you can see below, CTI Logistics had AU$44.3m of debt, at June 2019, which is about the same the year before. You can click the chart for greater detail. However, it also had AU$2.19m in cash, and so its net debt is AU$42.1m.
How Healthy Is CTI Logistics's Balance Sheet?
We can see from the most recent balance sheet that CTI Logistics had liabilities of AU$29.9m falling due within a year, and liabilities of AU$48.3m due beyond that. On the other hand, it had cash of AU$2.19m and AU$29.8m worth of receivables due within a year. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by AU$46.2m.
This is a mountain of leverage relative to its market capitalization of AU$60.8m. Should its lenders demand that it shore up the balance sheet, shareholders would likely face severe dilution.
In order to size up a company's debt relative to its earnings, we calculate its net debt divided by its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) divided by its interest expense (its interest cover). This way, we consider both the absolute quantum of the debt, as well as the interest rates paid on it.
CTI Logistics's debt is 2.9 times its EBITDA, and its EBIT cover its interest expense 3.4 times over. Taken together this implies that, while we wouldn't want to see debt levels rise, we think it can handle its current leverage. Even worse, CTI Logistics saw its EBIT tank 23% over the last 12 months. If earnings continue to follow that trajectory, paying off that debt load will be harder than convincing us to run a marathon in the rain. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But ultimately the future profitability of the business will decide if CTI Logistics can strengthen its balance sheet over time. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting.