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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. It's only natural to consider a company's balance sheet when you examine how risky it is, since debt is often involved when a business collapses. We note that McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) does have debt on its balance sheet. But the real question is whether this debt is making the company risky.
When Is Debt Dangerous?
Debt and other liabilities become risky for a business when it cannot easily fulfill those obligations, either with free cash flow or by raising capital at an attractive price. In the worst case scenario, a company can go bankrupt if it cannot pay its creditors. However, a more usual (but still expensive) situation is where a company must dilute shareholders at a cheap share price simply to get debt under control. By replacing dilution, though, debt can be an extremely good tool for businesses that need capital to invest in growth at high rates of return. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together.
View our latest analysis for McKesson
What Is McKesson's Debt?
As you can see below, McKesson had US$7.67b of debt at June 2019, down from US$9.88b a year prior. However, it also had US$1.95b in cash, and so its net debt is US$5.72b.
A Look At McKesson's Liabilities
The latest balance sheet data shows that McKesson had liabilities of US$38.0b due within a year, and liabilities of US$14.3b falling due after that. Offsetting this, it had US$1.95b in cash and US$19.3b in receivables that were due within 12 months. So it has liabilities totalling US$31.0b more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined.
Given this deficit is actually higher than the company's massive market capitalization of US$27.1b, we think shareholders really should watch McKesson's debt levels, like a parent watching their child ride a bike for the first time. Hypothetically, extremely heavy dilution would be required if the company were forced to pay down its liabilities by raising capital at the current share price.
We measure a company's debt load relative to its earnings power by looking at its net debt divided by its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and by calculating how easily its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) cover its interest expense (interest cover). The advantage of this approach is that we take into account both the absolute quantum of debt (with net debt to EBITDA) and the actual interest expenses associated with that debt (with its interest cover ratio).