David Iben put it well when he said, 'Volatility is not a risk we care about. What we care about is avoiding the 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. Importantly, The Fulham Shore PLC (LON:FUL) does carry debt. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?

What Risk Does Debt Bring?

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. While that is not too common, we often do see indebted companies permanently diluting shareholders because lenders force them to raise capital at a distressed price. Of course, the upside of debt is that it often represents cheap capital, especially when it replaces dilution in a company with the ability to reinvest at high rates of return. When we think about a company's use of debt, we first look at cash and debt together.

See our latest analysis for Fulham Shore

What Is Fulham Shore's Debt?

As you can see below, Fulham Shore had UK£1.85m of debt at March 2022, down from UK£15.9m a year prior. But on the other hand it also has UK£6.14m in cash, leading to a UK£4.29m net cash position.

A Look At Fulham Shore's Liabilities

Zooming in on the latest balance sheet data, we can see that Fulham Shore had liabilities of UK£27.6m due within 12 months and liabilities of UK£81.2m due beyond that. Offsetting this, it had UK£6.14m in cash and UK£2.90m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So it has liabilities totalling UK£99.7m more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined.

When you consider that this deficiency exceeds the company's UK£79.4m market capitalization, you might well be inclined to review the balance sheet intently. 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. Given that Fulham Shore has more cash than debt, we're pretty confident it can handle its debt, despite the fact that it has a lot of liabilities in total.

Notably, Fulham Shore made a loss at the EBIT level, last year, but improved that to positive EBIT of UK£4.9m in the last twelve months. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Fulham Shore's ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward. So if you're focused on the future you can check out this free report showing analyst profit forecasts.