Sunday 26 June 2011

Dealing with Cash Bargains

One of Graham's famous theme was Cash Bargain. When market cap of company is less than net cash (cash minus debt), then essentially everything ( fixed assets, working capital, management, intangibles) is available for free. This strange situation is what he used to call as cash bargain.

But those times and location were different. Such companies were take-over and/or liquidation candidates and shareholders used to receive cash after liquidation (worst case scenario). But this is India.
Hardly any take-overs attempts (Exception- GESCO Corp. in 2000.). Hardly any liquidation..

So, we need to be skeptical even with cash bargains. Lets try to see the negatives. Why should a company deserves to be available at less than cash-
  1. Cash is only on the books. Actual availability is uncertain. Market is basically saying- Show me the money!!!
  2. Management is fraud. They are taking away the cash from the company.
  3. Business is burning cash & is expected to burn cash for a long long time.
  4. Cash in balance sheet is not cash of the business but is customer's cash (basically get money from customers in advance while giving to suppliers sometime later)
  5. If company can't invest the cash to earn returns at rate more than WACC, then also they deserve to be valued less than cash. (They are not returning cash & are not investing it properly, either)
Plz share if i am missing something and there is some other logical reason for cash bargains!!

PS- As I write this, there are a few cash bargains that are available & I am trying to find whether they deserve to be cash bargains or not!!