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Some say volatility, rather than debt, is the best way to think about risk as an investor, but Warren Buffett famously said that 'Volatility is far from synonymous with risk. 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 can see that Brunello Cucinelli S.p.A. (BIT:BC) does use debt in its business. But the more important question is: how much risk is that debt creating?
What Risk Does Debt Bring?
Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. Ultimately, if the company can't fulfill its legal obligations to repay debt, shareholders could walk away with nothing. However, a more frequent (but still costly) occurrence is where a company must issue shares at bargain-basement prices, permanently diluting shareholders, just to shore up its balance sheet. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. When we examine debt levels, we first consider both cash and debt levels, together.
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What Is Brunello Cucinelli's Net Debt?
The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at June 2019 Brunello Cucinelli had debt of €113.7m, up from €95.4m in one year. However, it also had €67.4m in cash, and so its net debt is €46.3m.
A Look At Brunello Cucinelli's Liabilities
We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Brunello Cucinelli had liabilities of €243.2m falling due within a year, and liabilities of €383.2m due beyond that. Offsetting this, it had €67.4m in cash and €98.5m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by €460.6m.
Brunello Cucinelli has a market capitalization of €1.91b, so it could very likely raise cash to ameliorate its balance sheet, if the need arose. But we definitely want to keep our eyes open to indications that its debt is bringing too much risk.
We use two main ratios to inform us about debt levels relative to earnings. The first is net debt divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), while the second is how many times its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) covers its interest expense (or its interest cover, for short). Thus we consider debt relative to earnings both with and without depreciation and amortization expenses.
Brunello Cucinelli's net debt is only 0.46 times its EBITDA. And its EBIT easily covers its interest expense, being 11.9 times the size. So you could argue it is no more threatened by its debt than an elephant is by a mouse. Fortunately, Brunello Cucinelli grew its EBIT by 9.0% in the last year, making that debt load look even more manageable. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Brunello Cucinelli'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.