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Byrna Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:BYRN) recently released a strong earnings report, and the market responded by raising the share price. Despite the strong profit numbers, we believe that there are some deeper issues which investors should look into.
Zooming In On Byrna Technologies' Earnings
As finance nerds would already know, the accrual ratio from cashflow is a key measure for assessing how well a company's free cash flow (FCF) matches its profit. The accrual ratio subtracts the FCF from the profit for a given period, and divides the result by the average operating assets of the company over that time. This ratio tells us how much of a company's profit is not backed by free cashflow.
That means a negative accrual ratio is a good thing, because it shows that the company is bringing in more free cash flow than its profit would suggest. While having an accrual ratio above zero is of little concern, we do think it's worth noting when a company has a relatively high accrual ratio. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, "firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future".
Byrna Technologies has an accrual ratio of 0.54 for the year to February 2025. Statistically speaking, that's a real negative for future earnings. To wit, the company did not generate one whit of free cashflow in that time. Even though it reported a profit of US$14.4m, a look at free cash flow indicates it actually burnt through US$822k in the last year. We saw that FCF was US$10m a year ago though, so Byrna Technologies has at least been able to generate positive FCF in the past. However, as we will discuss below, we can see that the company's accrual ratio has been impacted by its tax situation. This would partially explain why the accrual ratio was so poor. The good news for shareholders is that Byrna Technologies' accrual ratio was much better last year, so this year's poor reading might simply be a case of a short term mismatch between profit and FCF. Shareholders should look for improved cashflow relative to profit in the current year, if that is indeed the case.
That might leave you wondering what analysts are forecasting in terms of future profitability. Luckily, you can click here to see an interactive graph depicting future profitability, based on their estimates.
An Unusual Tax Situation
In addition to the notable accrual ratio, we can see that Byrna Technologies received a tax benefit of US$5.6m. This is meaningful because companies usually pay tax rather than receive tax benefits. The receipt of a tax benefit is obviously a good thing, on its own. And since it previously lost money, it may well simply indicate the realisation of past tax losses. However, our data indicates that tax benefits can temporarily boost statutory profit in the year it is booked, but subsequently profit may fall back. Assuming the tax benefit is not repeated every year, we could see its profitability drop noticeably, all else being equal. So while we think it's great to receive a tax benefit, it does tend to imply an increased risk that the statutory profit overstates the sustainable earnings power of the business.