Debt Capacity Exercise
- 05:09
Using multiples and forecast cash flows to predict a company's maximum debt capacity.
Transcript
For question five, we're gonna be doing a debt capacity. We've been given an income statement excerpt, balance sheet excerpt, and then a completed free cash flow calculation. So, the first thing we should do is take a look at what's happening with the numbers. For Verso, there is a steep falloff between 2015 and 2016 in the earnings. We can see that with EBITDA being somewhat erratic leading up to 2015, before falling off in 2016, and then starting to build back up to normal levels again in 2018, this is a 10-year forecast. The first thing we wanna do is look at the free cash flow calculation and see how the earnings, or EBITDA, translate into free cash flows. So, essentially what we're seeing is a mirror image of what we saw above. The free cash flows are still somewhat depressed in 2017, and then starting to rebound again in 2018/19, and then stabilizing after that. In 2016 and 17, because the EBIT is negative, what we're seeing here is a negative NOPAT, and there's actually a tax benefit that's being created because of that. We're not gonna deal with the tax implications of these losses, so I'm just gonna leave it at that. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at these cash flows as we discussed in the presentation, and we're gonna do an MPV calculation based on these cash flows to determine what amount could be borrowed in a Term Loan A, or an amortizing term loan. Term Loan As are primarily five to seven year bank products, and they do get paid back each year, unlike, for example, Term Loan Bs, which have very small amounts of amortization, and are paid back more in bullet style, and bonds, of course, which are paid back as well in bullet style. So, what this is gonna look at is how much can be borrowed, assuming that all, or almost all, of these cash flows are going to be used to effectively sweep, or pay down, the loan. How much debt can these cash flows carry? So, what we need to do, again, is to make that MPV calculation, is we need the after-tax cost of debt, that's gonna be equal to one minus the marginal tax rate of 35%, which is what it was at the time of this happening to Verso, times the pre-tax cost of debt. With that, we can now build the MPV calculation. It's going to be MPV of the 5.2 for the seven years of forecast cash flow. So, I'm just gonna go out here seven years, select that, and come back. And what that gives me is a 682.3 net present value. What we're doing next is we're going to take a haircut on this amount, and we're basically saying that we don't know if this is achievable or not. So, we're gonna just take sort of a conservative haircut. This could also be interpreted to mean that we're not going to assume that all of the cash flows are usable for debt, that there's other reasons why we might need to keep cash around, aside from what's been obviously set aside in the free cash flow calculation, aside from Capex, aside from working capital, for unexpected occurrences. The other reason why you might wanna take a haircut is because you simply wanna be conservative about these numbers, and we don't know where they came from. If they came from management, the bank would wanna run a bank case, or a downside case, or they might wanna apply, as we discussed in the presentation, a debt service covenant ratio to govern the cash flows, and restrict them slightly. So, in this situation, we're simply going to apply a haircut of the 10% to the 682.3, and that delivers us a principle loan amount of 614. So, what we'd wanna do at this point is check in to see where this is in terms of debt to EBITDA, because that's what the market's gonna wanna look at. So, if I take the 614, and divide it by the EBITDA in the last year, the most recent year, or the LTM, if we had an LTM calculation, what we see is that the implied multiple is about 3x, and typically for the senior debt in a capital structure, so I haven't looked at any junior debt at this point, I haven't looked at anything beyond a Term Loan A. For the senior debt in the capital structure, you're gonna wanna be around three times, possibly three and a half times. Now, another thing to keep in mind is that we've calculated this debt to EBITDA multiple based on what was a pretty good year for Verso's EBITDA, and there's a significant falloff, of course, in the next year. So, we're not exactly sure how the banks might consider this, they might be a little bit hesitant, it was not a very good year before 2015 as well. So, we're actually looking at this multiple on a very kind of standout year for Verso. So, this might be even a little aggressive by creditors' standards, but regardless, this is certainly one acceptable approximation of the debt capacity for Verso.