Legendary fund manager Li Lu (who Charlie Munger backed) once said, ‘The biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital.’ So it seems the smart money knows that debt – which is usually involved in bankruptcies – is a very important factor, when you assess how risky a company is. We can see that Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) does use debt in its business. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?
When Is Debt A Problem?
Debt is a tool to help businesses grow, but if a business is incapable of paying off its lenders, then it exists at their mercy. Part and parcel of capitalism is the process of ‘creative destruction’ where failed businesses are mercilessly liquidated by their bankers. 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, 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. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together.
What Is Citrix Systems’s Debt?
As you can see below, at the end of June 2021, Citrix Systems had US$3.47b of debt, up from US$1.73b a year ago. Click the image for more detail. However, it does have US$521.0m in cash offsetting this, leading to net debt of about US$2.95b.
A Look At Citrix Systems’ Liabilities
We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Citrix Systems had liabilities of US$2.09b falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$4.33b due beyond that. On the other hand, it had cash of US$521.0m and US$716.8m worth of receivables due within a year. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by US$5.18b.
This deficit isn’t so bad because Citrix Systems is worth a massive US$11.9b, and thus could probably raise enough capital to shore up its balance sheet, if the need arose. However, it is still worthwhile taking a close look at its ability to pay off debt.
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). The advantage of this approach is that we take into account both the absolute quantum of debt (with net debt to EBITDA) and the actual interest expenses associated with that debt (with its interest cover ratio).
Citrix Systems’s debt is 4.8 times its EBITDA, and its EBIT cover its interest expense 5.9 times over. This suggests that while the debt levels are significant, we’d stop short of calling them problematic. Shareholders should be aware that Citrix Systems’s EBIT was down 30% last year. If that earnings trend continues then paying off its debt will be about as easy as herding cats on to a roller coaster. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But ultimately the future profitability of the business will decide if Citrix Systems can strengthen its balance sheet over time. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting.
Finally, a business needs free cash flow to pay off debt; accounting profits just don’t cut it. So it’s worth checking how much of that EBIT is backed by free cash flow. Happily for any shareholders, Citrix Systems actually produced more free cash flow than EBIT over the last three years. That sort of strong cash conversion gets us as excited as the crowd when the beat drops at a Daft Punk concert.
Our View
Citrix Systems’s EBIT growth rate and net debt to EBITDA definitely weigh on it, in our esteem. But the good news is it seems to be able to convert EBIT to free cash flow with ease. We think that Citrix Systems’s debt does make it a bit risky, after considering the aforementioned data points together. Not all risk is bad, as it can boost share price returns if it pays off, but this debt risk is worth keeping in mind. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. However, not all investment risk resides within the balance sheet – far from it.