Rule #1 Finance Blog

With Investor Phil Town

WHAT TO DO WHEN EARNINGS GROWTH AND EQUITY GROWTH DON’T MATCH

Here's Allen's second submitted question.  Yesterday we talked about whether or not he should consider dumping his Disney shares.

Hey Phil Town,

I would like to know your thoughts on selecting a growth rate when the earnings growth, (and analysts estimate of earnings growth) vary widely from equity growth. (In Disney's case, the historical PE's tend to be much closer to 2* earnings growth than 2* equity growth).

Thanks–Allen

Phil Town's response:

The key to buying a business is to know it's a wonderful business for
sale at an attractive price.  We can know it is wonderful if we
understand the MEANING of the business, if it has a big MOAT and if the
MANAGER is awesome. 

The Big Five Numbers confirm for us that the
business has the Moat we think it has (assuming we think it has one.)

If the Big Five are CONSISTENT both over time and from one to another (and if we have the other two M's) then we think we have a business
that is wonderful.

Note how key it is that the numbers be consistent both over time and
between each other. 

If sales are flat but earnings are growing, there
is a problem coming. 

If sales are growing but earnings don't grow,
watch out. 

If sales and earnings are growing but cash and equity
don't, something is requiring that cash be spent instead of being added
to equity or delivered to the shareholders as a dividend.

We want all four growth numbers going up together.

Sometimes to
illustrate this I plot a graph in Excel.  You can do it easily and it
will show you in a heartbeat what you might not see in the numbers. 

I
did one recently for a talk I did at Amazon.  Amazon had three numbers
going up nicely but the fourth, equity growth, went nowhere.  And that
tells us that Amazon is eating its own equity to provide for growth of
sales, earnings and cash flow.  Which means that the real value of the
business may not be growing.  Or at the very least, it would be really
hard to tell if the investment they are making in the future of their
business is going to pay off.

All that said, and then I looked at the equity numbers.  For an old line
company like Disney, you have to be sure that you look at the Cash Flow
page and see if they are paying out dividends to shareholders.  They
often are, especially if they want to keep the fund managers who tell
the little old ladies that as long as Disney is paying, things are
good… which is a load of bs, but it keeps them holding the stock. 

You
should realize that paying dividends does not always mean the business
is great.  Sometimes, like with GM, it means that management is trying
to fake you into thinking it's in good shape.


In Disney's case (and for cases like Disney) you can add up the last
ten years of dividends and put that total number in with the most
recent equity balance. 

In Disney's case the number is about 3.5
billion, and added to the 26 billion in equity, you get 30 billion or
so. 

Since 10 years ago the equity was 16 billion, it's almost doubled
once in 9 years. 

So by the rule of 72 we divide the number of years to
double once into 72 (72/9) and we get 6% as the compounded growth rate
for equity. 

You can do that for each shorter span of years, but it's a
pain.  And since it isn't quite 6%, we'll use 5.5% and see that there
is still a large disparity between earnings growth and equity growth.

Certainly, if we wanted to project a 12% growth rate for the future,
we'd want to see that at least the 3 year and 1 year equity growth
matched or exceeded it.  Check that for me and let me know what you
get. 

If it isn't pushing up toward 12%, then you will have to really
get comfortable with Disney's turnaround to justify that 12% number.
That's what Buffett can do, but he's a genius and I'm not.  I've tried
predicting the future of a business when it is NOT based on the past
and I've done pretty good a couple of times and gotten killed a couple
of times.  It made me want to not continue with the venture capital
stuff I was doing. 

So do your homework and let me know what you think.  The whole point of
Rule #1 is for you to get comfortable with a few businesses so that you
KNOW that you are going to make money if you can buy them on sale.  Is
Disney one of those for you?

Now go play,


Phil Town