By |Published On: May 30th, 2012|Categories: Research Insights|

Who doesn’t love the idea of buying something for nothing?

Jack and I were intrigued with the concept of something for nothing and took a shot at answering an interesting research question:

How do negative total enterprise firms perform?

In theory, a firm selling for a negative enterprise value is not possible because the seller is actually paying someone to take all their assets off their hands.

If you recall, total enterprise value (TEV) is supposed to represent the total cost an outside buyer would have to pay to acquire all assets of a firm–debt, equity, minority interests, preferred stock, etc–the whole enchilada.

We calculate TEV as follows:

  • market value of common equity
  • debt value at book value
  • minority interests at book value
  • preferred equity at book value

minus

  • cash and cash equivalents at book value

Remember, we must minus off cash and cash equivalents, because immediately after purchasing all the firms assets we can take the cash out of the till and put it back in our pocket (assuming we don’t need any of the cash for working capital requirements–strong assumption, but what the heck).

In the preliminary analysis below we look at the universe of negative TEV firms through time and calculate the performance to an annually rebalanced strategy. We look at the full universe, the universe that boots the bottom 10% of market caps (NYSE breakpoint), and the universe that boots the bottom 20%.

Performance Recap:

The basic stats

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[Click to enlarge] The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.

Here is a little analysis on various stress events

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[Click to enlarge] The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.

and our favorite MBA 101 chart

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The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.

My main takeaway is these strategies are WILD and have pretty insane volatility.
However…

You might be sitting there thinking, wow, all I gotta do is hold an equal-weight basket of negative TEV firms and I’ll compound like Warren Buffett, right?

The Bad News:

Here is a timeline of the number of opportunities that actually pop up over time.

A few key points:

  1. After you eliminate the micro-crap stocks, you end up being invested in a few names at a time (sometimes you go all-in on a single firm!)
  2. Sometimes the strategy isn’t invested.
  3. The amazing Bueffettesque returns for the “all firms” portfolio above are exclusively tied to micro-craps.


[click to enlarge] The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.

Summary:

If you want to buy cigar-butts, as defined by negative-TEV firms, you need to have some guts. You’ll also need to have a very limited capital base to work with or you’ll bounce yourself out of all the great returns associated with the smallest firms in the sample.

Good luck!

About the Author: Wesley Gray, PhD

Wesley Gray, PhD
After serving as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, Dr. Gray earned an MBA and a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago where he studied under Nobel Prize Winner Eugene Fama. Next, Wes took an academic job in his wife’s hometown of Philadelphia and worked as a finance professor at Drexel University. Dr. Gray’s interest in bridging the research gap between academia and industry led him to found Alpha Architect, an asset management firm dedicated to an impact mission of empowering investors through education. He is a contributor to multiple industry publications and regularly speaks to professional investor groups across the country. Wes has published multiple academic papers and four books, including Embedded (Naval Institute Press, 2009), Quantitative Value (Wiley, 2012), DIY Financial Advisor (Wiley, 2015), and Quantitative Momentum (Wiley, 2016). Dr. Gray currently resides in Palmas Del Mar Puerto Rico with his wife and three children. He recently finished the Leadville 100 ultramarathon race and promises to make better life decisions in the future.

Important Disclosures

For informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as specific investment, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Certain information is deemed to be reliable, but its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Third party information may become outdated or otherwise superseded without notice.  Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor any other federal or state agency has approved, determined the accuracy, or confirmed the adequacy of this article.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Alpha Architect, its affiliates or its employees. Our full disclosures are available here. Definitions of common statistics used in our analysis are available here (towards the bottom).

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