The best managers can do for their shareholders is to realise returns that exceed the opportunity cost of the capital entrusted to them. That is to generate returns that exceed the returns their shareholders could realistically expect from alternative, equivalently risky investments.
This difference between the returns a firm is able to earn on its projects and the charge it needs to make for that capital, is widely known as Economic Value Added (EVA).
This economic profit margin is sometimes described as a moat that protects a truly profitable firm from its competitors. But more than intellectual property or valuable brands that keep out the competition and preserve pricing power, a truly valuable firm will have a long runway of opportunities to invest more in cost of capital beating investments. It is the margin between the internal rate of return of the company and the required risk adjusted return, multiplied by the volume of investment undertaken that makes for EVA and potentially more wealthy owners- not margin alone.
The task for managers is to maximise neither margin nor scale – but their combination – EVA. For investments today in SA in rands an averagely risky project, given long term RSA interest rates of about 9% p.a. would have to promise a return of more than 14% p.a on average to hope to be EVA accretive.
The leading advisor on corporate governance in the US now agrees with the all importance of EVA when evaluating managers. Fortune Magazine of the 29th March reported that
“On Wednesday, ISS, the U.S.’s leading adviser on corporate governance, announced that it’s starting to measure corporate pay-for-performance plans using a metric that prevents CEOs from gaming the system by gunning short-term profits, piling on debt, or bloating up via pricey acquisitions to swell their long-term comp. ISS’s stance is a potential game-changer: No tool is better suited to holding management accountable for what really drives outsized returns to investors, generating hordes of new cash from dollops of fresh capital……”.
Positive EVA’s or improvements in EVA do not translate automatically into share market beating returns. The share market will always search for companies capable of realizing EVA. And who reward their managers accordingly in ways that align their interest with those of their shareholders. Such remuneration practice provide investors with useful clues about prospective EVA. It will help them follow the money. Managers after all will do what they are incentivized to do.
When EVA is positive, realizing as much of it as may be possible, calls for raising cash rather than paying it out- negative rather than positive cash flow – after spending to sustain the established capital stock. Not only retaining cash – not paying dividends but raising fresh capital- equity or debt- can make every sense if EVA enhancing.
Paying up for prospective EVA will raise share prices and reduce realized market returns. And investment activity that is expected to waste capital will reduce share prices to improve prospective returns. Investors may change their minds about how sustainable EVA will be. Investors, by adding or reducing the period of time before margins inevitably fade away in the face of predictable competition, can make large differences to the market value of a company- and can do so overnight.
These expectations as well as changes in the climate for doing business, as in interest rates that help determine the cost of capital, are often well beyond the control of managers. Managers should be encouraged by shareholders and investors to maximise EVA – not their share prices or total shareholder returns over which they can have little immediate influence, given all the other value creating or destroying forces always at work. They should neither be indulged, when by luck more than their good judgment, the market takes all share prices higher. Nor should they be penalized when the market turns sour.
Shareholders and their managers with EVA linked rewards- should hope that positive EVA surprises – when sustained – will be appreciated by investors willing to pay up for their shares. It may take time to convince investors of the superior capabilities of a management team and their business models. But superiority can only be demonstrated by consistently adding economic value beating the cost of capital.