Greenlight Company Presentation
How Does the Market Feel About This?
This is Poor Inventory Control
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In some ways, the cash sitting unused year after year is analogous to having an inventory problem.
The opportunity cost of trapped foreign cash is very high. The money sits earning only a small
amount of interest and generates a return less than inflation. Like decaying inventory, the real value
of the cash decays a little bit every day.
Even worse, the return is far below the cost of capital. For companies with all-equity balance sheets,
the cost of capital is particularly high, because expensive equity capital supports both the business
and the foreign cash.
Finance theory suggests that an unlevered or net cash balance sheet should be rewarded with higher
P/E multiples. In practice, the market assigns a discount for this level of overly conservative long-
term capital management.
Not only does the cash earn a return below the cost of capital, it is evident that future profits will
probably also be reinvested at a low return. As a result, the market not only discounts the cash
sitting on the balance sheet, it also drives down the P/E multiple due to the anticipated suboptimal re-
investment rate for future cash flows.
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