Is Givaudan (VTX:GIVN) Using Too Much Debt?

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.' It's only natural to consider a company's balance sheet when you examine how risky it is, since debt is often involved when a business collapses. Importantly, Givaudan SA (VTX:GIVN) does carry debt. But the real question is whether this debt is making the company risky.

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. Ultimately, if the company can't fulfill its legal obligations to repay debt, shareholders could walk away with nothing. However, a more usual (but still expensive) situation is where a company must dilute shareholders at a cheap share price simply to get debt under control. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together.

Check out our latest analysis for Givaudan

What Is Givaudan's Net Debt?

As you can see below, Givaudan had CHF4.62b of debt, at June 2021, which is about the same as the year before. You can click the chart for greater detail. On the flip side, it has CHF310.0m in cash leading to net debt of about CHF4.31b.

How Strong Is Givaudan's Balance Sheet?

The latest balance sheet data shows that Givaudan had liabilities of CHF2.41b due within a year, and liabilities of CHF5.26b falling due after that. Offsetting these obligations, it had cash of CHF310.0m as well as receivables valued at CHF1.63b due within 12 months. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by CHF5.74b.

Since publicly traded Givaudan shares are worth a very impressive total of CHF41.4b, it seems unlikely that this level of liabilities would be a major threat. Having said that, it's clear that we should continue to monitor its balance sheet, lest it change for the worse.

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).

Givaudan has a debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.0, which signals significant debt, but is still pretty reasonable for most types of business. However, its interest coverage of 13.3 is very high, suggesting that the interest expense on the debt is currently quite low. If Givaudan can keep growing EBIT at last year's rate of 12% over the last year, then it will find its debt load easier to manage. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. But ultimately the future profitability of the business will decide if Givaudan 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 company can only pay off debt with cold hard cash, not accounting profits. So we always check how much of that EBIT is translated into free cash flow. Over the last three years, Givaudan recorded free cash flow worth a fulsome 84% of its EBIT, which is stronger than we'd usually expect. That puts it in a very strong position to pay down debt.

Our View

The good news is that Givaudan's demonstrated ability to cover its interest expense with its EBIT delights us like a fluffy puppy does a toddler. But truth be told we feel its net debt to EBITDA does undermine this impression a bit. Zooming out, Givaudan seems to use debt quite reasonably; and that gets the nod from us. While debt does bring risk, when used wisely it can also bring a higher return on equity. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. Be aware that Givaudan is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

At the end of the day, it's often better to focus on companies that are free from net debt. You can access our special list of such companies (all with a track record of profit growth). It's free.

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