Ambienthesis (BIT:ATH) Takes On Some Risk With Its Use Of Debt

The external fund manager backed by Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger, Li Lu, makes no bones about it when he says 'The biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital.' So it might be obvious that you need to consider debt, when you think about how risky any given stock is, because too much debt can sink a company. We note that Ambienthesis S.p.A. (BIT:ATH) does have debt on its balance sheet. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?

Why Does Debt Bring Risk?

Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. However, a more common (but still painful) scenario is that it has to raise new equity capital at a low price, thus permanently diluting shareholders. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. The first step when considering a company's debt levels is to consider its cash and debt together.

View our latest analysis for Ambienthesis

How Much Debt Does Ambienthesis Carry?

The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at December 2020 Ambienthesis had debt of €22.7m, up from €7.93m in one year. However, it also had €13.3m in cash, and so its net debt is €9.45m.

A Look At Ambienthesis' Liabilities

Zooming in on the latest balance sheet data, we can see that Ambienthesis had liabilities of €47.6m due within 12 months and liabilities of €34.9m due beyond that. Offsetting this, it had €13.3m in cash and €31.0m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So its liabilities total €38.2m more than the combination of its cash and short-term receivables.

While this might seem like a lot, it is not so bad since Ambienthesis has a market capitalization of €70.0m, and so it could probably strengthen its balance sheet by raising capital if it needed to. But we definitely want to keep our eyes open to indications that its debt is bringing too much risk.

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).

While Ambienthesis's low debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.5 suggests only modest use of debt, the fact that EBIT only covered the interest expense by 3.8 times last year does give us pause. But the interest payments are certainly sufficient to have us thinking about how affordable its debt is. Importantly, Ambienthesis's EBIT fell a jaw-dropping 22% in the last twelve months. If that earnings trend continues then paying off its debt will be about as easy as herding cats on to a roller coaster. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But ultimately the future profitability of the business will decide if Ambienthesis 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, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. So we always check how much of that EBIT is translated into free cash flow. In the last three years, Ambienthesis created free cash flow amounting to 11% of its EBIT, an uninspiring performance. For us, cash conversion that low sparks a little paranoia about is ability to extinguish debt.

Our View

We'd go so far as to say Ambienthesis's EBIT growth rate was disappointing. But at least it's pretty decent at managing its debt, based on its EBITDA,; that's encouraging. Overall, we think it's fair to say that Ambienthesis has enough debt that there are some real risks around the balance sheet. If everything goes well that may pay off but the downside of this debt is a greater risk of permanent losses. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. However, not all investment risk resides within the balance sheet - far from it. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for Ambienthesis you should be aware of, and 1 of them is a bit unpleasant.

If, after all that, you're more interested in a fast growing company with a rock-solid balance sheet, then check out our list of net cash growth stocks without delay.

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