China Everbright Water Limited (SGX:U9E) shareholders, and potential investors, need to understand how much cash the business makes from its core operational activities, as well as how much is invested back into the business. What is left after investment, determines the value of the stock since this cash flow technically belongs to investors of the company. I’ve analysed below, the health and outlook of China Everbright Water’s cash flow, which will help you understand the stock from a cash standpoint. Cash is an important concept to grasp as an investor, as it directly impacts the value of your shares and the future growth potential of your portfolio.
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Is China Everbright Water generating enough cash?
Free cash flow (FCF) is the amount of cash China Everbright Water has left after it pays off its expenses, including its net capital expenditures, which is what the company needs to spend each year to maintain or grow its business operations.
I will be analysing China Everbright Water’s FCF by looking at its FCF yield and its operating cash flow growth. The yield will tell us whether the stock is generating enough cash to compensate for the risk investors take on by holding a single stock, which I will compare to the market index. The growth will proxy for sustainability levels of this cash generation.
Free Cash Flow = Operating Cash Flows – Net Capital Expenditure
Free Cash Flow Yield = Free Cash Flow / Enterprise Value
where Enterprise Value = Market Capitalisation + Net Debt
The business reinvests all its cash profits as well as borrows more money, to maintain and grow the company. This leads to a negative FCF, as well as negative FCF yield, in which case is not a very useful measure.
Does China Everbright Water have a favourable cash flow trend?
China Everbright Water’s FCF may be negative today, but is operating cash flows expected to improve in the future? Let’s examine the cash flow trend the company is anticipated to produce over time. Over the next two years, expected growth for China Everbright Water’s operating cash is negative. This is unfavourable to its future outlook, especially if capital expenditure heads the opposite direction. Below is a table of China Everbright Water’s operating cash flow in the past year, as well as the anticipated level going forward.| Current | +1 year | +2 year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow (OCF) | -HK$907.3m | -HK$726.1m | -HK$804.7m |
| OCF Growth Year-On-Year | -20% | 11% | |
| OCF Growth From Current Year | -11% |
Next Steps:
Keep in mind that cash is only one aspect of investment analysis and there are other important fundamentals to assess. I suggest you continue to research China Everbright Water to get a better picture of the company by looking at:
- Historical Performance: What has U9E’s returns been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity.
- Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look at who sits on China Everbright Water’s board and the CEO’s back ground.
- Other High-Performing Stocks: If you believe you should cushion your portfolio with something less risky, scroll through our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.