Ingevity (NYSE:NGVT) 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.' 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, Ingevity Corporation (NYSE:NGVT) does carry debt. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?

What Risk Does Debt Bring?

Generally speaking, debt only becomes a real problem when a company can't easily pay it off, either by raising capital or with its own cash flow. Ultimately, if the company can't fulfill its legal obligations to repay debt, shareholders could walk away with nothing. While that is not too common, we often do see indebted companies permanently diluting shareholders because lenders force them to raise capital at a distressed price. Of course, debt can be an important tool in businesses, particularly capital heavy businesses. The first step when considering a company's debt levels is to consider its cash and debt together.

Check out our latest analysis for Ingevity

What Is Ingevity's Debt?

The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at June 2023 Ingevity had debt of US$1.43b, up from US$1.08b in one year. However, it does have US$68.0m in cash offsetting this, leading to net debt of about US$1.36b.

How Healthy Is Ingevity's Balance Sheet?

We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Ingevity had liabilities of US$311.1m falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$1.80b due beyond that. Offsetting this, it had US$68.0m in cash and US$267.0m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by US$1.78b.

When you consider that this deficiency exceeds the company's US$1.75b market capitalization, you might well be inclined to review the balance sheet intently. Hypothetically, extremely heavy dilution would be required if the company were forced to pay down its liabilities by raising capital at the current share price.

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). Thus we consider debt relative to earnings both with and without depreciation and amortization expenses.

Ingevity's debt is 3.1 times its EBITDA, and its EBIT cover its interest expense 4.7 times over. This suggests that while the debt levels are significant, we'd stop short of calling them problematic. Importantly Ingevity's EBIT was essentially flat over the last twelve months. Ideally it can diminish its debt load by kick-starting earnings growth. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Ingevity's ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward. 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 business needs free cash flow to pay off debt; accounting profits just don't cut it. So it's worth checking how much of that EBIT is backed by free cash flow. During the last three years, Ingevity produced sturdy free cash flow equating to 56% of its EBIT, about what we'd expect. This cold hard cash means it can reduce its debt when it wants to.

Our View

Ingevity's struggle to handle its total liabilities had us second guessing its balance sheet strength, but the other data-points we considered were relatively redeeming. For example, its conversion of EBIT to free cash flow is relatively strong. Taking the abovementioned factors together we do think Ingevity's debt poses some risks to the business. So while that leverage does boost returns on equity, we wouldn't really want to see it increase from here. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. We've identified 1 warning sign with Ingevity , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

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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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.