I’m sure someone other than me has observed that a value investment is a value investment that worked out and a value trap is a value investment that didn’t work out. At any rate, it seems to me that it takes more than a high earnings yield to make a value stock. A low P/E can be justified if the company is risky or in terminal decline, which are not inherently disqualifying for a stock, but when combined with a lack of competitive moat a low multiple is well-deserved and is unlikely to signal an opportunity.

Which brings us to Helen of Troy (HELE). This knife has been falling since 2022 when it had a share price of about $245; it consolidated at around $97 between October of 2022 and June of 2023, went up a bit and then back down and then fell off another cliff in June of 2024 to about $55 or $60, drifted sideways for a bit, and then collapsed again because of the tariffs to $24 and change as of this writing, and has not shared in the post-tariff rally. The question becomes at what point, if any, we can declare this share price decline to be overdone.

Actually, that’s the wrong question. First of all, historical stock prices are widely believed to have no predictive power, and obviously the people who thought the company was worth $245 in 2022 are no longer around and willing to act on their belief by bidding the company back up. Second, a company is fairly or incorrectly priced based on its earnings power, not by the path it took to arrive at that price. And third it is entirely possible for the fair price to be zero, particularly in the presence of debt. It may or may be not be a bit harsh to apply this criterion to HELE, as we shall see.

Helen of Troy is a supplier of kitchenware, insulated beveragewear and coolers, and outdoor carrier packs; and also cosmetics, home health care products, and also heaters, fans, air purifiers, etc. to both online and physical retailers. This somewhat chaotic mix of household goods is the result of several acquisitions over the years and whatever competitive advantage Helen of Troy brings from its distribution network is questionable, as sales have been declining in recent years. The company has been focusing on rationalizing its brand portfolio and has incurred significant restructuring charges in recent years, which one is often tempted to treat as nonrecurring but for a serial acquirer undergoing business difficulties I anticipate that Helen of Troy will be in a constant state of restructuring for the foreseeable future.

Helen of Troy’s product lines are largely commoditized, meaning that their products tend to compete on price more than product differentiation. The cosmetics I’m not so worried about for even with recession fears in the market, make-up is about the last thing women will cut from their budget, and generally they are considered consumer staples rather than discretionary. On the other hand, even if people will continue to buy cosmetics, it is not a given that they will continue to buy them from Helen of Troy. Sales in the US account for 3/4 of total sales, and as 63% of their products came from China in fiscal year 2025 (fiscal year ends in February), the tariff concern is not unjustifiable.

Turning now to the figures, just about 47% of Helen of Troy’s sales in 2025 came from Home & Outdoor and 53% from Beauty and Wellness. Sales in the former declined by 1.1% as compared to 2024, and in the latter, 10%, not counting the effect of a new acquisition.

I am often in the practice of counting acquisitions as growth capital rather than maintenance capital for purposes of computing free cash flow, but I think this approach is more justifiable for industrial companies and other capital-intensive businesses where an acquisition can add a new product line or supplier and at any rate it represents its own source of sales and earnings. But in HELE’s case, acquisitions of brand names are part of the company’s innate strategy and generally results in acquiring intangibles, so I think acquisitions might well be charged against free cash flow, particularly as they have resulted in occasional goodwill writeoffs. At any rate, given the size of Helen of Troy’s recent acquisitions relative to its current market cap, the acquisitions should at least be noted.

The figures are further complicated by a gain on the sale and leaseback of certain premises in 2024 which the company credited to cost of goods sold for some reason, and the expense of complying with an EPA ruling in 2023, both of which I have adjusted out. Counting the gains from the sale of property as operating income borders on an accounting shenanigan to me, as the company is not in the business of buying and selling real estate and this gain is not part of the company’s recurrent business activity.

In 2025: Sales $1908 million, gross margin $914 million, operating income (not counting impairments) $188 million, depreciation and amortization $55 million and capital expenditures $30 million, producing operating cash flow of $213 million. Interest expense $52 million, leaving $161 million or $128 million after 20% estimated taxes. There was also a $229 million acquisition, so if that is counted free cash flow was actually negative in fiscal year 2025.

In 2024 sales were $2005 million, gross margin $949 million, operating income (adjusted for real estate gains) was $224 million. Depreciation and amortization was $51 million and capital expenditure was $37 million, leaving $238 million in operating cash flow. Interest expense was $53 million, leaving $183 million, or $146 million after estimated taxes. There were no acquisitions this year.

In 2023 sales were $2073 million, gross margin was $899 million, operating income (adjusted for EPA compliance costs) were $235 million. Depreciation and amortization were $45 million, and capital expenditures were $175 million, leaving $105 million. Interest expense was $41 million, leaving $64 million, or $49 million after estimated taxes. There was also $146 million in acquisitions that year.

In 2022 sales were $2223 million, gross margin was $953 million, operating income was $273 million. Depreciation and amortization was $36 million and capital expenditures were $78 million, producing operating cash flow of $231 million. Interest expense was $13 million, leaving $218 million, or $176 million after estimated taxes. There was also $411 million in acquisitions that year.

The alert reader will note that the acquisitions were not covered by Helen of Troy’s operating cash flows, which were funded by borrowings. And yet despite these acquisitions, sales and earnings have been declining. I should note in 2025 the company repurchased $103.2 million in shares at an average price of $99.34, and in 2024, $55.2 million at an average price of $127.67. Helen of Troy also repurchased $188 million in shares in 2022 at an average price of $220 per share and $203 million in 2021 at an average price of $197. Even allowing that the company can be forgiven for not anticipating the collapse in share prices, three of the repurchases were made with borrowed money. Some companies do recapitalize by swapping debt for equity, but those are generally maturing companies moving from their growth to their mature phase, not ones in such a precarious position as Helen of Troy, which has declining sales, $560 million in market cap, and $900 million in long term debt.

So, returning to our original question of whether the collapsing stock price of Helen of Troy is overdone, $146 million in free cash flow for 2025 gives us free cash flow yield of 26%. If we demanded a 10% return on investment, and we could be assured that earnings would decline at no more than 16% a year in perpetuity, we could in theory find a satisfactory purchase. However, as we have said, Helen of Troy imports 63% of its products from China and even before the tariff announcement the company was seeing weakening demand for its products, which as I have said are commoditized and therefore compete largely on price even though HELE’s strategy seems to involving acquiring brands. Therefore, I find it difficult to predict if sales will decline at 10% or 16% or 26% or more (or less, admittedly), and I would not care to take the risk of guessing wrong.

I could take the backup approach and value the company largely on its balance sheet, but owing the company’s acquisitive nature, most of its long term assets consist of goodwill and intangible assets. Tangible assets total $1.382 billion, while the company’s total liabilities come to $1.449 billion. So, when I asked how much further the share price has to fall, all the way to zero is not the trivial answer it first appeared. Furthermore, even if the company is coming up with $146 million in free cash flows every year, a prudent company would shoring up its balance sheet by paying down debt (and an imprudent company is an unattractive proposition in itself), so it could be years before that cash flow would be genuinely available to the shareholders.

Wherefore I can say that even if catching a falling knife were a desirable strategy in general, I think catching this one strikes me as an unattractive proposition, despite the considerable free cash flow yield, and so I cannot recommend it as a candidate for portfolio inclusion.

I had a surprisingly bad experience at a certain investing website that accepts user submissions and I thought I would speak of it. Last week I spoke highly of BorgWarner and thought a wider audience might benefit from my views, so I submitted my last post to them.

I proposed that the equity was worth $4.8 billion, plus $2.1 billion in the company’s excess cash, plus about $400 million in the present value of the company’s below market interest rate, total $7.3 billion. My editors, including two managing editors, though, argued that if I wanted to add the company’s excess cash to the equity, I would have to remove the company’s long term debt from it as well. Naturally, I found this quite confusing because I thought I already deducted it from the assets to arrive at the equity in the first place, and that under their rules the company was worth less money with the excess cash than without it, but they weren’t having it.

Now, the formula for Enterprise Value is EV = Equity + debt – cash. This equation is so ubiquitous that I can’t really think of a citation for it, so let’s just say The CFA Curriculum (any level), vol. 2. The equation can easily be rewritten as Equity = EV – debt + cash. Now, the equation that the editors are using, equity = EV – debt + cash – debt, I am quite unable to find a citation for.

I think it was the “- cash” part that was throwing them off, because I am a firm believer in the concept of excess cash, of which BorgWarner has $2.1 billion based on the usual formula. And for the sake of avoiding double counting, I scrupulously removed any of the interest on the excess cash, so that $4.8 billion is what the equity of BorgWarner would be worth if the company had no cash at all.

We may check the math as follows: Enterprise value is also the free cash flow to firm discounted at the weighted average cost of capital. The weighted average cost of capital is the long term debt weight of 5.7% * 3.7 billion, plus 12.5% * 4.8 billion/8.5 billion, or just about 9.5%, and $811 million per year capitalized at 9.5% is $8.5 billion again (unsurprising since I’m just reversing the weighted average cost of capital formula). The value of the equity is based on a discount of the free cash flow to the equity at 12.5% and matches the one computed from the enterprise value equation (as it should since I supplied the numbers myself), and now the cash must be dealt with somehow. In fact, the enterprise value equation does not distinguish between excess and non-excess cash so the raw equation is even more generous to my point of view.

And here, again, is where my editors insist for whatever reason that I subtract the debt again, which, in addition to being based on the equation conjured from their own fevered brains, also messes up the enterprise value based on weighted average cost of capital as it essentially assumes that the company will pay off its long term debt and yet continue to pay interest on that debt for some reason.

In fairness, a company cannot operate with no cash at all, and even though BorgWarner is cash flow positive and has an untapped $2 billion line of credit it may find it useful to keep some cash on hand. A rule of thumb is 2% of annual sales, which in BorgWarner’s case works out to $280 million, but the company could give up at least the $1.8 billion in cash left over. And obviously a company can have excess debt, current or long-term, and any cash used to pay that down would be unavailable to the shareholders, but BorgWarner is not such a company and therefore there is no reason to assume that its long-term debt will be paid off at any point in the foreseeable future.

I was trying to explain my reasoning, although perhaps not as well as I might because I was still stunned into inarticulacy that they were using the special EV = equity + 2*debt – cash formula that their editorial policy has apparently forced on them, when they declared their decision was final. Suffice to say, I will not be renewing my trial membership.

My faithful readers will recall that I thought Garrett Motion, maker of turbochargers and related auto parts, was an attractive investment, and indeed it was until the tariff monster was awakened. And while I was looking at it, I compared it to BorgWarner, another company in the auto parts sector, which had comparable R & D expenditure rates and a strategy of technological development. More to the point, it presents an even more attractive valuation based on its free cash flow yield.

BorgWarner (BWA) is a globally positioned producer of engine and drivetrain components, and also invests significant R & D expenditures in order to remain a technology leader in its space. The company has maintained a massive free cash flow yield over the last few years and of its $5.8 billion market cap as of this writing, $2.1 billion consists of cash, nearly all of which is “excess,” or not necessary for the company to carry on its business, and the earnings yield on its operating equity is highly enticing.

BorgWarner has recently refocused its strategy away from a largely electric-vehicle focused approach in favor of a more balanced use of its entire portfolio of offerings. As a result, its strong cash flows in the last few years have accumulated on its balance sheet and, in my view, this cash will be deployed most efficaciously into substantial share repurchases, to the benefit of the share price.

Company Overview & Strategic Position

BorgWarner operates in several fields in the automotive parts sector: turbos & thermal technologies are about 40% of sales, drivetrain devices a slightly lower proportion, powerdrive, including all-electric car technologies, about 15% of sales, and battery & charging systems, the last 5%. Total net R & D in 2024, according to the latest annual report, came to about 700 million or 5-6% of sales which is comparable to Garrett Motion, which I have written about before and still like) one of its competitors in the turbocharger space; however, more than half of that R & D was allocated to powerdrive and batteries despite their lower presence in the sales mix.

BorgWarner’s strategy starting in 2021 was to go all-in on electric vehicles, and the company even spun off its fuel systems division in 2023. However, in 2024 the company determined that adoption of electric vehicles was “volatile” compared to their expectations, and indeed the operating income from both the powertrain and battery segments were negative in 2023 and 2024. As a result, the company refocused its strategic efforts towards growth along its entire portfolio of offerings, including turbochargers, transmissions, etc. alongside developing its electric offerings. For this reason, I anticipate that there is scope for reduction in both R & D and capital expenditures (including acquisitions), resulting in further incremental improvement in free cash flows.

Valuation

Methodology

The auto parts industry is cyclical, which makes calculating a company’s prospective earnings power a complicated process, so I will explain my method for doing it:

Starting with the figures in the latest annual report, in the last year BorgWarner reported earnings of $338 million, but this was net of a $646 million goodwill writeoff which resulted from the company’s disappointed expectations in various acquisitions pertaining to its aggressive electric vehicle strategy.

Stepping back from that, BorgWarner’s operating income without the writeoff was $1192 million, and the company has $3.7 billion in debt outstanding with an average interest rate of 2.8%, producing interest expense of $105 million. However, this interest charge reflects that BorgWarner’s debts were issued at interest rates that are lower than current rates (for example, they have borrowed 1 billion euros at a rate of 1% until 2031). To focus on the company’s prospective as opposed to historical earnings power, I should adjust their pro forma interest expense to reflect the current rate of 5.7% for BBB+ rated bonds, which is BorgWarner’s credit rating. I should note that the company’s latest borrowing in August of 2024 was at an average rate of 5.2%. The pro forma interest expense comes to just about $211 million per year, leaving just under $1 billion in estimated pretax earnings. As the company has a global footprint, estimating its tax rate is difficult but the company’s provision is about 23% on average, leaving just about $755 million in after tax free cash flow, which is an impressive free cash flow yield of 20.7% of its effective market cap. I will point out that the above free cash flow figure does not include any income from BorgWarner’s enormous cash balance, as I consider that income to be non-operating.

Of course, for a cyclical company like an auto parts manufacturer, one year’s results are not a reliable measure of earnings power; it could be that 2024 was a particularly good year. One should consider Borg Warner’s earnings power over a complete business cycle, and applying a 5.7% interest rate, pro forma free cash flow figures for those years (taking data from previous 10-K filings) were, starting in 2023, were 2023: 539; 2022: 543; 2021: 743, and 2020: 397 (and 891 in 2019 but that properly belongs to the previous business cycle). The average figure over the length of a business cycle was $595 million per year, or a yield of 16.3%. BorgWarner’s long term debt has been stable since 2020, but interest rates were substantially lower before this year so actual free cash flows were higher. But again, as we are looking at prospective earnings power we should probably apply the present higher interest rates. But even in the pandemic year of 2020 the company managed a free cash flow yield of over 10% based on the current effective market cap.

I spoke earlier of the goodwill writeoff that BorgWarner took in 2024. As I stated before, the company’s aggressive pursuit of expansion in electric vehicle products included a number of acquisitions, and the above calculations do not count them against the company’s cash flows. However, in my opinion, although the acquisitions were regrettable with the benefit of hindsight, I anticipate that BorgWarner’s management will going to be more circumspect about purchasing growth in future. Therefore it would be somewhat unfair to ding the company’s future earnings prospects based on its past mistakes, especially as the pace of acquisitions slowed considerably in 2022 and 2023 and ceased completely in 2024 even as large amounts of cash have built up on the balance sheet.

Speaking of the cash balance, I would describe nearly all of the $2.1 billion in cash on BorgWarner’s balance sheet as “excess” cash. Excess cash is cash that a company holds that is not needed for the company’s operations and could be distributed to shareholders without affecting the company’s cash needs. The mode of calculation is as follows: excess cash is total cash minus current liabilities plus noncash current assets (or zero, whichever is greater). In this case, total cash is $2.1 billion, current liabilities total $3.6 billion, and noncash current assets total $4.4 billion, meaning that essentially all of BorgWarner’s cash is available to distribute to shareholders. This is hardly surprising for a reasonably mature cash flow-positive business like BorgWarner, particularly as the company has an unused $2 billion credit facility to address liquidity needs. And to the best of my knowledge none of BorgWarner’s creditors have imposed any legal restrictions on dividends or share repurchases (yes, I read the bond indentures). And as I stated above, none of the income from the company’s cash holdings was added to the free cash flow to firm/equity in order to avoid double counting.

Price Target

So, putting it all together, we have $600 million in average annual earnings over the last business cycle. Applying a conservative multiple of 8 times gives us a market cap of $4.8 billion. Add to that the approximately $1.8 billion in excess cash and $375 million representing the present value of the company’s below-market interest rates on its long term debt, produces a target market cap of about $7.2 billion, or a share price of $33 on the low end, which compares favorably to the share price as of this writing of $26.45.

Potential Risks

Obviously the most visible risk is the uncertain tariff situation. However, as I stated before BorgWarner has a global footprint, with only 25 of its 84 properties located in North America. Moreover, the United States represents only 16% of BorgWarner’s net sales, and indeed North America represents about 16% of global auto sales in the first place. And although 20% of BorgWarner’s property, plant and equipment is located in China, where the trade war is presently happening, again not all of those exports are directed to the United States so hopefully the present tariffs regime may not affect more than a single digit percentage of BorgWarner’s business. Of course, some of BorgWarner’s non-US customers could later seek to export their cars to the United States and get caught in the tariff net, but the effects of that are unpredictable.

But for what it’s worth, BorgWarner’s stock price has tracked the broader indexes pretty closely since the tariffs were initially announced so at least the market doesn’t seem to believe the company is more exposed that any other American company.

Beyond tariffs there is the possibility that the company could go on another ill-considered acquisition spree, even though recent experience may have scared the management team away from that course. Another possibility is that adoption of all-electric vehicles may in fact occur faster than BorgWarner has been observing, which would diminish the value of the company’s existing portfolio of products. But in my view the transition to an all-electric transportation fleet will take decades if it occurs at all, and meanwhile plug-in hybrids, which use many of BorgWarner’s existing suite of offerings, will be with us for a considerable length of time.

Conclusion

So, I would argue that BorgWarner’s prospective earnings power as measured by free cash flow yield is attractively high and the company is undervalued at the current price. Furthermore, the company is no longer disdaining its non-electric-vehicle portfolio, and there is room to save some research and development and capital expenditures on the electric vehicle product lines. Also, the company has recently accelerated share repurchases ($402 million in 2024 alone) and has the resources to apply billions more, which is always a good use of cash for an undervalued company. Therefore, I can strongly recommend BorgWarner as a candidate for portfolio inclusion.

Disclosure: As of this writing, long BWA and GTX

Insnurance companies

According to some guy from Columbia…

In my final article on this series of whether companies in certain sectors can be bought based on price to book ratio, I examine insurance companies. Recall that my original thesis is that, according to some well known financier whose name I forget, banks have assets that are impossible to value, and insurance companies have both assets and liabilities that are impossible to value. Even so, it is conceivable that any errors in valuation could be in the owner’s favor as easily as to their detriment. More to the point, the assets of these companies tend to consist largely of financial investments rather than, say, industrial equipment, so their book value tends to be a more reliable guide to their actual value and often times may be quoted regularly in the market. And so the naive strategy of evaluating these companies solely on their book value might be effective.

As we have seen, the correlation coefficient between a bank’s price/book ratio and its performance in 2024 was practically nonexistent, but when using tangible book value there was slight evidence of low price to book ratios producing outperformance when outliers are eliminated but at least in 2024 higher than average price to book ratios were not punished and even showed a tendency to be rewarded, which came as a surprise.

Turning now to insurance companies, the first complication is which book value to use. Insurance companies, particularly life insurance companies, make actuarial assumptions about life expectancy, interest rates, expected return on investments, and so forth. These assumptions are subject to change, of course, and as they change the value of the company’s liabilities change with them, sometimes dramatically, even though the company’s assets and near term cash flows are unchanged and a future shift in actuarial assumptions could erase the effect of the current ones instantly. The effects of these changes in actuarial assumptions are subsumed in “Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income” on the balance sheet, as these changes are not considered operating, since an insurance company is in the business of selling insurance and investing assets, not actuarial services.

However, insurance companies are in the habit of reporting their book value under GAAP and their book value not counting this accumulated other comprehensive income. By an extraordinary coincidence, of the fifty or so insurance companies that formed my sample, every single one of them reported a higher book value with this adjustment. Apparently, not a single insurance company has ever had its actuarial assumptions move in its favor in the history of the American insurance business. (Or, more likely, if they have the company sneakily counted it as operating income to make themselves look better). At any rate, in my opinion accumulated other comprehensive income, or more accurately, accumulated other comprehensive losses, should be included in book value, as it represents an economic loss, even if unrealized as yet, and a constraint on the insurance company’s business activities. This is also the view of a noted professor at Columbia School of Business.

Also, some insurance companies have goodwill, and eliminating that to arrive at tangible book value is another possible adjustment .

That said, what are our results? The Value Line, from which I draw my samples, divides insurers into life insurers and property and casualty insurers, the latter being much more numerous. There are also reinsurers, but not many of them so it is difficult to draw conclusions from such a small set.

Among life insurers I was pleased to discover that in 2024 the naive strategy actually showed some signs of success, with a correlation coefficient of about 0.2 for both raw and tangible book value. Unsurprisingly, book value modified for accumulated other comprehensive income showed a weaker correlation. As I’ve said, given the numerous possible determinants of investment performance, one can hardly expect price to book ratio to be the sole factor in returns, but a correlation coefficient this high at least suggests that something is going on.

Among property and casualty insurers, I was disappointed to find a correlation coefficient of about 0.015, essentially consistent with no correlation. However, by dividing the outcomes into quadrants as before, I find that a higher than average price to book ratio was almost twice as likely to produce a lower than average return as a higher one, while a lower than average price to book ratio was more likely to produce a low return. Also, apparently 2024 was a difficult year for the average insurer, as returns were skewed to the downside.

So, to conclude, at least for 2024 the naive strategy of buying banks or insurance companies based on price/book ratio did not show reliable correlations apart from among life insurers. However, when purely considering if the price/book ratio was above average there were some minor indications of the validity of the strategy; with property and casualty insurers high price/book ratios were more likely to underperform, while with Midwestern banks, high price/book ratio banks showed above average returns but curiously that advantage disappeared when looking at tangible book values, to be replaced by a slight advantage for low price/book ratios, a sign that goodwill writeoffs are not overdue at least. And for non-Midwestern banks low price/book ratios had a slight advantage once outliers are removed, but curiously the high price/book outliers were more likely to outperform, which is counterintuitive and requiring further investigation. And of course this study should be extended to prior years.

As a followup to my previous article where we discovered that at least in 2024 the naive strategy of buying banks based solely on price to book ratio did not perform as advertised. However, the Value Line from which I drew my sample also treats Midwestern banks as a separate category of bank, for reasons knowable only to them. True, Midwestern banks are more likely to be small or medium sized and regional, but in my previous article I focused on similar non-Midwestern banks, as large investment or money center banks likely have a distinct competitive niche that makes them less susceptible to being examined purely on their balance sheets. Also, I found some repeat entries from last week in this set of banks, meaning that depending on when one looks a bank can simultaneously be Midwestern and not Midwestern.

For the non-Midwestern banks, recall, neither regression analysis nor the simple sorting into quadrants of above and below average indicated that this strategy showed any chances of outperforming. Nor were results noticeably different when using tangible book value, which at least implies that most banks are not sitting on overdue writeoffs of goodwill, which I suppose is promising.

But now focusing on Midwestern banks, using raw book value the naive strategy fared no better in 2024, with an r-squared value of 1.72%, which is entirely consistent with the relationship between price/book value and returns being nonexistent. And removing outliers resulted in no improvement, as three of the banks with a price/book ratio above 1.8 performed better than the average for all banks under consideration and two such banks underperformed.

Looking at the quadrant approach, we see that in fact twice as many banks with an above average price to book ratio earned an above average return. So much for price/book ratio mattering! Low price to book was divided evenly.

However, when we switch to tangible book values, we see that the low price to book ratio strategy has some stirrings of validity. The r squared value was 2.75%, which is still quite small but considering how many factors actually go into bank returns, ferreting out the effect of a single causative factor is not easy and 2.75% is certainly further from zero than we’ve seen earlier.

And looking at the quadrant we see dramatic results indeed. The apparent “advantage” in high price to book banks more or less disappears, and is replaced by an apparent advantage in low price to book banks. So this suggests, at least subtly, that for Midwestern banks some goodwill writeoffs are indeed overdue and that the effort banks go through to report tangible as well as raw book value is not wasted, at least in the Midwest.

Obviously, more years and more potential for confounding variables should be examined, but it is encouraging to see that our naive price to book strategy is not entirely off base. And we haven’t even started on insurance companies yet.

A wise financier whose name escapes me once wrote that the trouble with banks is that they have assets that are impossible to value, and the trouble with insurance companies is that they have assets and liabilities that are impossible to value. Given the current situation with insurance companies and natural disasters, this is a difficult statement to gainsay, and likewise valuing mortgages and derivatives is difficult even during non-financial crisis times.

However, the possibility did occur to me that even if valuation of such companies is error prone, the error might in fact be nonbiased, which is to say that one has the same odds of guessing too high as too low. And so, as most valuation techniques of banks and insurance companies center on the balance sheet, could the naive strategy of assembling a portfolio based solely on buying companies with a low price/book ratio and avoiding the companies with a high price to book ratio be a valid strategy?

In order to investigate this, I computed the price/book ratio of all the banks in the Value Line investment survey (which hopefully is a representative sample) as of roughly February 2, 2024 and examined their one year performance. I decided to focus on the smaller community or regional banks, ignoring the massive money center or investment banks. And then, because banks are complicated by goodwill and other intangible assets, I did the same with tangible book value, which most but not all banks are kind enough to report in their earnings announcements. I then ran a linear regression analysis, as data mining analysts are known to do.

Before I reveal the results, I should try to discuss why banks and insurance companies are more transparent to balance sheet analysis than other companies. The reason is the assets of, say, an industrial company, are custom-designed to produce a particular product, and the value of those assets on the balance sheet may have nothing to do with their actual value in the economic sense, which is determined mainly by the demand for the company’s product and its competitive position. However, banks’ assets are generally marketable and fungible, as a bank’s “product” is simply the use of money, and the size of its portfolio of assets is generally a reasonable measure of its ability to do so. Insurance companies operate in an analogous way; they profit by taking in premiums and investing them, thus pocketing any investment income produced between when the premium is collected and when claims are paid.

So, how did my regression turn out? I have to confess, not at all convincingly. Using pure book ratio, the r squared turned out to be less than 1%, and eliminating outliers it actually went down. Tangible price to book ratio, outliers or not, fared no better. The r squared, recall, measures how much of the variation in the dependent variable (investment returns) is determined by the independent variable (price/book ratio). A value of 1% implies that hardly any relationship between the two exists.

However, the r squared is not the end-all of analysis, and much like the Spanish Inquisition, when you have data you want to torture it until it says something. So, I divided my 161 banks into four quadrants based on whether the price to book ratio was below the mean or above and whether the one year return was below the mean or above. Using the raw price to book ratio, 38 banks had a low price/book ratio and below average returns, 40 banks had a low price/book ratio and above average returns, 38 banks had a high price/book ratio and below average returns, and 45 banks had a high price/book ratio and above average returns, which more or less confirms what the regression told us, that at least in 2024 price/book ratio had essentially nothing to do with performance, and indeed the number of banks that broke the rule outnumbered the ones that followed it.

However, I did mention outliers before; there are times when the reported price/book ratio is so unrealistic as to be “obviously” wrong. I decided that any bank with a price/book ratio below 0.5 or above 1.8 was so far beyond the pale that it was unlikely that investors were seriously using it as a criterion. This eliminated three of the low price/book, low return banks, three of the high price/book, low return banks, fully 7 of the high price/book, high return banks, and none at all of the low price/book, high return banks. Curiously this has the salutary effect of making the proposed strategy look slightly better, but at the cost of eliminating a disproportionate number of high return banks, which obviously is exactly the opposite of what we want.

Applying the same method to the tangible book value, we find as follows:

Notice that there are more below average tangible price/book ratios. This is not surprising as a bank’s tangible assets can always be less than its raw book value but can never be greater. However, we still see that whether the price to book ratio is low or high, the odds of outperforming the average is the same as underperforming.

But, applying our search for outliers again we see that low price/tangible book value stocks are made to look slightly better.

Perhaps 2024 was an unusual year for banks, but it may be that investors who assign a high price to book ratio are actually seeing something in those banks that, if the year bears out their expectations, will justify a price advance and presumably an even higher multiple. Or it may be that a naive and cheap to execute strategy like low price to book is naturally too simple and exploitable to reliably produce outperformance. I may have to repeat this experiment with insurance companies or other years of historical data.

BlueLinx (BXC) is a wholesaler of construction materials, mostly wood products such as lumber, siding, and plywood. What interests me, though, is the company’s enormous cash reserves. Of its $800 million market cap, nearly $500 million consists of cash, the fruit of a very profitable 2021 and 2022, which the company seems to have no idea what to do with. Obviously my suggestion would be either a massive special dividend or repurchasing of shares (the company has repurchased $120 million so far, but it could handle plenty more), but the point is that for a cash-flow-positive business with a credit facility available to cover liquidity needs, most of that cash may be considered “excess,” and can essentially be deducted from the company’s market cap when analyzing it.

In terms of financial theory, a company is basically worth the money it has plus the present value of the money it will have. Obviously a company needs to keep some cash on hand for liquidity needs or other conveniences, but the issue is one of return on assets. Ordinarily every asset inside a company is contributing to that company’s return on assets, and the attractiveness of the company depends on whether its assets exceed, equal, or fall below the investor’s required return, and since that return is invariably higher than the short term interest rate for cash, a company should try to operate with as little cash tied up as possible. However, if there is “excess” cash not needed for the company’s operations, that cash is not required to meet any return on assets hurdle, because it can (and usually should) be distributed to the shareholders. I should point out that at the beginning of 2021, the company operated with the princely sum of $82,000 in cash on its balance sheet.

So, if we reduce the company’s market cap to $310 million, are the company’s earnings adequate? I did point out that 2021 and 2022 were remarkably profitable years. In fact, the company’s net income was $300 million in each of those years, and if those results were repeated the company would have a P/E ratio of…one. However, the market recognized those results as largely exceptional, with the share price actually declining in 2022, and as the company is essentially tied to the home construction market, which is apparently in a bit of a slump right now, this is understandable.

At any rate, in 2023 sales were $3136 million, gross profit was $527 million, operating income was $138 million, net interest expense (the company only started reporting interest income and expense separately in 2024–again, not used to having lots of cash lying around) was $24 million, leaving $114 million, or $92 million after taxes.

In 2022, sales were $4450 million, gross profit was $833 million, operating income was $439 million, interest was $42 million, leaving $394 million, or $311 million after a provision for taxes.

In 2021, sales were $4277 million, gross profit was $778 million, operating income was $438 million, interest was $46 million, leaving $392 million, or $311 million again.

It is unfortunate that BlueLinx’s gross profit margins tend to decline alongside sales, but that is the nature of operating as a warehouser and distributor. However, the company has been able to reduce inventory levels by nearly 30% between the end of 2022 and 2023, freeing up an additional $140 million in cash which, although not a suitable measure of long term free cash flow generation, as I have written before does suggest that management is not unaware or unresponsive to the slow housing construction market, even though selling, general & administrative expenses haven’t declined significantly since 2022.

At any rate, for 2024 to date sales were $1494 million versus $1613 million for the first half of 2023, gross profit was $250 million versus $269 million, operating income was $52 million vs $72 million, interest expense was $24 million versus $23 million, leaving $28 million versus $39 million, or $22 million estimated net income after taxes versus $31 million for the same period last year. Furthermore, depreciation exceeded capital expenditures by $7.6 million when historically they have tracked each other more closely, which is a source of additional free cash flow, not to mention a small further reduction in inventory.

So, if in a slump in the housing construction market the company is still able to produce, say, $50 million in free cash flow, that looks like a fairly anemic return against a market cap of $800 million but really quite impressive for a market cap of $310 million. And if the company is agile enough to take advantage of a resurgence in the market, as they were in 2021 and 2022, there may be other significant earnings windfalls in the future. However, I am not sure whether the housing industry in the United States has really reached its nadir, or whether the company enjoys a substantial competitive advantage against any competitors, so I would conclude it to be an attractive candidate for investment but not an unqualified buy.

Garrett Motion Inc. is a maker of turbochargers, compressors, and related technologies for vehicles, primarily for internal combustion engines but the company adds, almost defiantly, that they are devoting considerable research into adapting their product lines to electric vehicles in the form of compressors for fuel cells or circulating coolant. Sales have improved over the last few years, although somewhat offset by the strong dollar (the company does most of its work in Europe and China) and it offers an earnings yield of upwards of 13% that looks sustainable for the foreseeable future.

The company has an interesting corporate history; it emerged from Chapter 11 a few years ago, but this was not in order to avoid a default on its debts. Rather, it was because the company, which was spun off of its parent company Honeywell, was forced to indemnify Honeywell for asbestos liability, and this was an undeserved millstone around its neck as we have seen in other companies like OI Glass. Last year Garrett redeemed the preferred stock that was created by the sponsors of the bankruptcy, giving it a normal capital structure and improving clarity for the analyst.

Turning to the figures, Garrett has a market cap of roughly $1.8 billion. In 2023, net sales were $3.886 billion, gross profit was $756 million, operating profit was $509 billion, interest expense was $159 million and taxes were $86 billion, producing $261 in net profit. The company’s capital expenditures are in line with its depreciation charges, and I should note that the company also engages in significant research and development, which some analysts do not recommend writing off entirely as they may translate into improved income down the line, although this is uncertain.

In 2022 net sales were $3.603 billion, gross profit $683 million, operating profit $467 million, no interest at all (unfortunately the company had to take on some debt to redeem the preferred shares), taxation was $106 leaving $361 million.

In 2021 net sales were $3.633 billion, gross profit $707 million, operating profit $491 million, interest expense $83 million, taxes $43 million, producing net income of $345.

Year to date, sales were $1.805 billion for the first two quarters as compared to $1.981 billion last year. The company cites weakness in automotive demand slightly offset by aftermarket parts. Gross income was $357 million versus $391 million and operating income was $232 million versus $272 million. Interest expense, net of a writeoff of debt issuance costs, was $66 million compared to $56 million last year, leaving $166 million, or $127 million after actual taxes, as compared to $159 million for the first two quarters of 2023.

Although it is unclear how long, if at all, transition away from internal combustion or hybrids into full electric vehicles will take, for the present and foreseeable future GTX offers an attractive earnings yield well in excess of 10%, although the exposure to the auto industry suggests that volumes can be expected to be variable. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve finally cutting interest rates may be of some assistance, and there I can recommend Garrett Motion as an intriguing candidate for portfolio inclusion.

Warren Buffett famously said that investment opportunities arise when a business faces a large but solvable problem. However, how can an investor be sure that a problem is solvable until it’s been solved? And once the market consensus is that it has been solved, the stock price can be expected to reflect the fact that it has been solved, making the stock no longer a bargain.

This brings us to Ingevity, a chemical company that has been confronting a steep rise in a key input material that has resulted in substantial and expensive restructurings. The company is projecting that these changes will return the company to profitability and stability, and if their views are correct the company offers an attractive prospect at the current price. However, the company’s sales are under pressure even if the restructuring is effective, and if that is the case, it is possible that management’s projections can be disappointed.

Ingevity produces various carbon products from plant sources. It operates in three divisions: performance materials, which makes activated carbon products for internal combustion engines designed to capture gasoline vapor and return it to the engine, thus simultaneously improving fuel efficiency and pollution. Performance materials also comprises various carbon filters. Their second line of business, and the problematic one, is performance chemicals, which produces road surfacing and also a hodgepodge of chemicals for glue, ink, paper finishing, and emulsifiers for oil drilling. The problem is that prior to this year, the company’s main input for these products has included crude tall oil (CTO), which is a byproduct of making paper out of pine wood, which represented 26% of total cost of sales and 51% of its raw materials. Until very recently, Ingevity was locked into a long term supply contract while the price of CTO has risen dramatically, partly as a result of a decline in paper manufacturing, and was unable to pass this increased cost on to their customers. The company has since made considerable efforts to switch over to soy, canola, and palm oil, and to negotiate a way out of the supply contract at considerable expense. However, this restructuring will reduce the company’s exposure to the its miscellaneous chemical products, allowing it to focus on paving, charcoal filters, and its third division. The company claims that these miscellaneous product lines are low margin (negative margin, actually, because of the CTO problem), but still, profits are profits. Their third division, advanced polymers, produces caprolactone-based specialty polymers for use in coatings, resins, elastomers, adhesives, bioplastics, and medical devices (obviously I’m not an organic chemist).

As of this writing, the company’s market cap is $1.4 billion. The figures we have to work with are:

In fiscal year 2023, sales were $1692 million, operating income was $256 million before restructuring charges, interest expense of $99 million, leaving $157 million, or $124 million after estimated taxes. There is also $13 million in excess depreciation, resulting in $137 million in free cash flow, adjusted for restructuring charges.

In 2022, sales were $1668 million, operating income $341 million, interest expense $62 million, leaving $279 million in income, or $220 million after estimated taxes, before $32 million in capital expenditures in excess of depreciation, leaving $188 million. The company would like to chalk much of the difference up to the spike in CTO costs, and indeed cost of goods sold for the specialty chemicals did increase by $157 million between 2022 and 2023, while sales in every division except their miscellaneous industrial chemicals improved in 2023.

In 2021, sales were $1391, operating income was $307 million, interest expense was $51 million leaving $256 in pretax income or $202 million after taxes, and depreciation closely tracked capital expenditures.

Sorting out the projected effects of Ingevity’s restructuring involves going through a lot of SEC filings. The company has projected $250 million in writeoffs and restructuring charges, of which $70 million will be in cash. Of this amount, $25 million has already been recognized, and $25-$35 million more will be recognized in the remainder of 2024. But on the upside, the restructuring is expected to contribute a projected $30-35 million annually to the bottom line. As a result of this restructuring, the company also was forced by its supply contract to purchase vast amounts of CTO that it no longer required and had to sell into the open market, which resulted in a $50 million loss in 2023, which the company very kindly included in non-operating activities so it would not affect the free cash flow estimates above.

Furthermore, in July of 2024, conveniently just after the second quarter financials were filed, the company reported that they spent $100 million to finally get out of the CTO supply contract. Also, Ingevity is consolidating two manufacturing plants, which will cost a further $135 million in restructuring, of which $35 million is in cash, but which will, according to their projections save them $95-110 million in expenses, but 70-80% of that represents cost of sales and is therefore not accretive to earnings. At any rate, if we keep a price/sales ratio of 1 and a required return on investment of 10%, the costs of the restructuring and the savings produced by it seem to be roughly in line, if Ingevity’s management projections can be trusted. But at any rate, it is refreshing to see management being capable of such bold moves affecting such a large portion of their operations

So, in this difficult transitional year, for the first half of 2024 net sales were $731 million vs $874 last year, operating income was $120 vs $166, interest was 45 vs 41, leaving 75 vs 125 or 59 vs 99, and excess depreciation of $18 vs $15, resulting in estimated free cash flow from operations of $77 vs $114.

I should point out that based on the second quarter earnings call, the company was projecting $75 million in free cash flow for the entire year before the contract termination fee, although this figure did include $45 million in cash from CTO sales that are not expected to recur. Even so, I note that the $114 million for 2023 is already the bulk of the company’s free cash flow for the entire year. This is not surprising, as road surfacing is a seasonal business and most of the purchases take place between April and September apparently. I should also point out that excess depreciation may be unreliable, as many of what would under normal circumstances be new capital expenditures on the non-CTO-using product lines have been filed under the heading of restructuring charges and therefore deemed nonrecurring.

That same earnings call suggested that management was projecting free cash flow of $150 million for 2025, which seems to be achievable if the restructuring proceeds according to plan. However, although automotive products and carbon filters showed growth in 2024, road surfacing showed slight declines and so did industrial polymers, and of course the miscellaneous chemicals showed significant declines as the company has already stated it is transitioning away from these areas. So, even if the CTO-related problems have been solved, Ingevity may have some difficulty in controlling its pricing and margins, which can derange projections. Moreover, whenever I compare a company’s estimate of its free cash flow to my own calculations, theirs always comes in a little higher for some reason.

So, is the market consensus that the problem has been solved? Well, as of this writing the share price is near a multi-year low at $38.60, having fallen there from a peak of $90 at the beginning of 2023 when this CTO problem emerged. However, the share price fell to $38 in October of 2023, drifted back up to $54 last May, and then fell back to the $35s with the latest earnings announcement. Interpreting investor sentiment from price movements is a speculative business at best, but the decline from the latest earnings suggests that market believes that nothing has been solved yet, or that the cost of getting out of the CTO contract was disappointingly high. However, if the market does buy the figure of $150 million as a reasonable estimate of Ingevity’s free cash flow generation in the future, and sticks with a 10% return on investment as a reasonable figure given the company’s somewhat weak pricing power and ability to pass costs of input on to its customers as offsetting potential growth in investments, then the company seems reasonably priced as of now, and any shift in a positive direction might result in price increases.

Wherefore, I cannot recommend this as a pure value investment as it seems to be not in a strong competitive position and much of its value proposition depends on the management’s projection of the effectiveness of its restructuring. However, as a speculation, there are certainly worse opportunities out there.

You may recall from my previous article that I saw opportunities in the packaging company, Greif. But I see now an intriguing opportunity in the packaging-adjacent. Clearwater is a company that makes paper products including bleached paperboard and also tissues for retail consumers, and it offers an attractive free cash flow yield upwards of 15%.

Clearwater recently reported earnings that Wall Street cheered, resulting in its share price going up by 25% (sorry), but even after this advance the company’s earnings power could justify an even greater advance.

Sales in 2023 were $2.083 billion, and operating income was $108 million, and excess depreciation over cash flow produced a free cash flow of $149 million. Set against the current market cap of just under $800 million once excess cash is taken into account, that is a free cash flow yield of nearly 19%. In 2022 sales were $2.080 billion and free cash flow was $124 million, and in 2021, sales were $1.773 billion and free cash flow was $77 million. From 2021 to 2023, paperboard shipments have declined at a single digit percentage while prices increased by over 25%. In the consumer product division, which is roughly of equal size, sales volume increased by 10% and pricing by 15%. This is an encouraging sign that Clearwater is capable of passing on inflation to its customers.

For the first quarter of 2024, sales were $496 million versus $525 million in 2023, operating income was $17 million versus $24 million, and free cash flow was $22 million versus $29 million. Paperboard volumes were unchanged while sale prices declined by 10% as compared to the previous year, and consumer tissues showed a 5% increase in volume while sales prices remained flat. However, the company reported that an extreme weather event affected one of their plants to the effect of $15 million, so that $22 million is a low estimate of earning power. But on the downside, Clearwater also announced that capital expenditures for 2024 would be on the order of $100 million, as opposed to $70 million in 2023.

Now, in terms of free cash flow it is conceptually helpful to distinguish between maintenance capital and growth capital–that is, the amount of capital expenditures necessary to maintain the company’s earnings power as opposed to expenditures designed to increase the company’s productive capacity. The former must definitely be counted as a deduction against free cash flow; the latter does not (subject to the customary skepticism about growth projections, the concept of diminishing marginal return, concerns about management empire-building, etc. etc.). Unfortunately, corporate reporting does not seem to be aware of this distinction, as most managers, including Clearwater’s, do not disclose whether incremental capital spending is maintenance or growth, and analysts seem to be reticent to press them on the matter. Therefore, it is not clear whether the $30 million increase in capital investment in 2024 will be maintenance or growth.

One clue, however, is what the company is doing with the free cash flow it already generates. A company that sees plenty of growth opportunities will deploy free cash flow back into capital assets, while a company that sees fewer growth opportunities will find another use for that money, either returning it to shareholders in the form of dividends or share repurchases, or, in the case of Clearwater, repurchasing debt. Now, Clearwater has only $420 million in long term debt against $840 million in equity, and its interest is covered five and a half times, so I do not see its debt position as particularly worrisome at present, or at least, that lowering its debt further is unlikely to result in a significant multiple expansion. But as the company has chosen the low-return strategy of debt reduction, the implication is that it does not see the possibility of higher returns from investing in additional capacity, and therefore the extra $30 million should at least for the moment be considered maintenance rather than growth capital, unfortunately.

Nonetheless, taking the 2023 free cash flow figure of $149 million as representative of Clearwater’s earnings power, and deducting $30 million for additional capital expenditures still produces a free cash flow yield of 15%, and the company is a reasonable candidate for portfolio inclusion.