Yahoo Finance Would Eldorado Gold (TSE:ELD) Might Be Better Off With Less 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. We note that Eldorado Gold Corporation (TSE:ELD) does have debt on its balance sheet. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?
When Is Debt A Problem?
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, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. When we think about a company's use of debt, we first look at cash and debt together.
See our latest analysis for Eldorado Gold
How Much Debt Does Eldorado Gold Carry?
As you can see below, Eldorado Gold had US$482.5m of debt at June 2019, down from US$594.9m a year prior. On the flip side, it has US$123.6m in cash leading to net debt of about US$358.8m.
How Healthy Is Eldorado Gold's Balance Sheet?
We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Eldorado Gold had liabilities of US$160.3m falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$982.9m due beyond that. Offsetting this, it had US$123.6m in cash and US$82.5m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by US$937.1m.
This is a mountain of leverage relative to its market capitalization of US$1.46b. Should its lenders demand that it shore up the balance sheet, shareholders would likely face severe dilution. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Eldorado Gold'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.
Over 12 months, Eldorado Gold saw its revenue drop to US$428m, which is a fall of 11%. That's not what we would hope to see.
Caveat Emptor
While Eldorado Gold's falling revenue is about as heartwarming as a wet blanket, arguably its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) loss is even less appealing. Indeed, it lost a very considerable US$390m at the EBIT level. Considering that alongside the liabilities mentioned above does not give us much confidence that company should be using so much debt. Quite frankly we think the balance sheet is far from match-fit, although it could be improved with time. However, it doesn't help that it burned through US$242m of cash over the last year. So in short it's a really risky stock. For riskier companies like Eldorado Gold I always like to keep an eye on whether insiders are buying or selling. So click here if you want to find out for yourself.
When all is said and done, sometimes its easier to focus on companies that don't even need debt. Readers can access a list of growth stocks with zero net debt 100% free, right now.
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