ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?

ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?

10 Aug 2018

A little more than three years ago I wrote in defence of the word “scepticism”. I said that scepticism, which was once habitually paired with the word “healthy”, was having its meaning changed pejoratively to imply that a sceptic was a borderline fanatic who was in denial of the consensus agreed by all enlightened liberals. But scepticism is essential to successful investment and it might do people some good to employ it on other occasions. Something similar but opposite has happened to the word “liar”. It seems that everyone with whom some people disagree is called a liar. It has turned into a playground taunt, an insult tossed off casually without thought as to its actual implications. I will explain at the end why this really matters. Let me insist, if I dare, on two conditions that must be satisfied if someone is to be convicted of lying. First, what they say must be false and second, they must have a reasonable expectation that it is false. According to these criteria it is a very strong accusation to make. In the House of Commons to accuse another member of lying is considered unparliamentary language and the words must be withdrawn. Of course, in a trivial way, most of us lie routinely every day. For this reason the phrase “white lie” was invented. The film “Liar Liar” is about the hilarious chaos that ensues when a lawyer is forced to tell the truth for twenty four hours. Saki’s story of Tobermory the talking cat, written nearly a century earlier, was based on similar comic consequences: as was  William’s Truthful Christmas by Richmal Compton (1925).  By and large, it is considered better to be kind than truthful in personal relationships. “What can I do, what can I do? Much of what you say is true, I know that you see through me, But there’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” Paul Simon (Tenderness) The very existence of white lies alerts us to the fact that darker lies are serious stuff. People go to prison for perjuring themselves in court and the reason that they tend to receive custodial sentences (up to seven years) is that the law...

Dogs and tricks – new light from accounting changes?

Dogs and tricks – new light from accounting changes?

13 Jan 2018

The following paragraph is not true. A neat way to value a company is to divide the share price by the earnings per share (EPS) which gives you something known as a P/E (price/earnings) ratio. A low P/E ratio (say <10x) implies that a share is cheap and a high P/E ratio (say >20) suggests expensive. Many people, some of them claiming to be investment professionals or financial journalists, still promote P/E ratios (which came to be the standard valuation method in the 1970s and the 1980s). Here are some reasons why they are wrong. MARKET CAPITALISATION IS NOT THE VALUE OF THE COMPANY The price of a share is a measure of one of a company’s liabilities (the equity owned by shareholders) but not the value of the company. The equity is what is left over after all other obligations have been met. The value of the equity is known as the market capitalisation of the company. EI Group (formerly Enterprise Inns) has 479.5 million shares trading at 143p giving it a market capitalisation of £685 million. Also with a market capitalisation of £685 million is Go-Ahead Group with 43.2 million shares at 1586p. Their earnings per share last year were 20.5p (EI Group) and 207.7p (Go-Ahead) giving them P/E ratios of 7.0x and 7.6x respectively. How cool is that? Are they both cheap and are they almost equally cheap? You will not be surprised to read that it’s not as simple as that. The balance sheet of EI Group reveals that it the business is carrying more than £2000 million of net debt whereas Go-Ahead has £200 million of net cash. Consequently, the enterprise value of EI Group is £2700 million (market capitalisation plus net debt) and Go-Ahead’S enterprise value is just £485 million (market capitalisation minus net cash). On that basis the pub leasing business is worth 5.6x as much as the bus and train operating business. This doesn’t tell us which share is more likely to go up but it gives us plenty of ideas about what might influence their prices. None of which involve reported EPS. EARNINGS PER SHARE Another reason why P/E ratios are nearly useless is that...