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M&A vs other uses of cash      6-Aug-09 11:48 am    
I am never a fan of M&A. Studies show that 70% of public company acquisition fail to meet the initial hype. M&A is often done for the wrong reasons, mainly the favorable accounting treatment. I am not saying it is always bad, but it is more often than not. Let me go through a couple of simple points as to why the accounting is deceptive to shareholders and useful to management:

-Cash sits like a dead asset on the balance sheet. It has little value to EPS, and thus investors looking at revenue growth and P/E's don't value it like they should. (I value it in my enterprise value calculations).
-If MMSI spent the additional cash by "investing" more in R&D, it would lower their short term net income/EPS. Obviously they invest in R&D, but I am talking about additional R&D vs other uses of this cash.
-If they take that same cash and buy someone, they do not charge that against earnings. They immediately get revenue growth. They buy the R&D. The downside for management is the additional cost layers, which they cannot immediately rid themselves of. However, they convince analysts to discount these costs by taking restructuring charges or other "non cash" items so that you back them out in the EPS estimates. So they tout the additional revenue growth while discounting the additional expenses. It is accretive (usually) because you are taking cash and getting a marginally higher return. My concern is they never talk about the ROI of that cash used in the acquisition. Will they earn 12-15% on that cash? Nope.

Just my opinion.
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denisdman

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M&A vs other uses of cash
denisdman Not rated 6-Aug-09 11:48 am  
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Merit Medical Systems, Inc. (MMSI)

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