Philosophy
Epoch believes that the key to understanding a company requires a focus on the cash generation drivers of the business—not a focus on accounting terms like earnings or book value. How does the business generate its free cash flow, and how does management allocate that cash for the betterment of the owners of the business; i.e., the shareholders?
Epoch manages a variety of investment strategies, with different investment objectives. But they all share a common investment philosophy, centered on two key principles:
- The ability of a company to generate free cash flow makes the business worth something.
- How management allocates a firm’s free cash flow determines whether the value of the business rises or falls.
In keeping with a long line of investment theory1, we believe the value of any business is simply the present value of the future free cash flow that the business will produce – i.e., the cash flow that is available to be distributed to the owners. To determine that value, an investor needs to forecast a firm’s growth rate from year to year, as well as how its cost of capital will change over time (since that cost of capital serves as the discount rate in calculating present value). Under a couple of simplifying assumptions – namely, that both variables will be constant – this calculation reduces to a very concise equation:
V = CF1/(r-g)
Where V is the value of the business, CF1 is the cash flow that the business throws off to the owners in year 1, r is the firm’s cost of capital, and g is the growth rate of future cash flow.
A higher level of CF1 in the numerator leads to a higher value for the business. And so does a higher level of g in the denominator (since it makes the denominator smaller). But these two variables are not independent of each other. There is always a tradeoff between growth (which requires reinvestment) and the amount of free cash flow that is left to distribute to shareholders (more reinvestment means less free cash flow, and vice versa). We can see management’s dilemma more clearly if we rewrite the discounted cash flow equation in terms of return instead of price, like this:
r = CF1/V + g
The choice that management always faces in seeking to maximize the return to shareholders is how much of the firm’s cash flow to distribute today as free cash flow yield (CF1/V) and how much to reinvest in the business to create future growth (g).
A company’s return on invested capital (ROIC) plays a key role in determining how management should decide this question. A company’s growth rate is simply the product of how much of its profit it reinvests (i.e., the investment rate) and the ROIC that the company earns on that investment. And of course, the investment rate also determines how much of a firm’s total cash flow remains as free cash flow.
If the prospective ROIC on reinvestment is greater than the cost of capital (the “required return” in the discounted cash flow formula above, which for equity is ultimately an opportunity cost representing what investors could earn elsewhere), management should reinvest. Doing so will create additional value for shareholders. If the prospective ROIC on a proposed investment is less than the cost of capital, reinvesting would destroy value (relative to the return that investors demand), and management should pay the cash flow out to owners, so they can invest it elsewhere and earn a higher return.
Regardless of the strategy they support, all of Epoch’s analysts and portfolio managers evaluate companies using this framework focused on free cash flow generation and capital allocation practices.
1 See, for example, The Theory of Investment Value, John Burr Williams, 1938; Gordon, Myron J. (1959), “Dividends, Earnings and Stock Prices”. Review of Economics and Statistics. The MIT Press. 41 (2): 99–105.