What corporate executives can learn from leading value investors

Joseph, Calandro Jr.; Sherratt, Paul A.

[3] This statement may strike some as odd given that, as of early-2021, many firms are aggressively leveraging their balance sheets due to very low interest rates and “soft” credit underwriting, with few if any covenants. Executives should take note, especially today when corporate cash holdings have grown to historic levels due to the Covid-19 pandemic,[6] that there is a difference between holding large amounts of cash to enable a long-term cost-effective resource allocation strategy and holding large amounts of cash to ride out a natural catastrophe/pandemic before proceeding with business-as-usual. Consider the risks facing executives in 2021 as cataloged in a recent Forbes article:[12] The virus causing COVID-19 mutates (external risk);Business suffers in the fallout from a government action (political risk);Diversity programs fail (reputation risk);Startups disrupt markets (competitive risk);Growth is stymied (business risk);Key talent leaves (operating risk);Plain vanilla competition wins market share (competitive risk);A sudden market pivot trips planning (strategic risk);IT security is threatened (IT risk);The business needs to pivot again – HARD (pivot risk). [...]by actively looking for them, guided by the rationality concept analysis, enabled a much more insightful result, which ultimately resulted in the firm making a lower bid than a traditional private market valuation had suggested.