Essay About Sales Growth And Individual Cohort Level

Teuer Furniture a Case Analysis
Teuer Furniture AMemorandumTeuer Furniture’s valuation per share based on our discounted forecast cash flow methodology is $31.03. The discounted cash flow methodology is based on forecasting the free cash flows for two time periods (2013-2018) and thereafter in perpetuity.Estimating free cash flow involves forecasting variables across the three main financial statements (Income statement, Balance Sheet and Cash flow statement). The variables are segregated by the treatment and ordered in priority of its impact on the final forecast. Sales growth at an individual cohort level (i.e – break sales by new store sales by year and old store sales by year), the rate of new store openings, and inventory assumptions have a disproportionate impact on the forecast methodology.In particular, high inventory levels mean that higher sales growth actually hurts the Company’s free cash flow in the short run, due to the increase in net working capital, and opening too many stores too quickly can eat up all the Company’s free cash flow through the projection period.FactorTreatmentSales growth: Consolidated at a store cohort level (see Exh 1) based on the growth profile of each existing and new storeAssumes high growth in initial years following opening, tapering off to flat growth on an individual level (all growth in out years is driven by macro factors)Macro factorWe used the furniture industry growth rate as our primary macro factor, unadjusted for GDP or inflationWe multiplied the individual cohort revenues each of the post-2010 cohorts by a “macro index” that was constructed in a compounding fashion from the furniture industry growth rateCGS (% sales)We drove this at a % of sales level, based on the historical margins various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012SGA excluding depreciation and advertising (% sales)We drove this at a % of sales level, based on the historical margins various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012Advertising (% sales)We drove this at a % of sales level, based on the historical margins various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012Accounts Receivable (% sales)We drove this at a % of sales level, based on the historical margins various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012Inventory (% current year CGS)We drove this at a % of CGS level, based on the historical relationship various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012Accounts Payable (% current year CGS)We drove this at a % of CGS level, based on the historical relationship various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012Accrued expenses (% current year advertising + SGA)We drove this at a % of advertising and SGA level, based on the historical relationship various cohorts exhibited between 2004 and 2012For the following parameters we made no change to the assumptions made by Teuer’s finance teamRate of new store openingsWe accepted management’s plans to open two new stores per year through 2015Depreciation (years)We assumed a 5 year straight line depreciation on capital expenditures, with zero residual valueRefresh  cost We assumed a 70% refresh cost rate vis a vis original capex required to start up the store that occurred 8 years after store opening – this led us to revise management’s estimations of refresh cost for stores that opened prior to 2012Corporate tax rateWe assumed a 40% tax rate on pre-tax profitCorporate expensesWe assumed 5% margin on corporate expensesDiscount rateWe assumed 12.1% as the cost of capitalLong-term growth rateWe assumed a long-term growth rate of 3.5%.  We felt this was reasonable as it was less than GDP growth of 5%Shares outstanding (K)The Company had 9.945M shares outstandingLeaseWe assumed the company would lease all of its square footage at a cost of $20.88 per square foot in 2013, and this cost would increase by 2% per square foot thereafter.Capital ExpendituresWe accepted management’s estimation of capital expenditures excluding refresh costsOur share price calculation process is described below:Calculate individual store cohort P&Ls using above assumptionsCalculate individual store cohort balance sheets using above assumptionsConsolidate 1 and 2Derive a net income figure from the consolidated IS: NI = Sales – CGS – SG&A – Depreciation – Advertising – Tax Rate x Pretax ProfitDerive non-cash items and cash outflows from the consolidated balance sheet and total capex from individual store cohort balance sheetsCalculate the FCF as follows: FCF = NI – capex – ΔNWC + DepreciationUse the FV of the final FCF in 2019 to calculate a perpetuity value for the business assuming 12.1% cost of capital and 3.5% growth rateAdd the perpetuity value to the FV of the final FCFDiscount all FCFs to present value using 12.1% cost of capitalAdd all discounted values together to get value of businesses operating assets through the NPV of their future cash flowsSubtract debt and add cash to get equity value of business. In this case, both were zero as the firm did not raise capital since 2008 and the firm’s cash flow in excess of its investments always returns to the shareholders each year in the form of dividends. so they did not impact our analysisDivide equity value by number of shares outstanding to get final value of $31.03 per shareNote: Sales projection is one of the most critical activities in valuing the company. We understand that given the nature of the industry, (high end furniture) it is highly sensitive to GDP growth. In an ideal scenario given resources, we would like to build a co-relation model, which would derive an elasticity metric w.r.t GDP. This would  in turn give us an indexed sales number that would be more realistic. However, given our limitations, we have segmented the Sales numbers by new store sales by year (Eg: rate of growth of a new store in year 1, year 2 and so on) and used that to project for future sales.