- #71
Art
You should look up the history of Starbucks. If you have a good product and good marketing combined with first rate management skills there is no reason why you cannot achieve exponential and profitable growth thus justifying those early high PE multiples. A company's share price is based on the sum of it's theoretical gross profits in the future not how much it is making today.WhoWee said:I agree, a 7 times multiple is a usual valuation of a small mature company...IF management is part of the deal and/or there are more/better assets...in the case of a pizza shop...the "earnings" are the owners paycheck. I don't believe anyone would pay $200,000 for $20,000 in assets and a $30,000 paycheck. Maybe an unfair example?
However, 7 times still makes the point of an over-priced stock market. Some high flying fast foods have soared to 200 to 300 times...based on unrealistic future growth...which requires the company to grow faster than it should and borrow as much as possible and pay too much for locations.
To continue my comparison, the pizza shop owner with a $2,000 per month rent obligation and otherwise debt free...who earns $30,000 per year (on revenues of $150k to $200,000/year) working the business himself, would be INSANE to open a second unit with a $4,000+ per month rent and $2,500 in new debt service (to gross $300,000/yr?)...and have to hire someone to run (which?) one of the shops in order to make an additional...$30,000(maybe?) per year.
Chains do this routinely...to please the market craving for growth...their occupancy cost is often times $20,000+ per month on gross revenues (and investment) of $1.5 and operating income of 8%. One of the favorite strategies of the major chains is to do sale/leasebacks to create "earnings" and put older debt free properties (with lower occupancy costs) at risk.
Most of the larger chains that have failed...didn't fail because people didn't like their food/concept. They failed because they tried to expand too quickly and borrowed more than they could service...most of the time they made these decisions to support or increase their market value.