Cashflow, Free Cashflow, and Proforma Forecasting

Cashflow, Free Cashflow, and Proforma Forecasting

Proforma Forecasting Models

Proforma forecasting models are designed to use the balance sheet and income statement from a
corporation from a number of past periods (such as three previous years) for the purpose of
making a forecast for a number of years into the future (such as five years). In a few words, the
user will enter data from historical balance sheets and income statements and use the model to
make a forecast. Once that forecast is made, certain conditions or assumptions can be overridden
and a new forecast can be made.
A good proforma model will also produce at least one cashflow sheet for historical years and for
the forecast, along with common size, trend, important ratios and value drivers and a list of
critical variables that drive the forecast.
It should be understood that the default forecast produced by a proforma model is usually not a
reliable forecast for the actual future of the company in question. The models is designed to be
used for sensitivity analysis, where the user, after making the default forecast, plugs in certain
values for such categories as capital spending and new debt, possibly makes new assumptions
about such important categories as sales growth rates or days receivable, days inventory, or
important ratios like CGS/sales, then reforecasts to evaluate the effect of these assumptions upon
future cashflow or profitability and to evaluate future financing needs. In effect, the analyst is
using “what-if” analysis, asking “what will happen (e.g. to cashflow) if this is done (e.g. borrow a
certain amount of money and use it to buy fixed assets)?” The proforma model allows the analyst
to project different scenarios, whether scenarios that are being strategically considered (planning)
or scenarios that are considered to be highly likely (true forecasting).
The default forecast for a proforma cashflow forecasting model will assume the continuation of
historical growth rates for operating categories like sales, cost of goods sold, SGA expenses and
other operating expenses, and all interest expenses, but will freeze all categories of gross fixed
assets (but not depreciation) and any new addition to debt. Therefore, on the proforma cashflow
sheet, capital expenditures and change in short term debt and change in long term debt is
recorded as zero for the forecast years. This is one of the reasons why the default forecast by
itself is not likely to project an accurate image of the company’s future. At a minimum, some
level of capital spending must be manually projected into the future by the analyst, which is done
by overriding the forecast value for capital spending (normally zero at default).
[To help understand this, if the reader has access to a proforma cashflow forecast with company
data, look at the forecast values for these three categories. Look also, on the income statement
or balance sheet, at how the proforma forecast treats all categories of gross fixed assets,
depreciation, net fixed assets, sales, CGS, SGA expense, notes payable, and long-term debt].
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Why does the proforma model forecast this way? Again, because the purpose of the model is to
do sensitivity analysis, allowing the user to override default values, making direct capital
investment decisions (by buying various categories of gross fixed assets, like land, equipment,
rolling stock, etc.) and deciding how to finance such purchases, whether via short-term debt,
long-term debt, some combination, or internal cashflow. Models can be used for many other
purposes as well, such as valuation.
The Concept of Free Cashflow
Free cashflow is at the core of modern valuation techniques. One of the most common and
respected standards of valuation of any corporation is to estimate the present discounted value of
free cashflow (discussed more below). Techniques used to do this are complicated but the
concept of free cashflow is consistently found at the core of such estimations.
Free cashflow is a company’s operating cashflow after investment in new capital but before
considering new debt. Copeland, Koller, and Murrin define free cashflow in the following way:
“Free cash flow (FCF) is a company’s true operating cash flow. It is the after-tax
cash flow generated by the company and available to all providers of the
company’s capital, both creditors and shareholders. It can be thought of as the
after-tax cash flows that would be available to the company’s shareholders if the
company had no debt.”1
The concept of free cashflow works on a related premise that the ultimate origin of long-term
corporate growth is invested capital. Generally, productive fixed assets are expected to be at the
core of a company’s productive ability, which in turn is essential for the production of
commodities sold by the company, which in turn is essential for sales revenues and their growth.
Therefore, cash placed into invested capital (increasing net fixed assets) is a primary value driver
for long-term sales growth (but not necessarily margins or other measures of profitability).
This concept shows a clear bias towards manufacturing firms. Clearly the growth of productive
assets, and in particular net fixed assets, is far less important in service firms, such as large law
firms or large consulting firms, or merchandising firms, like sports apparel merchandisers. This is
recently recognized by analysts. For example, Weston, Chung, and Siu have this to say about
capital budgeting (for what has traditionally been defined as invested capital):
“Capital budgeting represents the process of planning expenditures whose returns
extend over a period of time. Examples of capital outlays for tangible or physical
items are expenditures for land, building, and equipment. Outlays for research and
development, advertising, or promotion efforts may also be regarded as investment
outlays when their benefits extend over a period of years.”2
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The first group listed in this quotation, all fixed assets, have always been regarded as invested
capital. Research and development, however, is of critical importance in such industries as
pharmaceuticals and chip design, whereas advertising and marketing outlays are the critical value
drivers in many consumer industries such as clothing apparel.
If this premise about the importance of invested capital can be accepted as valid, then an
immediate question arises: how is the expansion of productive fixed assets to be financed?
Generally, there are two candidates; (1) internal cashflow and (2) debt. Free cashflow is a
measure of cash remaining assuming that new investment capital is financed via internal cashflow
(rather than new debt).
How does free cashflow differ from other measures of cashflow? Free cashflow equals ordinary
operating cashflow after all adjustments, including all categories of depreciation, amortization,
and tax payments, minus new investment, but excluding any debt payments and prior to any cash
received from new loans.
In notation form
Free Cashflow = Net Operating Cashflow - New Invested Capital (Investment)3
It should be remembered that Net Operating Cashflow does not include interest payments on debt
nor principle reductions of long-term debt, but does include adjustments for accruals,
depreciation, amortization and taxes.
Estimating Free Cashflow with a Proforma Model
As was stated above, the estimation of free cashflow is at the core of the best modern corporate
valuation techniques. There are a number of different ways, each rather difficult, to estimate
valuation through the estimation of the present discounted value of free cashflow.4 This section
discusses the use of a proforma model blended with another model used to estimate the perpetuity
component of free cashflow. It is assumed that the analyst has access to a legitimate proforma
forecasting model which can generate a few periods (typically years) of forecast cashflow based
upon data from historical years. Although any proforma model that can do this will suffice, the
examples below are drawn from The Bora Credit Evaluation and Cashflow Model5, which uses
three years of balance sheet and income statement data to make a five-year proforma forecast.
The explanation below is easier to follow if the analyst has access to an Excel workbook provided
by the author labeled PDVCash.xls or PDVV5.xls. The printout page of this workbook is shown
in Appendix A of this document.
The proforma approach involves two steps: (1) Using the proforma model to generate five
proforma forecast years of free cashflow then discounting each forecast year by using a discount
rate, then summing them. (2) After estimating a sixth year based upon average growth rates of
the prior five years, obtaining a perpetuity forecast assuming constant growth using a standard
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constant growth formula.
To show the analyst how this is done, an appendix is attached to this document. That appendix
includes a cashflow page from the Bora model using Hershey Foods as an example, followed by
the printout from Excel workbook PDVCash.xls, which takes the data from the proforma forecast
and and makes a present discounted value estimate of the free cashflow of Hershey Foods. Here
are the steps that we taken to obtain that value:
1. From the proforma model printout, the two historical years for NET CASH AFTER
OPERATIONS are entered into the Operations Cashflow row and the data from
Capital Expenditures are entered into the Investment row. This will generate two
investment rates for two separate years (48.3% and 50.2%). These will later be averaged
into one investment rate.
2. Next, the five forecast years for NET CASH AFTER OPERATIONS are entered into
years 1 through 5 (from 2,978 to 4,210). This will automatically generate a sixth
projected year.
3. At this point, if the actual workbook is being used, default assumptions will have produced
an actual valuation ($46.404 billion in the example). The actual formulas used to make
this calculation are described at the end of this set of instructions. Override possibilities
will be discussed first.
4. The first override possibility is the Expected long-term growth rate, which is used in the
calculation of the perpetuity. The default is the average of the five forecast years. This
rate represents the expected growth rate for all years following the first five. If the default
looks unrealistic, change it to a more realistic value.
5. Probably the most important rate to consider is the Investment rate. The default is set to
the historical Investment rate determined in step 1. Aside from the fact that the historical
numbers might produce an unrealistic result (for example, with heavy external financing, it
is possible for new capital spending (investment) to exceed operations cashflow,
producing a meaningless value greater than 100%) which would have to be overridden,
the analyst might conclude that investment should include more than change in net fixed
assets (the proforma model defines capital expenditures as equaling NFAt - NFAt-1 +
Depreciationt). It might be deemed appropriate to also include values like recurring
research and development expenses or marketing costs, as was discussed in the opening of
the paper. In this case, the analyst, using additional data particular to the company being
investigated (such as R&D outlays for recent years), should make an off-line calculation
and override the default Investment rate.
6. The present value Discount rate is defaulted to be equal to the model’s First-estimate
WACC (weighted average cost of capital). This model, in turn, uses a simpler estimate of
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WACC than some. The default WACC takes the Current Long-Term Bond Rate,
assumed at default to be 7% (and the analyst should override this if that figure is much
different that the market yield for 30-year U.S. Treasury Bonds and replace it with that
yield) and adds a premium of 5.0%. This is meant to represent the cost of capital to the
firm when some mix of equity or debt is used. There are many alternative ways of
calculating WACC6 (the author is not impressed with any of them and so uses this simpler
approach) and if the analyst uses any of those then the Discount rate can be overridden.
The spreadsheet uses standard discounting techniques to discount for present value, and the
TOTAL DISCOUNTED VALUE equals the sum of the five discounted proforma years (6,441
in the example) and the Perpetuity Value (39,962 in the example). The formulas for each
respectively are7:
F and
C
d
i
i i =
= + å 1 (1 )
5
P where (with values shown from the example)
C r g
w g
=
- +
-
6 (1 )(1 )
( )
F: present discounted value of the five forecast years
C: proforma forecast values for operations cashflow
d: discount rate (12%)
C6: projected year 6 cashflow value (4,590.82)
r: investment rate (49.2%)
g: expected long-term growth rate (9%)
w: weighted average cost of capital (same as discount rate, 12%)
Where the Proforma Forecasting Technique Works Best and Where it is Limited
The forecasting technique based upon the use of a reliable proforma forecasting model will
normally provide a more credible forecast than an algebraic model because the latter relies more
upon point- or single-valued estimates of all key variables and is therefore extremely sensitive to
even small variations in some of the key variables, such as the growth rate in after-cash tax flows
or the marginal profitability rate.8
The proforma-based valuation technique works best when modeling an established company with
recent cashflows that are healthy and with fairly high levels of capital investment. If the analyst
were to run AT&T through the model, for example, the result would be reliable. AT&T has good
cashflow and a high investment rate.
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The problem arises when the analyst tries to evaluate weaker companies with poor or negative
cashflow or companies that, because of restructuring or similar reasons, are going through a spurt
of negative cashflow in recent years on the path to recovery. Takeover targets are often in this
situation. A proforma model, which derives its forecast from recent trends, will often forecast
five years of negative cashflow or the extension to the model, used to forecast the 6th year for the
long-range component of the valuation formula, will forecast negative cashflow for the 6th year.
The present value estimate of such a company is, of course, negative (the company is worthless).
This would technically be true. A company that is doomed to forever have negative cashflow is a
bankruptcy candidate.
Negative cashflow for surviving companies, though, is a temporary problem. The analyst must
therefore do some extra work to try to resolve the problem of negative valuation. (The analyst
can also try to value the company using the algebraic approach, although this involves no less
work). When fixing this problem, use this general three-step approach: (1) Scour the historical
books and try to find the origin of the cashflow problem, then (2) determine if the problem is
temporary (and possibly even resolved) or if this company really is in trouble, and (3a) if the
problem was temporary, determine if it is likely to show up as better performance (such as a
higher sales growth rate or fatter margins) than is shown in the proforma forecast, and override
the forecast to reflect this, or (3b) try to figure out what the management of the target company
or the management of the takeover company is going to do to fix this (such as fatten margins by
lowering SG&A expense through downsizing or eliminating redundant resources), and reflect this
by overriding key variables in the default forecast.
If this sounds imposing, don’t worry. The quality of an evaluation depends upon good detective
work and the depth of analysis, not a perfect valuation projection. By trying to figure out what is
wrong, the analyst will likely uncover some problem, whether temporary or permanent, in the
company. This should be written up and aptly described in the evaluation. If the override doesn’t
produce a credible valuation figure, so be it.
© 1998, Gary R. Evans. This may be used for educational purposes only. This material may not be used for
profitable purposes of any kind without explicit permission of the author.
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1. Copeland, Tom, Koller, Tim, and Murrin, Jack. Valuation - Measuring and Managing the
Value of Companies, 2nd ed., 1996, Wiley, pp. 172 - 173.
2. Weston, J, Fred, Chung, Kwang S., and Siu, Juan A. Takeovers, Restructuring, and Corporate
Governance, 2nd ed. 1998, Prentice-Hall, p. 179.
3. In the Bora Credit Evaluation and Cashflow Model, for historical data, free cashflow equals
NET CASH AFTER OPERATIONS minus CAPITAL EXPENDITURES (the latter is already
recorded as a negative value in the historical data). For the proforma forecast, a capital
expenditure projection must be made. Note that the cashflow category entitled Change in
Investments is not CAPITAL EXPENDITURES and does not figure into the calculation of free
cashflow.
4. This is discussed at length in Weston, et. al., chapter 9, and Copeland, et. al., Part II, chapters
5 - 10. It is assumed that the reader is generally familiar with this subject.
5. The Bora Credit Evaluation and Cashflow Model, © 1998, Gary R. Evans and Steven D.
Evans.
6. In Weston, et. al., see pp. 189 - 194 and in Copeland, et. al., see chapter 8.
7. See Weston, et. al., p. 184. The second equation shown (the perpetuity) is the same as
equation 9.3 in Weston. There is no tax variable because taxes are already removed in the
proforma model.
8. See Weston, et. al., model 9.5 from table 9.7, for a good example of an algebraic model.
Notes