Parts that contribute to overall payday vision
Posted by admin in Save Money, Taxes, revenue, short-term income, understanding finances on May 15th, 2010
Sound like Flash Gordon or Star Wars? It isn’t. It is the synergistic result of a partnership. Each of these partners had separate needs that they could not fulfill themselves. Working together, however, they were now at the point of strategically planning how they wanted to develop the highways and cars of the future. The first thing they did was create a vision reflecting the individual aspirations of the partners.
Each had a part to contribute to the overall vision. Using the Plan–Do–Check–Act cycle, they then planned what they wanted to do and constructed some prototypes. On several of the projects, they’re checking to see if what they designed and tested is working as predicted. This partnership is well on its way to having its vision become a reality—a vision with the potential of saving thousands of lives while improving automobile efficiency and reducing pollution. Partnerships not only add value to business, but sometimes make dreams come true.
Synergy between various types of credit
Posted by admin in manufacturing, market demand, market forecasts, marketing, material costs on April 17th, 2010
Now that you’ve formalized your partnership—and are in a position to capitalize on it—start planning for the future. Strategic planning is the best way for partners to envision what will happen in the next few years.When partners plan together strategically, the synergy created is enormous. And the outcome is something your competitors can’t replicate because it exists only in the context of your partnership. No matter how hard they try, they cannot re-create that unique set of dynamics that is uniquely yours.
Some time ago I witnessed an example of this type of partnership synergy. At the time, I was participating in a workshop for a multimember partnership including the National Highway Safety Board, the California Department of Transportation, several automobile manufacturers, and some computer and software designers. They are dedicated to increasing auto safety and using technology to improve efficiencies. Their vision is to create a systemto provide interaction between the automobile and the road to enhance safety and performance. Electronic sensors embedded in the road surface will monitor traffic, surface conditions, and other useful information and relay it to the driver via a computer in the car. This data will be projected via a dashboard monitor or onto the windshield and also signal the optimum speed the car should be traveling under these conditions. Such a system could also indicate alternate routes should there be traffic delays or other obstacles.
Move from loan dependence to independence
Posted by admin in credit, credit cards, economy, effective budgeting, equity on March 16th, 2010
Reaching the Commit stage is the gold medal of partnering— when “me” becomes “we.” As you link your success to each other’s well-being, you move from independence to interdependence.While this goal is sometimes attained in our personal relations, it is elusive for most business partnerships. This doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but long-term partnerships are rare. Businesses change, marketplace realities evolve, and alliances shift market forces in different directions. Achieving this level of partnership ensures that as long as the partnership provides mutual benefits and trust exists, abundance will flow.
The partnership becomes institutionalized when there is formal commitment to it. In our personal lives, people have weddings or other commitment ceremonies to publicly acknowledge their partnerships. Aside from the ritual, which is important, they send a message to the outside world that “we are in this together.” A business example is United Airlines, which ran a series of advertisements featuring their employees, who had just signed an employee ownership contract with management. The message was obvious: Since they were now owner-employees, their customers could expect service as if it were coming from the company leaders—because it was! In an extremely competitive marketplace, this is a powerful message.
A joint strategic planning of credit
Posted by admin in Business plans, bonds, budget, business, communication on February 15th, 2010
Everything you’ve done up to this point has been focused on getting you to the full partnership stage. You and your partner have worked hard together, navigating the Stages of Relationship Development to produce trust and mutual benefits. You’ve also engaged in the steps necessary to accomplish a task in order to determine the partnership’s worth. You’ve used the Plan–Do–Check–Act cycle to continuously improve the task and relationship dynamics of your partnership.
You’ve seen the partnership move from a past to a future orientation. The final two stages will feel almost anticlimactic. This is a good thing. You’ve worked so hard to increase your Partnering Intelligence that by the time you’re prepared to make a commitment and move to full partnership it will feel like the only logical step. The only thing that stands between you and full partnership is one more task: to conduct a joint strategic planning session in order to solidify your future vision and spell out the plans to get you there. Your partnership is now in the Commit Stage of Partnership Development. You have achieved the trust and communication needed to help you maximize the synergy. You have identified the mutual benefits that the partnership provides. Having managed the changing dynamics of the relationship and its impact on each organization, you are now positioned to perform.
Credit and equity prices and volatility
Posted by admin in Real estate, Save Money, Taxes, revenue, short-term income, understanding finances, variable costs on October 30th, 2009
Generally, equity-based models for credits have to be analyzed in the context of the leverage cycle. When the level of debt remains constant, equity as well as credit investors both benefit from rising equity prices, driven, for example, by increasing earnings estimates. When leverage is rising like, for instance, between 1997 and 2000, equities tend to perform well while credit spreads widen at the same time. Conversely, deleveraging through rights issues or asset disposals, cost cutting and dividend cuts provide a favorable environment for credit, but not for equities. As Figure 3.24 shows, there is undoubtedly a relationship between equity prices and credit spreads. Yet, this relationship varies over time, depending on the current and the expected fundamental environment in the future.
Models that only relate credit spreads to equity prices therefore need to be interpreted cautiously. Assume, for example that the management of a company signals its willingness to concentrate on the creation of shareholder value. Then the probability of leveraging increases substantially. If there has been no decoupling, credit investors should take that as a sign to be rather bearish.
Learn how to value corporate credit
Posted by admin in Business plans, Companies, bonds, budget, business, communication, consulting on October 29th, 2009
One of the most widely used indicators to value corporate credit is the equity market. The Merton model formalizes the relationship between leverage, equity prices, equity volatility and credit spreads. While the model permits an assessment of the relative valuation of equity and credit, it makes no explicit statement about which of the markets is currently priced correctly, or if both markets are in disequilibrium. In addition, focusing solely on equity prices and volatility neglects the effects of changes in leverage. However, equity-market performance contains information about the future state of the economy, the future cash flows and risk premium in the market. Stronger cash generation benefits corporate bonds since creditworthiness improves and the required risk premium is lower. Furthermore, as the equity cushion increases through rising equity prices and more IPOs and equity volatility decreases, default probabilities and spread levels tend to fall.
The ratio of sales to loans and assets
Posted by admin in Business plans, Companies, Money Tips, Taxes, communication, market demand, market forecasts, profit margin, understanding finances on October 28th, 2009
The ratio of sales to assets is an asset turnover ratio that measures the sales-generating capacity of a given asset base. Taking the nominal GDP of the nonfinancial corporate sector as a measure for sales. The ratio has started to turn up at the beginning of 2001. This pattern is normally consistent with periods of recovery. However, it should be noted that this ratio is near its historical low. The z-score for the nonfinancial corporate sector has collapsed dramatically since 2000, resting well below the critical level of 1.8 since the second quarter of 2002. For an individual firm this signals that the company is likely to fail within 2 years. On the macro level it indicates a high probability of rising default rates and widening credit spreads. Three points stand out:
- based on macroeconomic data the z-score has never been in the safe zone;
- the average score since 1952 is about 2;
- in the 1970s and 1980s, the z-score was permanently in the distress zone implying that corporate America should have gone bankrupt, but clearly it survived.
This leads to the conclusion that the weighting scheme is no longer appropriate to capture the vulnerability of the corporate sector. The relative importance of the individual factors changes over time. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the weighting scheme on a regular basis, for example by using a regression methodology.
The ratio of credit earnings before tax, interest depreciation
Posted by admin in Companies, Investment Opportunities, budget, fixed costs, management skills, manufacturing, market demand, production cycles, profit margin on October 27th, 2009
A second metric for profitability is the ratio of earnings before tax, interest depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to total assets. Using data from the national accounts of the United States we define earnings before tax and interest as pre-tax profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustment plus net interest. This metric follows a similar path as the ratio of retained earnings to total assets, although on a higher level and with a higher volatility.
Measuring the extent to which a firm’s value can decline before its book value becomes negative and a firm becomes insolvent, the ratio of market value of equity to total debt represents the inverse of leverage. We have defined the value of equity as the market value of outstanding equities, total debt is defined as total credit market instruments. The tremendous equity bubble of the late 1990s has collapsed, but nevertheless the equity-to-debt ratio stays above the level reached in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of its higher volatility, the ratio is largely driven by the equity performance. As a result the equity-to-debt ratio usually rises at the end of a recession because equity markets already
anticipate stronger economic growth while many companies still deleverage their balance sheets. Here again, the 2001 recession makes an exception.
About one-and-a-half years after the end of the recession in November 2001 equity markets finally marked their lows.
Measure for mortgage profitability
Posted by admin in Financial Advice, Global Markets, bonds, budget, business, expenditures, finances, fixed costs, incentive on October 26th, 2009
A common measure for profitability is the ratio of retained earnings to total assets. We defined retained earnings as undistributed profits, that is, after-tax profits minus dividend payments. Like the working capital ratio, the profitability measure is on a downtrend in the longer term. During recessions the profitability of the companies usually declines. It is worth noting that the latest recession in 2001 marks an exception with respect to the ratio of internal funds to total assets. Whereas the profitability declined like in any other recession before, the cash flows of the companies on average improved in this period due to rigorous cost cutting in the corporate sector.
Fundamental models for loans spreads
Posted by admin in Companies, Money Tips, consulting, credit, liability, management skills, manufacturing, material costs on October 25th, 2009
A popular approach to estimate the credit risk of an issuer is the use of z-scores. In this context, Altman’s five components framework has attracted particular interest. On the company level, it is based on the five metrics.
Replacing the company-specific metrics by macroeconomic factors yields a fundamental model for the credit market. Because of the required minimum history and data reliability we will focus on the US market. Data for this procedure is taken from the flow of funds statistics and the national accounts of the United States.
The ratio of working capital to total assets measures the net liquid assets of a firm relative to the sum of financial and tangible assets. We isolated net liquid assets for the US nonfinancial corporate sector from the flow of funds statistics by subtracting mortgages, consumer credit, trade receivables and miscellaneous assets from total assets and subsequently adding inventories, trade and tax receivables.
The large fall in 1974 is due to a significant decline in the value of trade payables. Usually, the ratio of working capital to total assets falls in a recession. But there also seems to be a secular downtrend in this ratio.