Economic Value Added: The Practitioner’s Guide to a Measurement and Management Framework: Craig Savarese

The shareholder value creation philosophy is a central element in many companies’ financial management practices. A widely adopted approach to measuring financial performance and managing for value creation is economic profit (economic value added). A deceptively simple concept, companies often are not prepared for the challenges and issues they need to consider when measuring economic profit, nor for how to incorporate it into financial management practices. This book addresses these challenges by: developing a framework for linking economic profit to shareholder value; explaining the issues relevant to developing a company-specific economic profit measure; and demonstrating how to incorporate economic profit into financial management practices. The book is about practical application - designed as a user’s guide - so that you can apply shareholder value principles and understand the implications for your business. It shows how economic profit links to shareholder value, and dispels commonly cited myths about adopting a shareholder value framework to drive a company’s financial management practices. It is aimed at financial managers and accounting professionals, managers, consultants and equity analysts who want to understand the application of shareholder value.

EVA, SVA, and the Economy

While at Accenture, one of our analytical tools was Shareholder Value Analysis (SVA) – a tool based on Economic Value Added.  The premise is that by looking at a company’s financials, we can determine where to best target our innovation efforts.  The analysis can show us, for example, if reducing SG&A will have a greater impact on EVA than, let’s say, COGS.  It will tell us the impact on EVA if we increase sales by a certain amount.   It is a very powerful tool.  You can see the general model by clicking the image on the right.  The analysis is obviously a lot more complex.

This model works nicely in good times.  But does it work today?  What is it telling us?

I asked two of my ex-Accenture colleagues who are experts on SVA the following question:

Cost of Capital is part of the EVA equation. Given the credit crisis, how has this impacted EVA? Is cost of capital going up? If so, what does that mean in terms of where companies should invest then efforts? Or is it going down because the prime rate is so low? What does this mean that from a targeting perspective?

Here are the two responses:

Response #1: On the EVA question, theoretically the Cost of Capital is down given the prime.  But actually it’s up given the credit markets — the Libor is a good proxy (the rate at which banks lend to each other). The B2B rates are even worse, hence all the talk about the credit markets freezing up. In terms of targeting Cost of Capital, that’s a tougher question. Most of the action in EVA around the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is related to more or less leverage. So targeting it would mean more leverage and there’s not too many companies that want to go in this direction now. In fact, we may have determined a “ceiling” on how far you can push on that lever.

Response #2: From a mathematical perspective, marginal cost of capital is fairly low these days. The availability of capital, however, is the real issue. In the current market it is difficult to raise capital. Therefore if an enterprise can generate excess cash and can identify opportunities with good returns they should certainly invest. It is no different for an individual. Assuming that a major catastrophe is not looming on the horizon and assuming that one has available cash, this is the time to invest. I should hasten to add that the “classical” capital market theories upon which WACC and EVA are based are NOT, in my opinion, quite valid in a tumultuous market where risk free rates are almost zero and people are simply keeping cash “under the mattress.”

Interesting thoughts.

My follow up question is, “Assumiung WACC is up, what is the relative impact of cost reduction versus revenue growth on EVA?”

What do you think?  I’d love to get many different perspectives on this topic.

Economic value added or EVA ®

Economic value added or EVA® is a measure of the true economic profit of a company. Although in a sense it is nothing more than the traditional, commonsense idea of “profit”, it makes a clear separation from dubious accounting adjustments that may occur (remember ENRON, which for a long period of time was reporting profits, while in fact was in the final approach to becoming insolvent).

EVA® is calculated as the difference between the Net Operating Profit After Tax and the opportunity cost of invested Capital. This opportunity cost is determined by the weighted average cost of Debt and Equity Capital (“WACC”) and the amount of Capital employed.

The term EVA® is a registered trademark by its developer, the consulting firm Stem Stewart & Company, since 1994. Still, another much older term for economic value added, the Residual Cash Flow, has been also used by companies for years. These measures have their foundation in the residual income and internal rate of return, concepts developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Residual income was originally developed and used by General Electric (GE) to measure performance, and was popularized by McKinsey & Company as economic profit (Carton, Hofer, 2006).

Unlike other measures, EVA® can be calculated at divisional level (i.e. Strategic Business Units), can be used for performance evaluation over time, as it is a flow, and it captures the period-by-period value creation or destruction of a given firm or investment and thus makes it easy to audit performance against management projections.

EVA® can also be used for corporate valuation and equity analysis, motivating the managers and setting organizational goals.

Even though it is a much appreciated indicator, it also has some limitations. EVA® overemphasizes the need to generate immediate results and therefore it doesn’t stimulate investments in innovative products or process technologies. Also, when calculated at the divisional level of a company, it does not control for size differences, and a larger plant or division will tend to have a higher value than its smaller counterparts.

Taking into consideration the usefulness of EVA® , many companies have adopted it as part of a comprehensive management and incentive system, which leads their decision processes.