What You Must Know About Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc’s (NASDAQ:ADAP) Financial Strength
Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:ADAP), which has zero-debt on its balance sheet, can maximize capital returns by increasing debt due to its lower cost of capital. However, the trade-off is ADAP will have to follow strict debt obligations which will reduce its financial flexibility. While zero-debt makes the due diligence for potential investors less nerve-racking, it poses a new question: how should they assess the financial strength of such companies? I recommend you look at the following hurdles to assess ADAP’s financial health.
Check out our latest analysis for Adaptimmune Therapeutics
Is ADAP right in choosing financial flexibility over lower cost of capital?
Debt funding can be cheaper than issuing new equity due to lower interest cost on debt. But the downside of having debt in a company’s balance sheet is the debtholder’s higher claim on its assets in the case of liquidation, as well as stricter capital management requirements. Either ADAP does not have access to cheap capital, or it may believe this trade-off is not worth it. This makes sense only if the company has a competitive edge and is growing fast off its equity capital. A double-digit revenue growth of 48% is considered relatively high for a small-cap company like ADAP. So, it is acceptable that the company is opting for a zero-debt capital structure currently as it may need to raise debt to fuel expansion in the future.
Can ADAP pay its short-term liabilities?
Given zero long-term debt on its balance sheet, Adaptimmune Therapeutics has no solvency issues, which is used to describe the company’s ability to meet its long-term obligations. However, another measure of financial health is its short-term obligations, which is known as liquidity. These include payments to suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. Looking at ADAP’s most recent US$30m liabilities, it seems that the business has been able to meet these obligations given the level of current assets of US$262m, with a current ratio of 8.85x. Having said that, a ratio greater than 3x may be considered as quite high.
Next Steps:
Having no debt on the books means ADAP has more financial freedom to keep growing at its current fast rate. Since there is also no concerns around ADAP’s liquidity needs, this may be its optimal capital structure for the time being. Moving forward, its financial position may be different. This is only a rough assessment of financial health, and I’m sure ADAP has company-specific issues impacting its capital structure decisions. I recommend you continue to research Adaptimmune Therapeutics to get a better picture of the stock by looking at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ADAP’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for ADAP’s outlook.
Valuation: What is ADAP worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether ADAP is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
