Are United States Lime & Minerals, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:USLM) Interest Costs Too High?
The direct benefit for United States Lime & Minerals, Inc. (NASDAQ:USLM), which sports a zero-debt capital structure, to include debt in its capital structure is the reduced cost of capital. However, the trade-off is USLM will have to adhere to stricter debt covenants and have less 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 USLM’s financial health.
See our latest analysis for United States Lime & Minerals
Is financial flexibility worth the lower cost of capital?
There are well-known benefits of including debt in capital structure, primarily a lower cost of capital. Though, the trade-offs are that lenders require stricter capital management requirements, in addition to having a higher claim on company assets relative to shareholders. The lack of debt on USLM’s balance sheet may be because it does not have access to cheap capital, or it may believe this trade-off is not worth it. Choosing financial flexibility over capital returns make sense if USLM is a high-growth company. USLM’s revenue growth over the past year is a single-digit 0.9% which is relatively low for a small-cap company. While its low growth hardly justifies opting for zero-debt, the company may have high growth projects in the pipeline to justify the trade-off.
Can USLM meet its short-term obligations with the cash in hand?
Since United States Lime & Minerals doesn’t have any debt on its balance sheet, it doesn’t have any solvency issues, which is a term used to describe the company’s ability to meet its long-term obligations. But another important aspect of financial health is liquidity: the company’s ability to meet short-term obligations, including payments to suppliers and employees. At the current liabilities level of US$12m, the company has been able to meet these commitments with a current assets level of US$117m, leading to a 9.86x current account ratio. However, a ratio greater than 3x may be considered by some to be quite high, however this is not necessarily a negative for the company.
Next Steps:
As a high-growth company, it may be beneficial for USLM to have some financial flexibility, hence zero-debt. This may mean this is an optimal capital structure for the business, given that it is also meeting its short-term commitment. Going forward, its financial position may change. Keep in mind I haven’t considered other factors such as how USLM has been performing in the past. You should continue to research United States Lime & Minerals to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for USLM’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for USLM’s outlook.
Historical Performance: What has USLM’s returns been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity.
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.
