It is easy to become addicted to deals: buying growth can produce spectacular numbers. The problem comes when investors enable the habit, making it that much harder to break. Exhibit A: Li & Fung, the sourcing group whose clients include Target and Walmart. Its shares perked up last week in expectation that the $500m it raised in bonds will go on yet more deals.
Bought-in businesses are hard for outsiders to understand and more of them only make it tougher. Hence the sharp fall in Li & Fung’s shares in August, when its first-half numbers undershot expectations. In the past four years, the company has spent $5bn on 33 deals. But what exactly they have contributed is not clear. Take the four deals to date this year. Had they all been included as of January 1, net profits would have been lower in spite of their 7 per cent net margin – twice the level the group itself managed.
Shareholders are not giving the company carte blanche, at least. Since August, Li & Fung’s shares have traded on a forward price-earnings multiple of about 19 times – much less than the 25 times average they had commanded for the previous seven years. Yet investors’ apparent approval of last week’s hybrid – which is debt that looks like equity to rating agencies – will only allow more deals.