EVA Momentum: The One Ratio That Tells the Whole Story

Virtually all corporate managers use ratios like profit margin, earnings growth, and return on equity to set goals, analyze operations, and measure success or failure. Yet all ratios are wrong in the sense that every one of them can make it appear that operations are improving when a business actually is faltering, and vice versa .
In this article, one of the pioneers of the modern economic profit school of financial management claims to have discovered a new ratio that accurately consolidates all the pluses and minuses of decisions and operations into a single reliable overall measure that cannot be increased without truly creating value. "EVA Momentum," as the measure is called, is the change in a company's economic profit (or EVA) in a given period divided by its sales in the prior period. In other words, it is the size-adjusted change in economic profit.
The author goes on to demonstrate why most companies can use EVA Momentum as both their overarching financial target and the best way to keep score for multiple business lines. The article also shows why EVA Momentum is a better performance measure than ROI and that, as a diagnostic and management tool, it provides a more effective alternative to the popular DuPont ROI formula. Unlike the DuPont formula, EVA Momentum reflects the contributions to overall performance of important factors such as profitable growth, strategic retrenchment, and the quality of resource allocation decisions in general. At the same time, it provides a more accurate and informative means of examining performance, weighing tradeoffs, identifying investment opportunities, and prioritizing initiatives—all on the basis of their expected impact on a company's market value.     

The Relationship Between Accounting Profit and Economic Income

The reliance on economic concepts, most notably economic income, for the measurement of profit in financial accounting is misplaced. This paper explores the concept of economic income, contrasting it with the concept of profit in the conventional accounting model. The concept of individual economic income cannot be used for measurement of profit for a past period as the concept is based on the capitalisation of expectations and excludes "separate but correlated" concepts of profit and capital needed for capital maintenance.     

Risk-Adjusted Economic Value Analysis

Abstract

The ability of commonly used profitability measures to reflect risk exposure appropriately is evaluated and found lacking. As an alternative, a modern portfolio theory approach, based on utility theory, is recommended. Generalized formulas for calculating risk-adjusted economic values by deriving risk adjustments from certainty equivalents are developed by using the Markowitz expected utility maxim. Practical applications are described. Where appropriate, simplifying assumptions are shown to result in closed-form solutions, thereby reducing the need for extensive, stochastic cashflow simulations. The resulting formulas can be used to measure financial performance on a risk-adjusted basis consistently across different lines of business or to evaluate risk exposures in strategic alternatives.     

应对疫情对经济影响的关键是构建确定性

对于经济影响而言,所谓的确定性并非疫情得到完全控制,而是疫情传播速度和影响范围得到控制,经济活动者对于疫情的恐慌得到缓解,因而可以在较大范围和程度上恢复经济活动。确定性不是自然而然产生的,而是通过构建来实现。按目前形势预测,疫情大致影响GDP增速0.2-0.5个百分点,对经济不同环节的影响差异较大:对消费的影响是断点式的,滞后惯性影响小;对生产和投资的影响是连续性的,滞后惯性影响大。疫情的不确定性对企业影响最大,要特别关注疫情触发中小企业资金链断裂、进而导致大量企业破产的多米诺骨牌效应。当务之急是要通过构建确定性来稳定预期,迅速控制疫情传播速度和影响范围,缓解、消除经济活动者的恐慌情绪,减轻疫情对经济的冲击。     

Accrual Accounting for Performance Evaluation

This paper examines alternative accrual accounting rules from an incentive and control perspective. For a range of common production, financing and investment decisions we consider alternative asset valuation rules. The criterion for distinguishing among these rules is that the corresponding performance measure should provide managers with robust incentives to make present value maximizing decisions. Such goal congruence is shown to require intertemporal matching of revenues and expenses, though the specific form of matching needed for control purposes generally differs from GAAP. The practitioner oriented literature on economic profit plans (EPP) has made various, and at times conflicting, recommendations regarding adjustments to the accounting rules used for external financial reporting. Our goal congruence approach provides a framework for comparing and evaluating these recommendations.     

HOW TO FIX ACCOUNTING—MEASURE AND REPORT ECONOMIC PROFIT

Bending accounting rules has become so ingrained in our corporate culture that even ethical business leaders succumb to the temptation to “manage” their earnings in order to meet analysts' demands for smoothly rising results. The author of this article argues that such behavior reflects not a general decline in ethical standards so much as executives' growing sense that accounting itself has become “unhinged from value.” For example, clearly valuable expenditures on R&D, customer acquisition, and employee training are generally expensed immediately against earnings. And reported corporate income is often further reduced by provisions for losses that most companies never expect to incur, by “book” taxes they never expect to pay, and by depreciation charges on assets that are actually increasing in value. At the same time, the opportunity costs associated with employee stock options and the corporate use of equity capital are not reflected in the accountant's measure of profit. To improve the quality of corporate governance and revitalize the public's faith in reported earnings, the author proposes a complete overhaul of GAAP accounting to measure and report economic profit, or EVA. Stated in brief, the author's concept of economic profit begins with an older, but now seldom used, definition of accounting income known as “residual income,” and then proposes a series of additional adjustments to GAAP accounting that are designed to produce a reliable measure of a company's annual, sustainable cash‐generating capacity. Besides expensing the cost of equity capital as well as stock options, the author recommends bringing off‐balance‐sheet items such as pension assets and liabilities back onto the balance sheet, eliminating reserve accounting, capitalizing R&D and other expenditures on intangible assets, and recording economic rather than accounting depreciation. Such changes, by replacing the accountants' current flawed definition of earnings with a comprehensive new statement of value added, could restore investor confidence in financial statements. Even more important, managers would be less likely to pursue their now common practice of boosting earnings by making value‐reducing operating and investment decisions and more likely to use financial reporting not to mislead the market but as an opportunity to communicate relevant, forward‐looking information.     

Prudence, Demand Uncertainty, Background Risk, and the Law of Supply: A Nonexpected Utility Approach to the Firm

We identify two motives, prudence and risk aversion, which give rise to precautionary behavior for a quantity- or price-setting monopolist facing demand uncertainty who has dual theoretic preferences. We also analyze a piecewise linear profit function due to a tax on profits that varies with the profit level. We show that the comparative statics of greater risk (mean-preserving spread and mean-utility preserving spread) can be totally or partially determined by the Diamond-Stiglitz and Kihlstrom-Mirman single-crossing property. For example, for a prudent risk-averse quantity-setting dual theoretic monopolist, a mean-preserving spread will have the same impact on output under uncertainty as a fall in the state of demand under certainty. Finally, we find that, in contrast to expected utility, a stochastically larger state of demand (first-order stochastic dominance) will raise output even if background risk is present.     

我国汽车消费贷款保证保险的绩效分析

发展汽车消费贷款保证保险是保险业积极促进国内汽车消费的一项重要举措.既能间接扩大内需,推动国民经济增长,又能帮助银行管理贷款违约风险.本文通过构建汽车消费贷款保证保险绩效模型,分析得出汽车消费贷款保证保险能间接提高购车人信用等级,并为保险公司寻找新的利润点和融资渠道.最后根据绩效分析有针对性地提出了政策建议.     

Postmodern Corporate Finance

One of the core tenets of modern finance theory is that corporations create value by producing operating rates of return on capital that are greater than the cost of capital. “Postmodern” corporate finance, while reaffirming the importance of earning an adequate return on capital, also attempts to restore at least part of the traditional corporate emphasis on top-line growth that prevailed before the intense focus on returns by modern shareholder value advocates. One important reason for the heightened emphasis on growth in addition to returns is that most rate-of-return measures used by companies and investors are based on conservative accounting practices that make old assets look more profitable than new ones, thereby discouraging investments in growth. This article introduces a new return measure called “Gross Business Return” that, when evaluated against a Required Return framework that reflects the level of current stock prices, has a stronger correlation with how companies are valued by the stock market. Moreover, in reviewing historical returns over time for both the market and specific industries, the author's research suggests that the market appears to demand considerably lower current returns than those implied by traditional weighted average cost of capital (WACC) approaches. And to the extent corporate executives rely on WACC, they could be passing up valuable growth opportunities. To help evaluate tradeoffs between growth and return, the author introduces a cash-based measure of corporate economic profit called Residual Cash Earnings. Unlike most traditional return and economic profit measures, Residual Cash Earnings, when expressed as a percentage of sales, provides a way for corporate managers to identify growth opportunities that, while producing current returns lower than WACC, are likely to add value over a multi-year time horizon. These new measures and analytical tools are suitable for strategic planning, budgeting, resource allocation, performance measurement, and rewards. Consistent application of these principles across these management processes provides a framework for constantly rebalancing the emphasis on growth and return to adapt to changes in the economy, industry, and competitive landscape.     

以公共风险的结构和强度重塑财政政策体系

随着我国社会、经济发展形态和发展目标的变化,财政政策体系目标和运行逻辑也需要超越建立在确定性思维基础上的凯恩斯主义分析框架,财政政策供给要根据风险权衡原理,视公共风险的结构和强度进行相机调整.在当前复杂的国内外发展环境下,财政须充分发挥作为国家治理的基础与重要支柱的作用,以应对各种不确定性作为财政政策体系运行的目标,与金融环境协调配合,在保证财政自身风险可控前提下,通过灵活多样的政策工具为经济社会注入确定性,降低风险、引导预期,使经济社会系统整体的公共风险最小化.     

Bank profitability during recessions

This paper contributes to the literature on the relation between bank profitability and economic activity. When allowing for stronger co-movement of bank profit with economic activity during deep recessions, we find a much larger impact of output growth on bank profitability than commonly found in the literature. Among the different components of bank profit, loan losses are the main driver of this result. We also find long-term interest rates in previous years to be important determinants of bank profit in times of high economic growth. Our findings are robust to the use of aggregate or individual bank data.     

企业实现经济目标的伦理代价及对策

本针对我国某些领域经济秩序混乱的现状，以及企业选择经济行为，实现经济目标的策略进行分析与研究。企业经济行为的起点和归宿都是为了获利。然而，如果企业以不正当途径和手段获利，交为此付出沉重的代价，造成企业经济与信誉的损失。因此，企业只有选择伦理与合法的手段，才能最终实现企业的经济目标。     

经济利润、市场竞争与企业价值

从经济利润的涵义入手,从市场竞争的角度阐述了经济利润在企业经营过程中的变化趋势。由于市场竞争最终会趋于一个相对稳定的状态,即均衡竞争,因此,企业的投资资本回报率在充分竞争下会等于资本成本,经济利润最终将趋于零。经济利润与经济利润趋于零的思想对传统的估值理念与估值方法提出了新的挑战,为此,在经济增加值(EVA)和剩余收益(RI)估值模型原有的理论基础上,探讨了如何将新的估值理念运用到这两种估值模型中。     

FINANCIAL REPORTING BY FOUR UK CLEARING BANKS: A CASH FLOW EXIT PRICE (CaFE) APPROACH

This paper examines the published accounts of the four main UK clearing banks during the 1980s and investigates some of the economic factors with which the banks had to contend. A particular focus concerns less developed country (LDC) debt, provisions against losses on the clearing banks' LDC debt portfolios and factors which might influence the timing of provisions. We find a significant and positive association between share returns and future changes in cash flow plus adjustment for exit price changes, and suggest that this measure may be more closely associated with market expectations than changes in reported profit.     

The Determination of Fair Profits for the Property-Liability Insurance Firm

Single period and dynamic valuation models in continuous time, under certainty and uncertainty, are developed for a property-liability insurance contract to determine the “fair” (competitive) premium and underwriting profit. The intertemporal stochastic model assumes that the claim frequency and the price index of claim settlements are functions of a set of underlying state variables which follow a multivariate Wiener process. The competitive premium is shown to be proportional to the claim frequency and the price index for claim settlements at the time the policy is issued. The factor of proportionality varies directly with the claim settlement rate and the length of coverage, and inversely with the risk-adjusted real interest rate on the dollar-valued claim rate.     

Transfer Price Negotiation in the Presence of Unequal Bargaining Power: The Effect of a Peer Evaluation Scheme on Inter-divisional Profit Distribution

This study examines how managers balance economic incentives and inter-divisional equity considerations during transfer price negotiations. Our experiment shows that both buyers and sellers are willing to give up a significant amount of their profits to pursue a more equitable outcome (one that results in greater inter-divisional profit equalisation). We also find that incorporating peer evaluation schemes into negotiators' formal incentive plans has both economic and social-psychological impacts on negotiation behaviour, resulting in even greater inter-divisional profit equalisation. While this outcome may seem 'fairer' to the individual managers, from the firms' perspective profit equalisation can obscure divisional performance, potentially leading to resource allocation inefficiencies.     

MEASURING THE PROFITABILITY OF UK PROPRIETARY LIFE INSURERS

This paper compares and evaluates various legal and economic methods to measure and report UK life insurance company profitability in terms of their (i) treatment and recognition of profits emerging from life insurance business over time; and (ii) compliance with «true and fair view» requirements of the Companies Act and the concepts set out in the Accounting Standards Board («ASB») proposedStatement of Principles. A simple life insurance policy model is used to demonstrate the differential impact of each method on the pattern of profit recognition over time. Legal methods of reporting «profit» used by the UK industry to comply with conservative UK solvency regulations fail to provide inventors with insight into the value of the business. Economic methods provide a more «realistic» basis for reporting to shareholders by incorporating discounted future profits into the value of life insurance business, but these do not accord with the European Union Insurance Accounts Directive («IAD»). A legal «earned profits» method, although not endorsed by the industry, is the only one that appears to provide a «true and fair view» as envisaged by the Companies Act and meet the objectives of the ASB. Various outstanding issues between the industry-endorsed economic methods and the ASB's requirements are discussed.     

商业银行股权激励的特殊意义与现实问题分析

银行业普遍存在的管制,使银行面临着有限的控制权市场和接管威胁,从而大大降低了市场约束银行管理者的能力,因此对银行而言,通过股权激励机制协调股东和管理者的利益、降低代理成本显得尤为重要.我国商业银行实施股权激励不应盲目照搬西方国家的范例,应慎重选择股权激励的实施范围,目前最好只局限在高级管理人员,通过对股权激励机制的合理设计来充分发挥其长期激励效应,切不可盲目扩大激励范围,将股权激励演变成一种新的福利措施.应尽快建立起以经济资本为核心的业绩考核体系,在经济资本的约束下实现业务发展模式和盈利模式的转变.股权激励机制的有效实施离不开完善的银行治理结构.     

Financial liberalisation,crisis, and restructuring: A comparative study of bank performance and bank governance in South East Asia

This paper examines the impact of changes in bank governance on bank performance for a sample of commercial banks operating in SE Asia between 1990 and 2003. We identify bank governance in terms of bank ownership and measure bank performance as rank order alternative profit efficiency, technical change, and productivity. The period was characterised by financial deregulation, the Asian crisis and bank restructuring programmes. To resolve financial distress, SE Asian authorities implemented inter alia bank privatisation programmes and widened access for foreign ownership. Our results tend to support bank privatisation and the repeal of state ownership on economic grounds. We suggest the potential benefits of foreign ownership may take longer to be realised. For domestic private-owned banks, the challenge is improving bank efficiency.     

The Empirical Average Cost of Capital: A New Approach to Estimating the Cost of Corporate Funds

The authors develop a new way to measure the cost of capital, called the empirical average cost of capital (or “EACC”), which is consistent with existing methods of calculating the weighted average cost of capital, but uses information from the firm's financial statements and requires fewer and less subjective inputs. The authors’ model relies on the concept of economic profit while using data from the period 1990‐2012 on net operating profits and total capital to estimate the EACC at both the individual company and industry‐wide levels. Estimates of the EACC and rolling quarterly forecasts of future net operating profits for a single company, McDonald's, for its related industry, and for 57 other U.S. industries are compared to five conventional “textbook” estimates of the weighted average cost of capital published by Ibbotson Associates. The authors find that the EACC yields forecasts of future net operating profit after taxes that compare favorably to those of the five published measures of the weighted average cost of capital, as well as the average and median of these measures.