The rational optimist

I got this book a couple of weeks back, and as I read let me capture my thoughts.
The first quote is quite interesting (I hope it is as Adam Smith wrote it and not a translation of what he wrote)
This division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion.
It is the necessary consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

Managing Complexity in Chemical Industry

Source: AT Kearney - Controlling Complexity in the Chemical Industry

Chemical companies are facing increased complexity. Levers of managing better growth: 1. Complexity; 2. Cost of raw materials; 3. production; 4. sales and delivery; 5. sales; 6. delivery.

I. Optimize operations: shutdown lines and locations, improve utilizations, avoid investments.
II. Reduce material costs: reduce number of suppliers formulations and raw materials, introduce technology platforms.
III. Improve productivity: Adapt organization, processes and resources for product development, technical services and sales.
IV. Make top-line improvements: Improve product mix, increase prices, switch or remove under-performing products.

Ascertain complexity by plotting formulation across these two axis:
1. Average sale per formulation ($ million)
2. EBIT margin per formulation

Average sales per formulation - <= $5 million (be alert on complexity managing), $2 million (reducing complexity is a priority).
Complexity tradeoff is defined as the difference of value and cost of complexity.

• Leading indicators of complexity:

1. Focus on revenue growth (topline) rather than profitability (bottomline).
2. Customer value understanding gap.
3. Inability to understand full product or service cost and profitability.
4. Limited or no understanding of PLC Vs unclear responsibility for complexity management.

• Lagging indicators:

1. Flat bottom-line in-spite of growing top-line.
2. More products but no increase in bottom-line.
3. No enhanced value generation by increasing portfolio.
4. No success in product pruning.
   

Complexity and tie-up meagre or limited resources such as:

1. Product development is forced to manage a broad portfolio of projects resulting in overly long development cycles.
2. Purchasing grapples with high transaction costs - managing a large number of suplliers and raw material vendors.
3. Manufacturing faces long lead times, frequent changeovers, increased cycle times, capital investment, and rising scrap and rework levels.
4. Outbound logistics is pressured by long lead times, excess finished goods inventory, loss of sales due to improper planning and demand estimation.
5. Marketing, Sales and Service deliver inefficient sales and service operations, cannibalization of sales, forecasting errors and increased expenditures on advertising a broad range of products and variants.

Managing Working Capital (Chemicals Industry -examples)

Source: KPMG- -Working capital chemicals industry

The Chemicals industry effectively passes rising prices to their customers. Their working capital levels have actually continued to fall ( a sign of improvement efficiency).

Between 2005 and 2007 the median days of working capital (DWC) in the European Chemical sector has fallen from 84.3% to 73.7% a 12.6% improvement. Looking at best performing companies in the sector the improvement is even greater. The top quartile companies have improved their performance over the same period by 22.7%, illustrating that the best keep getting better.

If companies improved their days of debtors (DSO), stocks (DIO) and creditors (DPO) to the same level as the top quartile, these companies could liberate €22billion of cash from working capital.
This released cash from working capital efficency can enable funding of capital expenditure as well as reduce debt, (shareholders). All of these uses would have a substantial positive impact on valuation.

Levers for releasing cash are: improving the stock days and debtor days.
1. Days of inventory outstanding i.e., the days of sales that the company is holding as inventory and
The improvements in inventory are most likely being driven by continual investment in the manufacturing process to improve yields, remove bottlenecks and accelerate production.
Furthermore shifting greater responsibility for raw material inventory onto suppliers in the form of consignment stock drives down the inventory on the balance sheet.

2. Days of sales outstanding i.e., the number of days of sales the company has tied up in debtors
3. Days payable outstanding i.e., the number of days of sales sitting in trade creditors
4. Nearly 50% more cash can be generated by negotiating longer payment terms with suppliers.

• Thus it is critical to focus on the total cost of ownership during negotiations with suppliers and weigh up the benefits of longer terms against potential discounts or shifting ownership of raw material inventory from your balance sheet.
• But over-pushing the suppliers to a position of dis-advantage (in paymnet and supply terms) would make the suppliers un-viable and thus squeeze the supply chain elements (in an event of higher buyer power).
• A way out is to improve your forecasting efficiency and tell the supplier accurately about the supply schedules. This will enable shortening the working capital cycles / improving efficiency.
• Inventory is the buffer between supply - demand thus accurate forecasting of demand and matching suppply to it will enable optimization of inventory.
• Reducing inventory is the second largest cash generator. A better supplier management will enable to reduce inventory.
• Reducing overdue debtors is an effective way of releasing locked up cash.
• Segmenting the customer base to develop strategies that yield the highest return with limited resource. In an ideal world every customer would be called prior to invoice due date to ensure they received the invoice and identify if any problems exist. In reality companies do not have the resource to accomplish this, requiring careful identification of how to manage different types of customers. This should also then be fed through into payment terms, payment methods and credit limits.
• While introducing a new product the intended impact of 'working capital' must be calculated.
• In the current economic environment those companies with financial strength should fair best. The continuous focus on product innovation and high commodity prices is likely to drive business complexity in the chemicals industry and squeeze margins.

Distinct nature of the present crisis (2008-2011)

Source:money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/magazines/fortune/colvin_managing.fortune
This recession is different from the previous ones:

1. Most immediately significant, employment is plunging more steeply than in a long time - by more than two million jobs last year, more than during the previous two recessions, and this one is far from over.
2. At the same time, U.S. consumer spending is falling sharply. In the third quarter it sank at a 3.1% annual rate, the steepest decline since 1980 - meaning that managers who have made it through the past four recessions have never confronted anything like it. The drop is worrisome because consumer spending is more than 70% of America's economy, and while it may rise quickly or slowly, it almost always rises. During the whole of the last recession (2001), consumer spending never declined at all; its growth only slowed.
3. Compounding the problem, consumers are more deeply in debt than ever, an immediate concern for companies that lend to consumers. Longer term, consumers' balance sheets are so ugly that many executives believe this recession may linger as people slowly rebuild their finances. "It could be a couple of years before consumer spending goes up again."
4. Consumers aren't the only ones deleveraging. Companies are too, and on a more massive scale than ever seen before. That means business-to-business firms are also suffering.De-leveraging is typical in a recession, but because boom-time leverage had reached unprecedented levels, the reverse process may become particularly violent.
5. Yet another important difference - the credit crunch - affects even those companies that are reducing debt, but especially those that aren't. Virtually all firms depend on a constant flow of credit to carry them smoothly through the ups and downs of business fluctuations. While it's entirely typical for lenders to get more cautious in a downturn, the near freezing of credit is something else again. Even companies able to pay higher interest rates may find that credit isn't available from the usual sources at any price.
   

The U.S. housing bubble bursts, pushing U.S. consumer spending down, leading to less demand for imports from China, causing slower growth of the Chinese economy, thus decreasing demand for copper, pushing copper prices down to their lowest levels in almost three years, causing big problems for you and your warehouse full of copper.
You can conduct pretty fancy scenario planning and still not be ready for that - and it's safe to say we've barely begun to see the rippling effects of a recession in an information-based, truly international economy.

The most effective moves you can make for prospering through a recession are ones you established a long time ago. In times like these the strong get stronger and the weak get eaten. --> while Washington Mutual and IndyMac Bank were failing, Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) - which got out of subprime mortgages in 2001 - attracted $21 billion of new consumer deposits as consumers ran to safety. --> When the Wickes furniture retailing chain filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, more than 100 truckloads of furniture were on their way to its stores; a Milwaukee retailer that had remained financially solid, Steinhafels, bought the contents of several at bargain prices.

10 recommendations.

1. Reset priorities to face the new reality.
2. Keep investing in the core.
3. Communicate like crazy, balancing realism and optimism.
4. Your customers face new problems, so give them new solutions.
5. Don't rush to cut prices.
6. Focus on capital - how you're getting it and where you're using it.
7. Reevaluate people - and steal some good ones.
8. Reexamine compensation - what is it offering incentives for?
9. Think twice about offshoring.
10. Be smart about mergers and acquisitions.

Profiting from a recession

Source: http://www.boozallen.com/publications/article/658447
Firms response to recession

Healthcare Coverage - Impact on Small Business

Source: money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/smallbusiness/health_cure.fsb/index.htm

Impact of rising HealthCare premiums has been sever on small businesses is severe. -->

• Small businesses typically pay 18% more for health insurance than big companies, which can use their purchasing power to drive down the cost of coverage, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research foundation.
• And the number of small firms that provide health insurance to their employees has been shrinking every year: 59% in 2007, down from 68% in 2000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• Of the 46 million uninsured in the U.S., 27 million are small business owners, their employees or their dependents.
  

Rich Gallo says he can't afford to provide health insurance for his nine employees. For a long time he put off buying insurance for himself, figuring he needed time to shop carefully. - Medical care related to Gallo's heart attack cost $200,000, which was paid by the state welfare department, a foundation affiliated with the hospital, and donations from Gallo's church.

Trends in Insurance Cover

• Premiums on group policies have soared by as much as 30%, on top of double-digit increases in each of the past five years.
• Coverage is shrinking.
• Due to insurer consolidation, policy choices are more limited than ever.
• And in a seller's market for insurance, small business owners have little room to negotiate prices or terms.

The escalation of the health-care crisis couldn't come at a more difficult time. Sales and profit margins are dwindling amid a weakening economy and a credit crunch.--> As a result, companies can no longer pass higher health-care costs on to their customers.

Many small busines owners are wrestling with tough issues such as --> "Do they lay off some workers in order to provide coverage for the rest?"

Policymakers will probably exercise caution in changing a system (HealthCare) that accounts for 16% of the U.S. economy. Many powerful interests will have their say in crafting legislation, including (but not limited to) insurers, state regulators, doctors and the drug industry.

Proposals range from

• eliminating employer-based health insurance and requiring all Americans to buy plans through state-run agencies, to
  
• lowering the cost of insurance by allowing employers to join insurance associations that pool risk across state lines.
  

"Insurance costs are a big disincentive to an entrepreneur."

Some innovative ways to cover themselves and their employees:

1. With soaring monthly premiums, the company along with its broker engaged in a complicated dance they call the shuffle. It involves switching insurers almost annually to qualify for low introductory premiums. Cole does get lower premiums - he's had eight insurers in the last 10 years - but at a price: He spends six to eight hours each fall filling out new insurance forms.As monthly premiums climbed the employer switched to a policy that primarily covers medical catastrophes - but there's a catch. Some ailments are and medical problems are considered pre-existing conditions and aren't covered under the policy.
2. In some states small firms have banded together to qualify for lower group rates on insurance. In Cleveland, for example, companies with 500 employees or fewer can buy health insurance through the Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE), the partner of the regional chamber of commerce. Rates are about 8% lower than on the open market. Some 14,000 companies participate in the pool, which dates back to the 1980s. But Cleveland's experiment has not been widely imitated. Pools are difficult to organize and costly to administer. And insurers are less motivated to participate now that there's less competition in the industry.
3. Insurance woes are forcing many entrepreneurs to rethink their business plans. By enrolling in one course (university course) each semester, the employer (individual) is qualified for low-cost student health insurance with an annual premium of $4,000 and a deductible of $250. (Her annual tuition bill is $2,200.)
   
4. A content creating company has moved from full time employees to freelance contractors.
5. Many small firms impose long waiting periods before new hires become eligible for health coverage.
6. For highly skilled workers (woodcutters, artisdans, carpenters etc...) some small businesses pay out of pocket for medical costs. Employers who buy health insurance can pare costs in several ways.
   
7. Some pressure employees to switch to generic drugs, take preventive measures during flu season, and limit doctor visits for colds and other minor maladies. Others have tried to lower insurance costs by putting a price on vice - penalizing unhealthy behavior such as smoking and overeating. Sixteen percent of the nation's largest employers make workers who smoke contribute more than nonsmokers to cover health-insurance premiums, according to Mercer, a global human resources consulting firm.
   

"People put pedometers on their dogs to log mileage and did all sorts of crazy things to win the prizes - anything but exercise or lose the weight," says Doug Short, CEO of BeniComp, which crafted the cost-reducing plan for Independent Alliance. "Now people have to take responsibility for their health."

Anecdotal evidence aside, it's unclear that wellness programs make a major dent in health-care costs. And despite the increasing popularity of this approach, it has another downside:

TMI - That's "too much information" - about workers and their private lives. Some business owners confess they are uncomfortable discussing personal health issues with workers or sponsoring contests that require embarrassing weigh-ins reminiscent of The Biggest Loser.

Emerging markets were going to weather the storm … but will they survive the hurricane?

Source: http://www.dbresearch.com/
The financial breakdown of the west has spilled over to the emerging economies and these economies face a sharp economic contraction, led by :

• declining FX reserves,
• battered financial systems,
• a pronounced weakening of real economic activity.
• sharply slowing exports,
• plummeting commodity prices and
• sizeable capital outflows

The global financial dislocation has also exposed financial vulnerabilities in a number of smaller EMs, forcing several of them to request IMF financial support:

At the beginning of the crisis, the EM-6 had enough official FX reserves to cover their 12-month external financing requirements. This is generally regarded as a comfortable position.
However, this metric does not capture

1. all potential sources of balance-of-payments pressure
2. equity liabilities,
3. off-balance sheet liabilities related to cross-border derivatives transactions
4. resident capital flight.

Nonetheless, the comfortable external financing positions theoretically mean that as long as the authorities refrain from “financing” these types of outflows by drawing down their FX reserves, the countries will have sufficient funds to stay current on their debts falling due over the next 12 months, albeit at the risk of substantial currency depreciation in the event of, for example, substantial resident capital flight.

Two important sources of balance-of-payments pressure have weakened since the onset of the crisis.

1. The value of foreign portfolio holdings in the EM-6 has declined substantially on the back of large Q4-2008 outflows,
2. dramatic equity market correction and/or significant currency depreciation; and losses related to off-balance sheet transactions seem to have been largely realized.

Further EM-6 FX liquidity has stagnated or declined in recent months, only Mexico’s 12-month financing requirements now exceed its FX reserves (but only very slightly).

Resident capital outflows in the EM-6 should remain manageable as the risk of a sovereign default or a systemic banking crisis is low – and as long as the authorities devalue the exchange rate and allow domestic interest rates to rise.
This also applies to Russia, where FX reserves have fallen most, the current account is being hit the hardest and which has seen the largest resident capital outflows.

A scenario of how the (near) future will pan out for the EM-6
In a typical crisis, capital inflows recover after a while, allowing EMs to avoid drawing down all their external assets.
Uncertainity:

• But what if this time is different and the EM-6 only have very limited access to external capital markets over the next 12-24 months?
• What if capital-constrained financial institutions and spooked investors in the advanced economies remain reluctant to lend to EMs?
• What if banks that have tapped government bail-out programmes encounter significant political opposition to extending funding to EMs?
• What if the huge amount of expected fiscal-stimulus and bail-out related sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed debt issuance in the developed markets leads to a diversion of funds away from EMs?

One possible consequence of any of these / or a combination of these uncertainity panning out is :
Some combination of sizeable FX reserve buffers, bilateral swap agreements and access to the IMF’s short-term liquidity facility should provide the EM-6 with enough time to adjust their current account positions by way of a further (substantial) currency devaluation and a further (sharp) slowdown in economic growth.

The EM-6 economies are being battered and are already seeing a sharp deceleration in economic growth. The economic slowdown could become even more pronounced, should they remain shut out of international capital markets for longer than expected and be forced to adjust their balance-of-payments more drastically on the current account side. The recent Brazilian and Mexican sovereign bond issues have raised some hope that this can be avoided. However, under either scenario a systemic financial breakdown looks unlikely.
But no one knows if it will.