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Private Equity
Transforming Public Stock to Create Value
By Harold Bierman, Jr. John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0-471-39292-8
Chapter One
The Many Virtues of Private Equity
For purposes of this book the term private equity refers to the common stock of a corporation where that common stock is held by a relatively few investors and is not traded on any of the conventional stock markets. Normally the senior managers of the firm hold a significant percentage of the firm's stock, and we will assume that is the situation in all the cases discussed in this book.
In practice, the term private equity is used in several different ways. There are private equity investment firms that direct their clients' funds into mutual funds or to other money managers. There are even private equity funds that invest directly into publicly owned corporations, usually concentrating the investments into a few corporations.
Venture capital is a form of private equity. In this book the use of the term will be restricted to the investment in the equity of corporations that are, or will soon be, not publicly owned. An exception is the case of a partial leveraged buyout (LBO). This is almost private equity but the firm is still publicly traded.
Megginson, Nash, and vanRadenborgh (1996) offer a review of the history of privatization. Jensen (1993) covers the general issue of corporate control. Kleiman (1988) studied and reports the gains from LBO types oftransactions.
What are the advantages of private equity?
SIMPLICITY
Because there are no public equity investors the private equity firm's financial reporting requirements to all the relevant governmental entities are reduced. This simplifies management's responsibilities and results in transaction cost savings for the firm.
With private equity there are no requirements that management keep Wall Street informed of the firm's expected earnings and then provide an explanation of the actual earnings and why they differ from the expected earnings. Decisions are not affected by short term earnings and the anticipated stock market's reactions to the earnings; thus the firm's decision making may be improved.
The firm's board of directors can be chosen for effectiveness rather than appearances or public relations.
ALIGNMENT OF MANAGEMENT AND OWNERSHIP
With the average publicly held firm the interests of management and the firm's ownership are not always perfectly aligned. An entire area of study called agency theory has been created with the objectives of studying and reducing the conflicts between a firm's management and its owners. The classic papers on agency theory are Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Jensen (1986).
We assume the common stock of the private equity firm discussed in this book is to a significant extent owned by management. Management has an incentive to act in a manner consistent with maximizing the well-being of the equity owners.
DIVIDEND POLICY OF A PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM
The owners of a private equity firm tend to be paid for their services as members of management, consultants, or members of the firm's board of directors. They also hope for a value accretion to their stock holdings.
If the owners are also employees of the firm, the incomes earned for services will be taxed at ordinary income tax rates. But there is only one level of tax since the corporation gets a tax deduction for the amounts paid for service. This is the first tax advantage.
The gain from the value accretion of the stock will be taxed in the future at a capital gains rate when the gain is realized for tax purposes. Thus there are two tax advantages from value accretion and the use of private equity; one is tax deferral and the second is the lower capital gains tax rate compared to the tax rate on ordinary income.
The private equity firm has little or no incentive to pay cash dividends on the common stock. The investors would rather be paid as employees or have their equity investment gains be converted into capital gains and have these gains taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate in the future.
CAPITAL STRUCTURE
The normal public corporation has managers and owners. While the managers may also be stockholders, the total value of their stock investment in the corporation tends to be much less than the present value of their salaries and bonuses. The senior managers of public corporations have a significant incentive to act in such a way as to not jeopardize the stream of salaries that will be earned if the managers are not dislodged from their jobs.
With a private equity firm the relative values of salaries and ownership are changed. Now the owners have an incentive to substitute debt for equity both to gain (or maintain) control and to add value. The use of debt becomes a much more important tool for adding value with a private equity firm than with a public firm.
VENTURE CAPITAL
This is not a book on venture capital though many of the conclusions of this book apply equally to venture capital activities, since venture capital is a form of private equity.
It is assumed in this book that the firm being taken private has a track record and its value can be estimated based on objective financial measures of the results of operations. Frequently, a venture capitalist is evaluating the story told by an entrepreneur. While there may be projected financial results, they frequently are not backed up by actual results. The valuation of such a firm is more an art than a science.
MBOs
DeAngelo and DeAngelo (1987) review the early history of managerial buyouts (MBOs). From 1973-1982 they identify 64 buyout proposals made by managers of New York and American Stock Exchange listed firms. They identify eight factors that are important in the decision to effect a management buyout. These are:
1. Potential improvement in managerial incentives
2. Save costs of disseminating information to stockholders
3. Company secrets are better protected
4. Tax savings of interest tax shields and other tax savings
5. Avoidance of hostile takeovers
6. Difficulty to raise capital
7. Illiquid stock (leading to greater difficulty attracting managers)
8. Disagreements among stockholders (because of illiquid investments)
Diamond (1985) put together a team of practitioners of the LBO art to construct a book that explores the legal, tax, accounting, operational, and financial considerations of an LBO transaction. It is a handy reference book regarding the practical aspects of the LBO deal.
THE J.P. MORGAN CHASE FUND
In February 2001 J.P. Morgan Chase announced that its J.P. Morgan Partners unit was raising $13 billion for a private equity fund (see the Wall Street Journal of February 6, 2001). While $8 billion was to be the bank's own funds, $5 billion was to be raised from other investors. These investors were to include pension funds, university endowments, and foundations. This fund raising effort followed the creation within a few months of Thomas Lee's $6.1 billion buyout fund and KKR's raising of a $6 billion fund.
Private equity funds primarily invest in leveraged buyouts but they are not precluded from investing in venture capital activities. Their main investment destination is the LBO but private equity investment can take many different forms.
J.P. Morgan Chase and its predecessors investing in private equity had earned a 40 percent annual return on equity capital. To evaluate this return we would need to know the amount of debt and other senior securities used, as well as the status and age of deals that have been undertaken, but are not yet completed (thus there is not yet an objective measurable internal rate of return). Also, the 40 percent return was earned on a smaller amount of capital than was now being raised. Investing a large sum of capital in firms of larger size has its own set of challenges for a private equity operation. The number of eligible targets is reduced. On the other hand the number of firms competing for those larger targets is also reduced.
CONCLUSIONS
There are several reasons why value may be added by a firm converting from being organized as a publicly owned firm to be a private equity firm. First, there are operational reasons why a private equity firm may have more value. Second, two financial decisions (dividends and capital structure) are likely to be different with a private equity firm than with a publicly owned firm. The set of financial decisions with the private equity firm is likely to add value to the investors owning the stock.
QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. What are the advantages of private equity?
2. Of the eight factors listed by DeAngelo and DeAngelo, which one do you consider most important?
3a. Assume the LBO management firm is paid 2 percent on Company B's total assets and 20 percent of the gross profits (before capital charges and after taxes). The capital structure for Company B is:
Dollars Debt (.14) $40 Preferred (.12) 30 Convertible preferred (.06) 20 Equity 10
Company B has a .35 tax rate. It earned $90 before interest before taxes before management charges.
Required: Allocate the $90.
3b. Now assume the firm earns $45 before interest, taxes, and management changes.
Required: Allocate the $45.
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