Yahoo Movies What You Must Know About Interlink Electronics, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:LINK) Financial Strength
Interlink Electronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:LINK), which has zero-debt on its balance sheet, can maximize capital returns by increasing debt due to its lower cost of capital. However, the trade-off is LINK will have to follow strict debt obligations which will reduce its 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 will go over a basic overview of the stock’s financial health, which I believe provides a ballpark estimate of their financial health status.
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Does LINK’s growth rate justify its decision for financial flexibility over lower cost of capital?
Debt capital generally has lower cost of capital compared to equity funding. But the downside of having debt in a company’s balance sheet is the debtholder’s higher claim on its assets in the case of liquidation, as well as stricter capital management requirements. LINK’s absence of debt on its balance sheet may be due to lack of access to cheaper capital, or it may simply believe low cost is not worth sacrificing financial flexibility. However, choosing flexibility over capital returns is logical only if it’s a high-growth company. LINK delivered a negative revenue growth of -18%. While its negative growth hardly justifies opting for zero-debt, if the decline sustains, it may find it hard to raise debt at an acceptable cost.
Can LINK meet its short-term obligations with the cash in hand?
Since Interlink Electronics 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. With current liabilities at US$651k, it seems that the business has been able to meet these commitments with a current assets level of US$8.4m, leading to a 12.91x current account ratio. However, a ratio above 3x may be considered excessive by some investors, yet this is not usually a major negative for a company.
Next Steps:
LINK is a fast-growing firm, which supports having have zero-debt and financial freedom to continue to ramp up growth. This may mean this is an optimal capital structure for the business, given that it is also meeting its short-term commitment. Moving forward, LINK’s financial situation may change. Keep in mind I haven’t considered other factors such as how LINK has been performing in the past. You should continue to research Interlink Electronics to get a better picture of the stock by looking at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for LINK’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for LINK’s outlook.
Valuation: What is LINK worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether LINK is currently mispriced by the market.
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.
