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Strategic Planning and Organization Performance: A Review on Conceptual and Practice Perspectives

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Essays in Industrial Organization of Spatially Differentiated Markets

7 August 2024 11:19

• Industrial Organization

On Tuesday 20 August 2024 Alina Ozhegova will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

The thesis explores questions related to strategic interaction in imperfectly competitive industries. It utilizes game-theoretic models and modern structural econometrics to analyze competition in various retail markets in Norway.

Alina Ozhegova ´s thesis sheds light on firms' entry, location, and differentiation strategies, offering welfare and policy implications.

The first chapter investigates how firms use non-price attributes like product selection to exert market power. Focusing on the Norwegian grocery industry, Ozhegova shows that while pricing decisions for individual products are made nationally, product selection varies locally. Using an equilibrium model, she finds that firms in less competitive areas offer fewer products at higher prices. This highlights the strategic role of non-price factors in competition and suggests policy interventions to improve market welfare in remote areas.

The second chapter explores the entry decisions of multi-store firms in the Norwegian pharmaceutical market. Ozhegova and coauthors find that firms frequently open new outlets close to existing ones. The chapter aims to provide new evidence on what drives multi-store firms to enter the same local market. It proposes that firms already established in a market have a unique advantage in learning about local market demand through their sales observations. Essentially, they argue that these repeated entries into a market may be attributed to access to private information.

Finally, the third chapter studies product differentiation in a monopolistic competition setting. The thesis develops a novel theory of monopolistic competition that considers the horizontal heterogeneity of consumers in their spatial locations and the vertical heterogeneity of firms in their productivities. The model shows that more productive firms target larger local markets, leading to positive assortative matching. The researchers validate the model using data from the hairdressing industry and conduct counterfactual experiments to assess the impact of changes in population density and production costs on market entry, competition, and consumer welfare.

Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:

How are differences in local competition and heterogenous consumers accommodated in the empirical IO literature?

Trial lecture:

AUD D, NHH, 10:15

Title of the thesis:

«Essays in Industrial Organization of Spatially Differentiated Markets»

AUD, NHH, 12:15

Members of the evaluation committee:

Professor Frode Steen (leader of the committee), Department of Economics, NHH

Professor Pierre Dubois, Toulouse School of Economics

Professor Christine Zulehner, University of Vienna

Supervisors:

Associate Professor Morten Sæthre (main supervisor), Department of Economics, NHH

Associate Professor Mateusz Mysliwski, Department of Economics, NHH

Professor Fedor Iskhakov, Australian National University

The trial lecture and thesis defense will be open to the public.

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Weatherford: The Market Is Not Pricing It As A Cyclical Company

• Weatherford emerged from its Chapter 11 re-organization in 2019, showing improved performance post-2020 with better contribution margin, asset turnover, and leverage.
• The company's revenue is highly correlated with crude oil prices, making its current performance likely to decrease over the crude oil price cycle.
• An optimistic valuation of Weatherford, assuming that it is not a cyclical company, indicates no margin of safety.

Investment Thesis

At the end of 2019, Weatherford International plc ( NASDAQ: WFRD ) emerged from its Chapter 11 re-organization. Post-2020, its performance has improved with better contribution margin, asset turnover, and leverage leading to better returns.

But this is a cyclical company with a 77% correlation between its revenue and crude oil prices. The current performance is probably due to the better crude oil prices. Over the crude oil price cycle, I would expect the performance to be lower than the current one. Even ignoring the cyclical performance, there is no margin of safety. I do not see this as an investment opportunity for the long-term investor.

The present form of Weatherford followed from the 2019 bankruptcy (Chapter 11 in the US) re-organization. This is an oilfield services company providing a range of services required for the exploration, extraction, and production of oil and natural gas.

Weatherford currently has 3 reporting segments – Drilling & Evaluation, Well Construction & Completions, and Production & Intervention.

I do not see the segment reporting as critical because they all fall within the oilfield services/equipment sector when looking at the Beta (as per the Damodaran dataset).

Besides, over the past decade, there have been frequent changes to the segment reporting as exemplified by the following:

• In 2014, there were 2 segments - Formation Evaluation & Well Construction, and Completion & Production.
• In 2018, there were 4 segments - Production, Completions, Drilling & Evaluation, and Well Construction.
• In 2022, there were 3 segments - Drilling & Evaluation, Well Construction & Completions, and Production & Intervention

As an oilfield services company, Weatherford's fortune is tied to the expenditure of the oil & gas companies. This in turn is tied to crude oil prices. Crude oil prices are cyclical, as illustrated in the left part of Chart 1.

You can see from the right part of Chart 1 that Weatherford's revenue over the past 20 years shares the same pattern as that for crude oil prices. There is a 77% correlation between Weatherford revenue and Brent crude oil prices over the past 2 decades.

Chart 1: Crude Oil Price and Weatherford Revenue vs Brent Oil Price Source (Author based on Statista)

Note on the right part of Chart 1: To be able to plot the revenue and crude oil price onto one chart, I converted them into indices by dividing the values for each year by the respective 2002 values.

Operating trends

From a high-level perspective, Weatherford is not a wonderful company in the Buffett sense. Refer to Chart 2.

• While revenue has been trending up since 2020, there was hardly any revenue growth from 2015 to 2023. If you look at Chart 1, you can see that 2015 was at the bottom of the crude oil price cycle, whereas the price in 2023 was about 2/3 higher than that in 2015. We have a higher oil price in 2023, but a lower revenue. This discrepancy is clearly seen in the right part of Chart 1.
• While PAT showed an uptrend from 2015, this came from many years of losses. Furthermore, the profit in 2019 was due to “a gain on extinguishment of debt of $4.3 billion” following the bankruptcy re-organization.
• Capital efficiency as measured by gross profitability seemed to be trending down post-2020. The level in 2023 was even lower than that in 2015.

Chart 2: Performance Index and Returns (Author)

Note to Chart 2: Weatherford undertook several divestments in 2014 amounting to USD 1.7 billion. As such, it was more appropriate to trace the history from 2015.

However, post-2020, the returns have been trending up with the 2022 and 2023 returns being higher than those in 2015. Refer to the right part of Chart 2.

The question is whether the improvements were due to high crude oil prices or improvements in the operations. To get some insights into this, I looked at the contribution margin as well as the DuPont metrics. Refer to Chart 3.

• The improvement in the contribution margin started in 2017.
• There were uptrends in the leverage and asset turnover from 2015 notwithstanding the 2019 dip.
• Selling, General, and Administration (SG&A) margins were 16% in 2023 compared to 17% in 2015. This was despite lower revenue in 2023.

Looking at the results above, I would say that Weatherford probably benefited from the higher crude oil prices. But not all improvements were externally driven, as exemplified by the better leverage, asset turnover, and SGA margin which started before the 2019 re-organization.

Chart 3: Operating Profit and DuPont Analysis (Author)

Note to Op Profit Profile. I broke down the operating profits into fixed costs and variable costs.

• Fixed cost = SGA, Depreciation & Amortization and Others.
• Variable cost = Cost of Sales – Depreciation & Amortization.
• Contribution = Revenue – Variable Cost.
• Contribution margin = Contribution/Revenue.

Peer comparison

In its Form 10k, Weatherford listed several competitors. I managed to find data for the following - Schlumberger ( SLB ), Halliburton ( HAL ), Baker Hughes ( BKR ), ChampionX ( CHX ) and Expro Group Holdings ( XPRO ).

I looked at 2 metrics – return on capital and EBIT margin to compare Weatherford's performance with its competitors. Refer to Chart 4.

Before the 2019 re-organization, Weatherford's return on capital and EBIT margin were among the panel's worst. But over the past 2 years, Weatherford performance seems to be rising to the top.

Chart 4: Peer comparison (Author)

Financial position

Weatherford's financial position does not look too good. While it had some positive points, I think they are not good enough to offset the negative ones:

The positive points included the following:

• It had USD 862 million in cash and short-term investments as of the end of March 2024. This was about 7% of its total assets.
• It has a negative Reinvestment from 2015 to 2023. I defined Reinvestment = CAPEX + Acquisition – Divestiture – Depreciation & Amortization + Changes in Net Working Capital. The negative Reinvestment was because the Depreciation & Amortization, and Divestiture in certain years far exceeded what was spent on CAPEX + Acquisition and Net Working Capital.

My main concern is with its debt position and cash flow generation track record:

As of Jun 2024, it had a debt-capital ratio of 60%. While this had come down from its 2018 high of 185%, it is much higher than the sector average. According to the Damodaran Jan 2024 dataset, the debt-capital ratio for the oilfield services/equipment sector was 24%.

Over the past 9 years, it generated positive cash flow from operations for 5 years. From 2015 to 2023, it generated USD 808 million in cash flow from operations, despite having a cumulative loss after tax. Unfortunately, the cash flow from operations was not enough to cover the Net CAPEX. Refer to Table 1.

Table 1: Sources and Uses of Funds 2015 to 2023. (Author)

Weatherford is a cyclical company with a strong correlation with crude oil prices. The appropriate thing is to then look at its performance over the cycle.

Unfortunately, the company was re-organized in 2019, and I am not sure the pre-2019 performance is a reliable estimate of its future. As such, I used the 2021 to 2023 average contribution margin and capital turnover for my projections.

To represent the current size of the business, I assumed the 2023 revenue. I used the Earnings Power Value model in my valuation because there was no revenue growth track record over the past 9 years.

On such a basis, I found that the intrinsic value of Weatherford was USD 75 per share, compared to its market price of USD 103 per share. There is no margin of safety under this very optimistic scenario.

Note that the lack of a margin of safety was based on an optimistic picture because:

• The 2021 and 2023 average contribution margin and capital turnover are not cyclical averages. Crude oil prices are currently near the top than at the bottom. Thus, the 2021 to 2023 averages are probably the better performances.
• I assumed that there would not be any further asset down and restructuring charges. Historically, during the trough part of the crude oil price cycle, there were impairments and restructuring charges.

Risks and limitations

According to Damodaran, the value of a cyclical company:

“…is often more dependent on the movement of a macro variable…than it is on firm-specific characteristics. Thus, the value of an oil company is inextricably linked to the price of oil…”

“…earnings and cash flows reported in the most recent year are a function of where we are in the cycle, and extrapolating those numbers into the future can result in serious mis-valuations…”

Based on my valuation model, the market is pricing Weatherford on the basis that the revenue, contribution margin, and capital turnover are 6% higher than what I assumed.

You can see that the market is not pricing Weatherford as a cyclical company. It is even extrapolating further improvements from the past 3 years' average performance.

Secondly, in my valuation, I assume that there was no revenue growth. You may look at the past 3 years' trend and think that I am wrong.

If you assume a 4% perpetual growth, you will have an intrinsic value of USD 134 per share. In other words, there is a margin of safety. But is growth realistic when the 2023 revenue is lower than that of 2015?

Valuation model

I valued Weatherford based on a single-stage Free Cash Flow to the Firm (FCFF) model where the EBIT was determined based on the business model as shown in the left part of Chart 3.

FCFF = EBIT(1 – t) X (1 – Reinvestment rate) X (1 + g) / (WACC – g).

EBIT = Revenue X contribution margin – Fixed cost.

The Reinvestment rate was derived from the fundamental growth equation g = Return X Reinvestment rate.

Value of equity = Value of firm + cash + Other investments – Debt – Minority interests.

Table 2 illustrates the calculation.

The WACC was based on the first page results of a Google search for "Weatherford WACC". Refer to Table 3.

Table 2: Estimating the intrinsic value (Author)

Table 3: Estimating the cost of funds (Various)

Post its 2019 re-organization, the company’s performance seems to be improving. Revenue and PAT are on an uptrend. There were improving contribution margin, asset turnover, and leverage.

But not all is rosy.

• Gross profitability has been declining, and I have concerns about its financial standing.
• While growing, the 2023 revenue was lower than that in 2015.

Weatherford's performance is strongly linked to crude oil prices, and I posit that some of the operating improvements are likely due to better crude oil prices, especially when compared to those in 2015.

In addition to not being a wonderful company, my valuation of Weatherford based on its Earnings Power Value and assuming that it is not a cyclical company , does not provide any margin of safety.

If you are a long-term value investor, this is not an investment opportunity, as I expect the performance of Weatherford to decline when the crude oil price goes into the downtrend part of its cycle.

This article was written by

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

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For their last meeting of the fall 2023 semester, the students in MIT’s course 21W.756 (Nature Poetry) piled into a bus and headed to a local performance space for a reading: their own.

Sure, students in the course, taught by Professor Joshua Bennett, spend much of the semester reading and discussing poems. But they create and perform, too, often using tools from their other studies at MIT. One student in 21W.756 built a custom field microphone to incorporate recorded sounds into his work; another designed collages to complement her poems.

“The students are phenomenal,” says Bennett, a professor of literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT. “I try to think about how everything else they’re studying at MIT might meet up with the study of literature in a productive way. We’ve got great students who do super-interesting things.”

He adds: “They are willing to take the leap between other classes and our class very seriously. They see it as an opportunity — and they’ve explicitly told me this — to talk about being human. They’ve cherished that, and it’s been a transformative experience to have witnessed that.”

Bennett, an award-winning professor with a broad portfolio of work, knows about leaping between disciplines. He has published books of literary criticism, cultural history, and three collections of poems. Bennett has also gained renown as a spoken-word poetry performer — he has another major tour slated for this summer — and helped found the poetry collaborative Strivers Row. His readings have gained what must be millions of views on YouTube, including “ Tamara’s Opus ,” a dramatic work written for his deaf sister.

In short, Bennett also does his own super-interesting things, while encouraging students to join him in the pursuit of knowledge.

“Why do we create literature in the first place?” Bennett asks. “Why do we go to college? Why do we listen to people tell stories? Why do 300 or 3,000 people at a poetry reading listen to me or others talk? I imagine some of it is, there are things we love about being alive. And one of them is the feeling you can learn something new. You can be astonished. There is a space for you to become more complete through knowledge.”

Reading (and listening to) everything

Bennett grew up in Yonkers, New York, in a family that included preachers and musicians, and helped inculcate a love of learning in him.

“I’m thankful I had parents who just weren’t narrow-minded,” Bennett says. “They taught me to read everything, to listen to everything. At school I was reading Fitzgerald, and other works that were canonical, and wherever I saw beauty I really gravitated to it.” At the same time, he notes, “I was exposed to the genius of gospel music, jazz, and Motown,” while learning about Black scientists and much more.

He credits a 10th grade English teacher, Kaliq Simms, for helping him realize his potential as a student and writer.

“We read Hamlet, the Merchant of Venice, the Canterbury Tales, and she took us through literature in a way that made it land,” Bennett says. “She taught those works alongside Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. There was just something about the way she spoke to us. Ms. Simms said I was a ‘witty elocutionist.’ She just saw something in me other people didn’t see, or couldn’t. She had a serious role in changing my trajectory.”

Thus bolstered, Bennett earned his undergraduate degree as a double major in Africana studies and English from the University of Pennsylvania, where he became involved in the competitive poetry-slam scene. Bennett did so well as a performer that in 2009, before he had graduated, he was invited to perform “Tamara’s Opus” at the White House; it is an apology to his sister for not having learned sign language sooner. Graduating in 2010, Bennett was a commencement speaker at Penn.

If that weren’t enough, Bennett also earned a prestigious Marshall Scholarship, allowing him to receive an MA in theater and performance studies from the University of Warwick, in Coventry, England. Bennett then earned his PhD in English from Princeton University. His dissertation, about the place and meaning of animals in Black literature, ultimately became his 2020 book, “Being Property Once Myself.” It won the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize.

“It really emerged from having two grandparents who were sharecroppers who met in a strawberry field in North Carolina and emphasized the beauty of that field,” Bennett says. “I thought, how is that possible? To come out of that context with a story of love and beauty. When I got to Princeton, I expected the appearence of animals in African American literature to always be about degredation, but instead what I found were writers who took animals on their own terms, as beautiful, as powerful, as annoying, as recalcitrant, and sometimes as radicals or fugitives.”

Those writers include major figures such as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Robert Hayden, and Jesmyn Ward, among others. “I chose all canonical authors, on purpose,” Bennett says. “But that was to say, these are some of the most written-about books by African Americans, and even so, people had not written about them in this way.”

After receiving his PhD in 2016, Bennett spent three years as a Junior Fellow in Harvard University’s Society of Fellows, then joined the faculty of Dartmouth College in 2019. Two years later, he was promoted to full professor. Bennett joined the MIT faculty full-time starting in 2023.

Among other recent honors, Bennett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021. He also won the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize for his 2022 poetry collection, “The Study of Human Life.”

What kind of writing?

Bennett’s prolific output, both in scholarly works and as a poet and performer, no doubt owes much to his inner drive and enthusiasm. But his ability to produce work across genres also seems tied to his flexible thinking about writerly voice. Bennett is not constrained by the idea that his writing can only take one register; he varies his approach depending upon the project.

“To me it’s all [just] different kinds of writing,” Bennett says. “I was raised around musicians, around preachers, which I think is really central, because I understood what they were doing, even if some of them were improvising sermons, as a kind of writing. Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction are all kinds of writing, so [the question became], what kind of writing is best suited to my object of concern?”

For instance, Bennett says his 2016 poetry collection, “The Sobbing School,” a complex series of explorations about sustaining selfhood in the context of violence and tragedy, is about grief; that subject matter shaped the form.

“At that moment, I thought, these need to be elegies,” Bennett says.

However, Bennett’s 2023 nonfiction book “Spoken Word,” a history of the spoken-word poetry movement, is different. It is a deeply researched book that Bennett has written for a general audience, with a fast-paced text replicating the sense of movement and novelty surrounding the growth of the spoken-word genre, its best-known venues, like the Nuyorican Poets Café in Manhattan, and the creation of competitive poetry slams. In The New York Times , Tas Tobey called it a “vibrant cultural history.”

“I wanted to write ‘Spoken Word’ like a spoken-word poem, which I say explicitly, but I also wanted it to be a history of loving accomplishment,” Bennett says. “How people have not just competed, but worked together to create a sound.”

Another motif of “Spoken Word” is that in the process of creating spoken word poetry, people have found meaning in their own lives, discerned meaning in the works of others, and established human bonds and affinities and they might not have otherwise understood.

From the poetry slam venue to his own classroom, Bennett encourages this process. Making literature is an act of human value and meaning, and helps us reflect on it, too.

“We are here to sit with beauty and discomfort the whole time,” Bennett says of his class discussions. “Some of the work we read will be from people who were imprisoned, or enslaved, and we’re reading their poems together and learning what they have to say about human life.” Of his students, he adds: “We need as many hands on deck as possible, we need as many students who care and are devoted and as imaginative as possible in the room, and we need to give them all the resources we can to produce a livable world.”

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