2月22日，全球第五大食品公司卡夫亨氏宣布減記154億美元資產，其股價和聲譽也因此遭到重創。不過，與食品和飲料行業的其他競爭對手相比，卡夫亨氏的業績表現究竟有多差呢？

對于這個問題，最好的衡量指標是經濟增加值（EVA）。數據顯示，在過去三年間，卡夫亨氏的EVA以令人震驚的速度惡化。（無獨有偶，卡夫亨氏的股價也比2017年2月時的最高值下跌了約三分之二。）

2013年，來自于巴西的3G資本攜手巴菲特的伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司收購了卡夫。為了達到傳說中的效率，以及為行業設立一個新標桿，他們又主導了卡夫與亨氏的并購。2015年，卡夫完成了對亨氏的收購。接下來的兩年里，華爾街對3G資本主導的這次并購吹捧得無以復加。

然而所謂的“3G療法”，卻讓這家番茄醬生產廠商付出了血的代價。

EVA暴露了什么問題

EVA是衡量一家公司能否通過股東投資獲取足夠利潤，進而回饋股東的一個最基本的指標。它最早是由企業管理與分析領域的權威機構ISS提出的。EVA的基本理念是，除非一家公司產生的回報高于股東將這筆投資用于另一個高風險項目的回報，否則這家公司就不算真正的盈利。基于這一理念，在計算利潤時，EVA會從投資收益中扣除代表“機會成本”的“資本支出”。

當調整后的稅后利益高于資本支出時，EVA為正數，代表企業給投資者帶來了回報。當EVA為負數時，則代表企業在生產、研發、資本運營上表現不佳，缺乏競爭力，無法有效產生利潤。（EVA對計算運營利潤的傳統會計方法進行了調整，包括對研發成本、營銷成本、重組成本的資本化與攤銷等。）

如果一家公司的EVA勉強為正，則說明它的業績表現勉強可以接受，大致相當于一名職業高爾夫球手打出了18洞標準桿的成績。

在計算EVA指標時，我們對卡夫亨氏總數為1120億美元的股權和債務取5%作為資本支出，扣出資本支出后的收益為其實際經濟收入。2016年是卡夫亨氏并購后的第一個完整的經營年度，當年卡夫亨氏很輕松地跑贏了資本支出，其EVA盈余3.05億美元，約等于其銷售額的1.1%。到2018年，它的經濟利潤已經跌至負6.05億美元，下跌幅達9.1億美元，達到營收入的負2.3%。從2015年也就是公司業績還算強勁時算起，以EVA占銷售額的百分比為指標來衡量，業內比卡夫亨氏業績更差的企業只有六分之一。

導致崩潰的三個關鍵因素

卡夫亨氏的EVA之所以下跌得如此厲害，主要受三個負面因素的共同作用。

一是增收乏力。從2016年年末到2018年年末，卡夫亨氏的營收入下降了近5億美元，跌至260億美元出頭，跌幅達1.7%。一方面，卡夫亨氏要面對來自于在線零售商的激烈競爭；而在線下，它的卡夫芝士等拳頭產品也面臨著競品的激烈的價格戰。在最近接受CNBC采訪時，巴菲特坦承，卡夫亨氏高估了自己的品牌實力，并認為卡夫亨氏拒絕大零售商們提出的降價要求是錯誤的做法。巴菲特表示：“我們并不像自己想象的那么強大。”

盡管如此，如果卡夫亨氏能保證銷售額不下滑，并且將成本控制在相同水平，那么它去年仍然會產生可觀的EVA。削減成本本應該是3G資本的強項，它雖然一定程度上也削減了成本，但做得還不夠。

二是成本削減被利潤下滑所抵消。2015到2018年，卡夫亨氏的銷售和行政管理成本從10%下降到8%，這也就是3G資本所謂的“零基數預算法”的成果——即各部門的每一筆預算都要每年從零開列，并且必須有合理理由。然而成本的下降并不能抵消毛利潤的顯著下滑。從2017年年初到2018年年底，公司毛利率（營收入減去銷售成本）由39.5%下跌至36%，跌幅達3.5個百分點。

原因有兩方面。首先，許多產品的生產成本大幅上升了。比如據管理層介紹，公司在一種名叫Capri Sun的鮮果飲料的生產上投入了大量資本。為了針對大型商超做好線下推廣，去年該產品的銷售人員的人數增長了80%。其次，據最早提出EVA理念的ISS高級顧問貝內特·斯圖爾特觀察：“卡夫亨氏很多產品的盈利能力較弱。”雖然卡夫亨氏一直努力維持產品定價，但隨著克羅格和沃爾瑪等大型線下零售商紛紛推出自有食品品牌，在巨大的競爭壓力下，卡夫亨氏目前的折扣力度已經比兩年前大得多了。在接受CNBC采訪時，巴菲特也提到它的“議價能力較弱”。

簡而言之，毛利率3.5%的跌幅超過了管理成本2%的跌幅，使得卡夫亨氏的虧損率達到了銷售額的1.5%。管理費用的下跌是以研發、廣告和促銷支出的下降為代價的，而這些都對促進銷量至關重要。從2015年年底到去年年底，卡夫亨氏的研發成本、廣告成本和促銷成本總計減少了8400萬美元，下跌幅度超過10%，管理費用縮支的半數都來自于此。

三是資本支出巨大卻沒有回報。在2015年，卡夫亨氏每賣出1美元的產品，就會向不動產、工廠、設備等固定資產投資32美分。去年，這個數字上升到了41美分，漲幅達32%。也就是說，為了升級那些用了幾十年的老舊廠房，卡夫亨氏是頗下了血本的。

據卡夫亨氏的管理層透露，該公司的業務還受到了發貨延遲問題的影響，因此，公司覺得有必要斥巨資升級其供應鏈和倉庫網絡。對此，斯圖爾特認為：“然而卡夫亨氏未能通過降低成本和提高利潤等手段收回全部投資。”結果是，它的投資效率遠不如幾年前了。2015年，卡夫亨氏每進行1每元的固定資產投資，就能收獲3.5美元的銷售額，但現在這個數字已經下降到了2.5美元。

價值貶損200億美元

要衡量投資者從一家公司獲得多少回報，或者損失了多少，還有另一個終極指標——市場增加值（MVA）。MVA是EVA的一個變種，衡量的是投資者投入的股本與其當前市場價值的差額。斯圖爾特表示：“簡單說來，就是投入的現金與產生的價值的對比。MVA會告訴你，在股東投入到公司的股本的基礎上，究竟產生了多少財富。”

到2016年年中，也就是3G資本正受到華爾街熱捧的時候，卡夫亨氏的市值大約超過其賬面資本500億美元，這就是它為股東創造的累計財富。而現在，由于股價下跌得很厲害，加之投資還沒有收到回報，卡夫亨氏的MVA已經是負200億美元了。MVA的崩潰也是EVA下跌的必然反應。在這段時期里，卡夫亨氏的股東損失的價值要超過任何一家包裝食品公司。

3G資本在削減成本方面有一些好點子，但在如何推動卡夫亨氏的增長上，卻沒有什么良策。對于3G資本來說，如果你不能推動公司核心業務也就是包裝食品的增長，那么最后你只得花更多的錢來避免公司的進一步衰落。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

The shares and reputation of Kraft Heinz took a huge hit when the world’s fifth largest food company announced a $15.4 billion writedown on February 22. But how badly is Kraft Heinz really doing compared to rivals in the food and beverage industry?

The best yardstick is a metric called Economic Value Added (or EVA). And the EVA numbers show an absolutely shocking deterioration over the past three years. (Not coincidentally, shares in Kraft Heinz are down about two-thirds since their February 2017 peak.)

In 2015, Kraft bought Heinz. And over the next couple of years, Wall Street cheered 3G, the Brazilian investment firm that had teamed up with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to buy Kraft in 2013 and then engineered the Heinz acquisition, for achieving unheard-of efficiencies, and setting a new standard that rivals would need to rush to match. (Read “Buy. Squeeze. Repeat.

But what was advertised as the 3G cure has cost the ketchup-maker a lot of blood since then.

What “EVA” reveals

EVA is the most basic measure of whether a company is earning sufficient profits on the capital invested by shareholders to truly reward those owners. It’s a trademark and service of ISS, a global leader in corporate governance and analytics. The idea behind EVA is that a company isn’t really profitable unless it’s generating returns greater than what a shareholder could garner from another, equally risky investment. Hence, EVA deducts a “capital charge” from reported earnings on all of the billions backing the business––representing the “opportunity cost” of what that capital could be earning elsewhere.

When the adjusted, after-tax profits exceed the capital charge, EVA is positive, and the enterprise is rewarding investors. When it’s negative, the company’s operations are underperforming, uncompetitive, and killing shareholder value by doing a poor job of deploying investments in plants, R&D and working capital to generate profits. (EVA makes adjustments to traditional accounting to calculate operating profit, including capitalizing and amortizing R&D, marketing and restructuring costs.)

When a company beats the EVA bogey, it’s meeting the minimum requirement for adequate performance––just as, when a professional golfer shoots par, they’ve hit the benchmark for a decent 18 holes.

The ISS EVA methodology assess a 5% capital charge on all of Kraft Heinz’s $112 billion in combined equity and debt. What Heinz earns after subtracting that charge amounts to its real economic earnings. In 2016, the first full year following the Kraft-Heinz merger, the maker of Oscar Mayer hot dogs and Kraft cheese beat its cost of capital handily, and in the process, generated a positive $305 million in EVA, equal to 1.1% of sales. But by 2018, economic profit dropped to a minus $605 million, a swing of $910 million, to -2.3% of revenues. From the period starting in 2015, when EVA was also strongly positive, only one in six U.S. food and beverage companies performed worse, measured by the 3-year trend of EVA as a share of sales.

Three keys to a collapse

Kraft Heinz’s EVA went the wrong way due to a confluence of three negatives.

Kraft Heinz couldn’t grow the top line. From the close of 2016 to the end of last year, Kraft Heinz’s revenues fell by almost $500 million, or 1.7%, to just over $26 billion. Kraft Heinz faced stiff competition from online retailers and heavily discounted in-store brands that share space with such signature offerings as Kraft cheese slices. In a recent CNBC interview, Buffett acknowledged that the company overestimated the strength of its brands, and misfired by strongly resisting the big retailers’ demands for lower prices. “We weren’t as strong as we thought,” Buffett declared.

Still, if Heinz even managed to hold sales constant and kept costs the same, it would have generated respectable EVA last year. Pounding down expenses was supposed to be 3G’s strength. It did so lower costs to extent, but not enough.

Cost-cutting got swamped by falling margins. From 2015 through 2018, Kraft Heinz lowered its sales, general and administrative costs (SG&A) from 10% to 8% of sales. That’s the payoff from 3G’s vaunted “zero based budgeting” program that demands that managers justify every expense, starting from scratch, each year. A steep fall in gross margins, however, overwhelmed the progress on overhead. From the start of 2017 through the end of 2018, that figure––consisting of revenues minus cost of good sold––fell by 3.5 percentage points, from 39.5% to 36%.

The reason is two-fold. First, production costs on many products seem to have risen significantly. For example, management states that it spent heavily on producing a fresh version of its fruit drink Capri Sun. The in-store sales force for that product in the U.S. rose by 80% last year in a campaign to boost shelf space with big retailers. Second, “Kraft Heinz appears to be garnering smaller markups on many of its products,” says Bennett Stewart, a senior advisor to ISS who pioneered the EVA concept. Despite its efforts to preserve pricing, the pressure from house brands at big grocery retailers such as Kroger and Wal-Mart forced Kraft to offer far deeper discounts than the deals it had offered two years ago. On CNBC, Buffett referred to its “weaker bargaining hand.”

In short, the 3.5% fall in gross margins exceeded the 2% shrinkage in overhead, leaving Kraft worse off by 1.5% of sales. And the decline in overhead came at the expense of R&D and advertising plus promotional spending, categories crucial to boosting sales. In total, outlays in those two categories fell by $84 million, or over 10%, from the end to 2015 through last year, accounting for roughly half the savings in SG&A.

Big spending on capex, but no returns. In 2015, Kraft Heinz was deploying 32 cents for every dollar in sales in property, plant and equipment (PP&E) assets on its balance sheet, using it to make everything from Velveeta to Mac & Cheese to Miracle Whip. Last year, that number rose to 41 cents, a gigantic jump of 32%. Kraft spent heavily to revitalize decades-old plants churning out those venerable brands.

Management has also disclosed that business suffered from shipment delays, necessitating big expenditures to upgrade its supply chain and warehouse network. “But Kraft failed to recoup all of that investment by being able to lower costs and hence improve margins,” says Stewart. The upshot is that It’s now deploying capital a lot less efficiently than a few years ago. Today, it’s garnering $2.50 in sales for every dollar invested in PP&E, down from $3.50 in 2015.

A $20 billion shortfall

The ultimate measure of how richly a company rewards investors, or how badly it penalizes them, is Market Value-Added (MVA), an EVA offshoot that measures the spread between the equity investors have put into the business, and its current market value. “It’s money in versus value out,” says Stewart. “MVA tells you how much wealth is created over and above what shareholder put into the company.”

By the middle of 2016, when Wall Street was touting the genius of 3G, Kraft Heinz was trading at market value premium to its book capital on the order of $50 billion, representing the cumulative of wealth created for shareholders. Now, the company’s MVA is far in the red at a negative $20 billion, due to the big drop in the stock price, as well as investments that haven’t paid off. It’s the swoon in EVA, the relentless fall in profits after subtracting the charge for capital, that accounts for the collapse in MVA. No surprise that Kraft Heinz has destroyed more shareholder value than any other packaged goods company over that time frame.

3G had good ideas for cutting, but not for growing. And if you can’t grow in old-line packaged goods, you end up spending more just to keep from falling further behind.