I’m obviously exaggerating (slightly) but I’m astonished that anyone takes this analysis seriously. The stock market certainly doesn’t give a shit that your heavily waterboarded numbers say that your deal is a good idea - most buyer share prices tank following deal announcements.
Basically every deal paid for with cash will be accretive (it’s basically impossible to have incremental net interest expense > the boost in pf pretax income) even if you’re overpaying by like 500x and destroying massive amounts of shareholder value.
Once upon a time we amortized the gigantic new goodwill from mergers such that overpaying in cash deals had real consequences for pf earnings. but now we don’t.
we should probably look at economic value added (ie returns from the acquisition minus buyer WACC times purchase price) instead of accretion/dilution.
please tell me why i’m wrong though
