OB

New business dominates discussion during this week's board of aldermen meeting in Osage Beach. Among topics identified on the agenda include: two ordinances ...

Even the best stock pickers will make plenty of bad investments. Anyone who held Airthings ASA ( OB:AIRX ) over the...

Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com. While Airthings shareholders are down 66% for the year, the market itself is up 0.2%. It's good to see that there was some significant insider buying in the last three months. While the aim is to do better than that, it's worth recalling that even great long-term investments sometimes underperform for a year or more. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. Unfortunately it seems investors wanted more, because the share price is down 66% in that time. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. The last week also saw the share price slip down another 12%. The share price has slid 66% in that time. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually expect strong revenue growth.

Generally speaking, debt only becomes a real problem when a company can't easily pay it off, either by raising capital or with its own cash flow. In the worst ...

Veidekke may have net cash on the balance sheet, but it is still interesting to look at how well the business converts its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, because that will influence both its need for, and its capacity to manage debt. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com. That sort of strong cash conversion gets us as excited as the crowd when the beat drops at a Daft Punk concert. But the other side of the story is that Veidekke saw its EBIT decline by 7.4% over the last year. The cherry on top was that in converted 124% of that EBIT to free cash flow, bringing in kr832m. You can click the graphic below for the historical numbers, but it shows that Veidekke had kr383.0m of debt in June 2022, down from kr855.0m, one year before. While it does have liabilities worth noting, Veidekke also has more cash than debt, so we're pretty confident it can manage its debt safely. However, a more common (but still painful) scenario is that it has to raise new equity capital at a low price, thus permanently diluting shareholders. But the more important question is: how much risk is that debt creating? In the worst case scenario, a company can go bankrupt if it cannot pay its creditors. We note that Veidekke ASA (