An organization with one buyer price 30% of income and an organization with the identical income unfold throughout 200 prospects aren’t, to a lender or an acquirer, the identical enterprise — even when each different line on the revenue assertion matches. The market has already labored out how a lot that distinction is price. Most boards by no means ask.
Buyer focus is without doubt one of the most closely studied threat elements in company finance. The discovering holds up wherever it’s examined: a provider that relies on a small variety of main prospects pays extra for capital than one which doesn’t. Dhaliwal, Judd, Serfling and Shaikh ran the numbers on a big pattern of US suppliers and located that focus raises the price of fairness — sharper nonetheless for suppliers prone to lose a serious buyer, or badly uncovered in the event that they do (Journal of Accounting & Economics, 2016). The debt facet tells the identical story. A newer examine discovered concentrated-customer companies carry increased cash-flow volatility, modify their leverage extra slowly, and get held to an actual valuation low cost by traders who’ve already priced the danger in (Rehman, Liu, Wu and Li, Accounting & Finance, 2023).
None of that is unique. It’s the market doing what markets do — pricing a threat, whether or not or not the corporate itself has bothered to quantify it. A board that has by no means calculated its personal top-five buyer focus isn’t avoiding the quantity. It’s simply letting another person calculate it first. Normally a lender’s credit score committee, or a purchaser’s diligence workforce, on the actual level the place the quantity is hardest to enhance and costliest to be shocked by.
