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One 44 Advisory

One 44 advisory

Financial Flexibility

Capital Structure Analysis

To optimise your structure and your use of excess capital, we advise on buybacks, special and common dividends, and debt reduction. Every recommendation accounts for your objectives, risk tolerance, cost of capital, debt capacity and covenants, debt-equity mix, and market conditions.

Request a free consultation

Tell us what you’re working on. We’ll come back with a short written read on what we see and what we’d look at first. No obligation, and no sales sequence.
Consultation Form

The Decisions We Help You Make

Most capital allocation debates stall because nobody has established the numbers everyone is arguing about. These six pieces of work settle those first, then weigh the options against each other on the same terms.

Excess Capital Assessment

How much of your cash is genuinely surplus once the operating plan, committed investment, a sensible buffer and covenant requirements are all provided for. Management teams routinely over-reserve, and the real number tends to surprise.

Buyback Evaluation

Whether repurchasing stock is the right use of surplus capital at your valuation, what size of programme your liquidity can actually absorb, and how the market is likely to read the decision.

Dividend Policy

Special versus common, initiation versus increase, and what each commits you to in the years that follow. A regular dividend brings in a particular kind of holder and is painful to walk back.

Debt Reduction & Capacity

Where you sit against your covenants, how much headroom you genuinely hold, and whether deleveraging is a better use of capital than returning it. Often the least exciting answer and the correct one.

Cost Of Capital Benchmarking

What your funding actually costs you against comparable businesses, and which parts of your debt-equity mix are responsible for any difference.

Scenario Modelling

Each option run against your risk tolerance and a range of market conditions, so the board sees what happens if rates move, conditions tighten or the plan underdelivers.

What You End Up Holding

A recommendation with the working shown, built to survive the questions a board will ask about it.
  • Excess capital calculation, with every assumption stated
  • Cost of capital benchmarked against your comparables
  • Covenant headroom and debt capacity position
  • Side-by-side comparison of buyback, dividend and deleveraging
  • Scenario model covering rate moves and tighter conditions
  • A recommended course of action, with the case against it set out too

Situations That Prompt This Call

Cash Has Built Up And Nobody Has Decided

Not deciding is itself a decision, and it is the one shareholders notice. A stated policy is worth more than a large balance with no explanation attached to it.

You Are Being Pressed To Return Capital

An investor, or several, have raised it directly. You need an independent position before that conversation goes any further.

A Refinancing Or Covenant Test Is Approaching

Conditions have moved since the facility was agreed, and the headroom needs establishing properly rather than estimated.

What clients say

We had been circling the same buyback discussion for three board meetings because nobody could agree on how much cash was actually spare. Getting that one number properly established ended the argument in an afternoon.
Clementine Adeyemi-Rousseau
They argued against the option we had walked in wanting, and set out the case for it anyway so we could judge for ourselves. Our bank would never have done that, because our bank had a fee attached to one of the answers.
Fionnuala Oyelowo-Petrakis
Nobody had connected our leverage to the fact that certain funds could not hold us. Seeing the capital structure question and the investor base question addressed in the same room changed what we prioritised.
Gustav Nwachukwu-Salinas

Leaving Capital Where It Is Counts As A Decision Too

Shareholders read an unexplained balance the same way they read a stated policy: as a choice the board has made. The difference is that one of them you can defend. Let’s work out which choice you are actually making.
Call: 646-373-9104

From Balance Sheet To Board Decision

Five to eight weeks typically, though we routinely compress the work to land ahead of a specific board date.

1

Establish

We fix the numbers everyone is arguing about: surplus capital, covenant headroom, real debt capacity.

2

Benchmark

Your cost of capital and debt-equity mix set against comparable businesses, with the gaps explained.

3

Model

Buyback, dividend and deleveraging run side by side against your risk tolerance and a range of conditions.

4

Recommend

A course of action you can take to the board, presented with the counter-argument rather than without it.

Frequently asked questions

What is capital structure analysis?
It is a structured assessment of how your business is funded and what that mix is costing you. The work examines your debt-equity balance, your cost of capital, your debt capacity and covenant headroom, and how much of your cash is genuinely surplus to the operating plan. The output is a view on whether the current structure is serving your objectives or quietly working against them.
Excess capital is what remains after the operating plan, committed investment, a sensible liquidity buffer and any covenant requirements are fully provided for. The figure is rarely obvious from the balance sheet alone, and management teams frequently over-reserve out of caution. Establishing the number properly is usually the first task in the engagement.
Neither is universally better, and any adviser who answers this without knowing your situation is guessing. Buybacks offer flexibility and no ongoing commitment. Dividends signal confidence and attract income-oriented holders, but an established common dividend is difficult to reduce without consequence. Your shareholder base, valuation, tax position and appetite for commitment all bear on the answer.
Sometimes, and it is frequently the least glamorous and most sensible option. Deleveraging matters most where covenant headroom is thin, where a refinancing is approaching in unfavourable conditions, or where the cost of debt has moved against you. We assess it on the same footing as returning capital rather than treating it as a fallback.
Typically where a one-off surplus has arisen, from a disposal or an unusually strong period, and where the company does not want to establish an ongoing expectation. The appeal is that it returns capital without the forward commitment a common dividend creates. The trade-off is that it does less to attract the long-term income holders a regular dividend can bring in. take no placement fee, so the targets we recommend are the ones the analysis supports.
No. We are not a bank and we take no fee from a buyback, a refinancing or any transaction that follows from our advice. Our advisory fee is identical whichever route you take, which means the recommendation reflects the analysis rather than what would be most profitable for us to recommend.

Is Your Balance Sheet Working Hard Enough?

Tell us roughly where your cash and leverage sit and what the board has been debating. We’ll come back with a view on whether there is a capital allocation decision here worth taking properly.
Request A Structure Review