Using The Altman Z-Score to Calculate the Risk of a Company Going Bankrupt

The Altman Z-Score is a model developed in 1968 by NYU Finance professor Edward Altman to predict the likelihood of a company going bankrupt within the next two years. According to Investopedia,

[R]eal world application of the Z-Score successfully predicted 72% of corporate bankruptcies two years prior to these companies filing for Chapter 7"

In creating the Z-Score model, Professor Altman studied an initial sample of 66 firms, half of which had gone bankrupt, and looked for the balance sheet and income statement ratios that had the most predictive value. Dr. Altman settled on these five ratios¹:

T₁ = Working Capital / Total Assets
T₂ = Retained Earnings / Total Assets
T₃ = Earnings Before Interest and Taxes / Total Assets
T₄ = Market Value of Equity / Total Liabilities
T₅ = Sales/ Total Assets

He then assigned weightings to them based on their predictive values to create his model:

Z Score Bankruptcy Model:

Z = 1.2T₁ + 1.4T₂ + 3.3T₃ + .6T₄ + .999T₅

Based on this model, a Z-score below 1.8 means bankruptcy is likely within two years; a Z-score between 1.8 and 2.99 is a gray area; and a Z-score above 2.99 means there is little likelihood of bankruptcy within the next two years.

There are several free Altman Z-Score calculators available online to facilitate the use of the model. There is also a fully-automated Altman Z-Score calculator (where you just need to enter a company's symbol and the calculator does the rest) at Shortscreen.com. I used the one at Ironwood Advisory's website to calculate an Altman Z-Score for Alloy Steel International (OTC BB: AYSI.OB). The calculator gave a Z-score of 4.89, and included this commentary:

Your Z score is in the high range. This company is in good financial health and is predicted to remain solvent for the next two years. Smaller firms should note that these models are based on data from firms with assets in excess of $1,000,000². If it is believed that asset size affects Z scores, then their use may not be appropriate.

The photo above of Professor Altman comes from the CFA Institute.

¹The components and weightings of Altman's model come from Wikipedia.

²Alloy Steel's total assets are approximately $7,030,000 and its net assets are $4,393,000.

Two New Jersey Plutocrats Join Forces to Oppose Offshore Drilling

Apparently, record-high energy prices haven't had the same effect on Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg as last week's Pew Poll noted they have had on a somewhat more representative sample of Americans. NJ Governor Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs chief, and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, one of the founders of ADP, got together with a couple of their less-affluent political colleagues in the Jersey Shore town of Belmar today to express their opposition to offshore drilling (The Record: "Corzine, others vow to fight offshore drilling").

On The Record's website, a lone commenter, "RamapoGuy" dissents from the Plutocrats' opinion on offshore drilling. After first noting that offshore rigs in the Gulf didn't spill oil even during Hurricane Katrina, he writes,

Alaskans get oil revenue checks each year..why can't we? We listened to the wackos in the 80's who said Nuclear energy would kill us all and now we are looking into Nuclear once more. If we would have ignored them back then, we would be in a better position today. We need to look at the current drilling technologies and start drilling something. We will always need oil so even if the oil is 10 years away, if we start exploring now, we will have it in 10 years. If we do nothing, we will have it never! Start drilling for oil and send a message to OPEC that we are starting to look elsewhere for oil.

Whom do you imagine has a better chance of getting his way on this, RamapoGuy or Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg? This is another reason to be confident in the secular bull market trend in oil continuing for another five years.