Is Allegro.eu (WSE:ALE) A Risky Investment?
Legendary fund manager Li Lu (who Charlie Munger backed) once said, 'The biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital.' It's only natural to consider a company's balance sheet when you examine how risky it is, since debt is often involved when a business collapses. Importantly, Allegro.eu S.A. (WSE:ALE) does carry debt. But the more important question is: how much risk is that debt creating?
Why Does Debt Bring Risk?
Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. 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. Of course, the upside of debt is that it often represents cheap capital, especially when it replaces dilution in a company with the ability to reinvest at high rates of return. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together.
How Much Debt Does Allegro.eu Carry?
The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at June 2025 Allegro.eu had debt of zł6.40b, up from zł6.08b in one year. However, it does have zł4.59b in cash offsetting this, leading to net debt of about zł1.81b.
How Strong Is Allegro.eu's Balance Sheet?
Zooming in on the latest balance sheet data, we can see that Allegro.eu had liabilities of zł2.76b due within 12 months and liabilities of zł6.84b due beyond that. Offsetting these obligations, it had cash of zł4.59b as well as receivables valued at zł1.14b due within 12 months. So its liabilities outweigh the sum of its cash and (near-term) receivables by zł3.88b.
Given Allegro.eu has a market capitalization of zł31.2b, it's hard to believe these liabilities pose much threat. But there are sufficient liabilities that we would certainly recommend shareholders continue to monitor the balance sheet, going forward.
View our latest analysis for Allegro.eu
We use two main ratios to inform us about debt levels relative to earnings. The first is net debt divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), while the second is how many times its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) covers its interest expense (or its interest cover, for short). Thus we consider debt relative to earnings both with and without depreciation and amortization expenses.
Looking at its net debt to EBITDA of 0.73 and interest cover of 5.9 times, it seems to us that Allegro.eu is probably using debt in a pretty reasonable way. So we'd recommend keeping a close eye on the impact financing costs are having on the business. If Allegro.eu can keep growing EBIT at last year's rate of 14% over the last year, then it will find its debt load easier to manage. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Allegro.eu's ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting.
But our final consideration is also important, because a company cannot pay debt with paper profits; it needs cold hard cash. So we always check how much of that EBIT is translated into free cash flow. Happily for any shareholders, Allegro.eu actually produced more free cash flow than EBIT over the last three years. That sort of strong cash conversion gets us as excited as the crowd when the beat drops at a Daft Punk concert.
Our View
Happily, Allegro.eu's impressive conversion of EBIT to free cash flow implies it has the upper hand on its debt. And the good news does not stop there, as its net debt to EBITDA also supports that impression! Looking at the bigger picture, we think Allegro.eu's use of debt seems quite reasonable and we're not concerned about it. After all, sensible leverage can boost returns on equity. Over time, share prices tend to follow earnings per share, so if you're interested in Allegro.eu, you may well want to click here to check an interactive graph of its earnings per share history.
If, after all that, you're more interested in a fast growing company with a rock-solid balance sheet, then check out our list of net cash growth stocks without delay.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.