First see dilution. Recap: dilution is bad. If you have a nice glass of lemonade and put a bunch of ice in it, eventually the lemonade will start to get watery...a.k.a. diluted. (Science!) If you own 50% of the shares of a company with 1 million shares outstanding and the company issues 1 million more shares, you'll own only 25% of the company. (Finance!)

Consider dilution from the eyes of an entrepreneur: the eventual goal in any company is to create wealth for shareholders. In the beginning, the founder owns all of the "wealth" or at least the shares in the company. Over time, that founder gives away pieces of the company in the form of shares to investors (in exchange for money). The problem is that the more shares the founder hands over, the less of her own company she owns.

An anti-dilutive act is anything the founder does to stop this problem. For example, she might buy back some of her own shares. Example: Some companies are anti-dilutive from the start, especially if they don't need a ton of money to get started. Yahoo! required only a little over $1 million of total capital until it reached break even. It chose to take on more capital because it believed that the dilution was worth the incremental capital raised so that it could take advantage of market opportunities. eBay was about the same.

The great fortunes of the Internet era were made in part because the founders suffered so little dilution that, at the end, they had tens of billions of dollars of wealth via their large percentage ownership stakes in the companies they founded.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are accretive v dilutive v...18 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what are at creative dilutive and neutral

00:07

acquisitions All right people Well it's all about the multiples

00:12

you work for boring co dot com You make stationery

00:16

roller coasters for the faint of heart And you grow

00:19

revenues at about ten percent a year All right well

00:21

your stock trades at about twelve times earnings and you

00:23

really want to buy your would be competitors Let's bounce

00:27

dot com which makes concrete bounce houses Yeah they're made

00:31

in russia What do you expect Unfortunately let's bounce has

00:34

been growing revenues at about fifteen percent but because they

00:37

make such a much more exciting than you do product

00:41

people are really into inflicting pain on themselves these days

00:45

Well they trade at thirty times earnings thirty years Fifteen

00:48

they're thirty they're willing to be bought but they'll want

00:51

thirty six times earnings for the privilege That is a

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twenty percent premium toe where they trade today And they

00:57

only want stock no cash you know because the primary

01:01

shareholders would all suffer a huge tax bill if they

01:04

took cash so they'll only take stock Yours All right

01:08

So this is a conundrum You traded a low multiple

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Twelve times your shareholders own you because you are a

01:15

quote value story unquote meaning that your cheap but you

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are a low risk company Now if you try to

01:23

buy a growth company and pay a high multiple for

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it well you risk alienating your shareholder base and that's

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bad like they'll sue you in elected Different forces will

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do different things but if you do buy let's bounce

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while the combination would be really powerful birthday parties everywhere

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would be a thrill a minute or something like that

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Well the problem is that a twelve times earnings company

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paying thirty six times earnings to acquire a competitors is

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dilutive to that twelve times earnings company That is the

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combined company If each piece were equal and they just

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merged as equals a mow their m o ya that's

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what they're called Well they would not have one Half

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of the combined company is being valued at twelve times

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earnings when it was a standalone company and then another

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piece valued at thirty times as a stand alone but

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combined at a price of thirty six times that's twelve

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plus thirty six or forty eighth and divided by two

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Companies combining here so the new company should the stock

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price is all remain flat at the proposed acquisition or

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merger Price set would be trading at twenty four times

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earnings and we're talking really slow so you could follow

02:34

the map All right well the combination of born cohen

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let's bounce would have been diluted to boring co because

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it's multiple of twelve would've been diluted down via the

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high multiple paid for let's bounds and the combination would

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have been act creative too Let's bounce because now they're

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stock will traded around twenty four times earnings instead of

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thirty times earnings Right obviously had both companies traded the

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same multiple of earnings when they combined Well there'd be

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no dilution or at creation for either side and the

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merger would simply be called neutral sort of like someone's

03:05

reaction to a roller coaster that neither rolls nor coasts

03:09

Yeah it's sort of like doing these videos are just

03:12

just keeping it real enough No we love doing good 00:03:14.905 --> [endTime] bye

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