Prophetic words that apply to every business and simplifies the importance of profit.

Profit Margin is calculated as “Net Profit” divided by “Gross Revenue.” Essentially this calculation tells you how much of every dollar earned in gross revenue is actually profit. The smaller the profit margin, the less you keep.

It goes back over 10 years now to when I was a bank branch manager in a rural community. A client was trying to purchase a lake cottage and was upset with us that we weren’t clamoring to provide them with a mortgage. They worked very hard in their business that provided a service to the oilfield, and had expanded it several times by adding more trucks and employees. In one of their rants on me for not giving them what they wanted (it was more like “demanded” at this juncture) one of the partners (a married couple) said, “What does it take? We made a million dollars last year!” True, their top line revenue was exceeding $1,000,000 in the previous fiscal year; however, their net income – the profit – was just over $15,000. Even adding depreciation and interest back into the calculation (to arrive at EBITDA) there was no way they could service the mortgage they were requesting. Their profit margin was (in a simplified example) 0.015%, which meant that for every $1.00 in revenue they generated, they were retaining $0.015 in profits (1.5 cents profit for every dollar in revenue…hardly sustainable in a cyclical industry.)

What I Don’t Like About Profit Margin

1. There are many variations on the calculation:

• gross profit margin
• operating margin
• pretax profit margin
• net margin…just to name a few. Each of these is measured slightly differently and has different meaning in different circumstances. If there isn’t sufficient care in assuring accurate nomenclature, things can get confusing.

2. The calculation, on face value, includes the non-cash depreciation expense (a tax figure) that often does not accurately portray the true market depreciation of an asset.

What I Do Like About Profit Margin

When calculated consistently over time, the trend will open up investigation and discussion on variances year over year (YoY) so that corrections can be made if necessary. I also like that it can be an internal benchmark, your own personal KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to which you could measure actual profit margin results against an ideal profit margin target that would fuel your business goals and growth aspirations.

Plan for Prosperity

What is a sufficient profit margin in your business? It is often relative to the industry in which you operate. If you have no idea, a good person to ask is your banker.

After spending virtually all of my professional career working on the financial and business aspects of agricultural production, I can confidently say that western Canadian grain farms need to target a 20% profit margin to sustain their businesses through the volatile cycles that affect the industry. “Target” because some years will blow right by 20%, other years will be low single digits (or negative numbers.) This truly is one space where bigger IS better!

Where has your profit margin measured out over the last 3-5 years? Which way is it trending? Why? If you don’t know the answers, or haven’t asked the questions, there is no time like right now to dig in.

If your business isn’t recession proof, here are a few tips to help you mitigate the effects of a recession and survive the downturn…maybe even thrive during it.

Bullet Proof Your Balance Sheet 

A strong balance sheet is your best weapon in fighting the effects of a recession. This also means keeping balance in the balance sheet, specifically top vs bottom, not just (left side and right side) assets vs liabilities. Top vs bottom means focusing on current assets and current liabilities (I.E. your working capital -the top half of the balance sheet), and not just accumulating assets and equity (the bottom half of the balance sheet.) Too often, I’ve seen businesses punish their working capital in a race to retire long term debt. While creating that equity by reducing debt is great, if it costs you your strength in working capital, it isn’t making your balance sheet bullet proof. Bullet proof is strong equity AND abundant working capital.

“Bullet proof your balance sheet during the good times, so you can catapult ahead of your competitors during the bad times.
If you get greedy during the good times, you’ll likely be on your knees in the bad times.”
– Moe Russell

Trim the Fat

Where in your business have things gotten a little complacent? Where is your business over-equipped? What can be identified in your business as “nice to have” instead of “need to have”?
When business is good it becomes easy to let things slide, to acquire equipment that helps things along but isn’t necessary overall, to treat oneself in ways that weren’t affordable before. It’s human nature, it happens, but it’s not sustainable in business that faces recession.

It is the business owner’s/manager’s obligation to scrutinize assets and processes for opportunities to get lean. And getting lean BEFORE the recession, before the business is forced to make reductions, is far easier than when the situation has become dire.

Is making a change to diet and exercise easier and more beneficial before a heart attack (I.E. prevention) or after (I.E. recovery)?

Be Responsive

We’ve all heard it before, and have probably said it a time or two ourselves: things will get better, they’ll turn around, just give it time.

Famous last words?

No one can accurately and consistently predict how long the market cycles will last. Many think they can, but they can’t. So if your business generates results that do not meet expectations, doing nothing about it is sure to repeat the same results. How long can your business not meet expectations during a recession? If we knew how long the recession would last, we could answer that question confidently, but we already acknowledged our inability to prognosticate market cycle duration. The solution then becomes, “do something about it.”

If revenue was below target, find out why.
If profit missed expectations, find out why.
If your best employees have resigned unexpectedly, find out why.
Waiting for divine intervention to “turn things around” is rarely a successful plan.

Plan for Prosperity

The advice above does not only apply to preparing for an economic or market recession; it applies to big picture planning in your business as well. Because it doesn’t take macroeconomic factors to have an impact on your business, putting these actions in play anytime will prepare you and your business for the unforeseen hazards that can throw your best laid plans into the ditch.

If you want to “Be Better™” is starts with “being ready.”

The Asset Turnover Ratio is one of my favorite metrics, especially when working with farm businesses. Despite what one may infer by the name, this ratio is not a promotion of turning over assets any faster than they already are. Quick turnover of assets is a major contributor to profitability challenges and cash flow challenges in the farm space.

In brief, the Asset Turnover Ratio is a measurement of how efficiently a business uses its assets to generate revenue. The calculation indicates how many dollars in revenue are generated by each dollar invested in assets. Higher is better.

The classic (textbook) version of the calculation is “Total Revenue” divided by “Average Total Assets.” So if your business generates $2.5million in revenue with $1million in average total assets, then your Asset Turnover Ration (ATR) is 2.5:1.0 (or for simplicity, just 2.5).

Here’s what I don’t like about Asset Turnover Ratio:

• It uses “average” total assets. I have never liked using average; I feel “average” is way to make substandard performance look acceptable.
  But more to this case specifically, how do we “average” the total assets in your business? If you just take the total at the beginning and the end of the year and average those two figures, you will get an “average,” but how accurate is it? Should we be measuring assets each month and average 12 measurements? What about assets that are acquired then disposed of very quickly between measurement strike dates? I’m not a fan of average.
• There is no clarity between which value to use when measuring assets (I.E. market value or book value)
• The calculation does not, by definition, include leased assets (leasing has become quite popular.)
• To be truly meaningful we must recognize that each industry has different Asset Turnover Ratios that are considered acceptable; sometimes the differences exist even within a similar space. Consider retailing: online retailers would have significantly lower investment in assets than retailers with brick & mortar store fronts. Online retailers would have significantly stronger ATR accordingly.

Once we clarify how we will approach the Asset Turnover Ratio, and maintain consistency in that approach so as to accurately trend your ATR metric over time, the ATR becomes a strong indicator of your business’ efficiency.

1. Determine how you will value your assets:
   – when will you measure the asset values (frequency, date(s), etc.)
   – eliminate confusion and ambiguity…do two calculations, 1 with market value of assets, and 1 with book value
   – do not exclude assets under a capital lease, it will provide a false positive. Assets under a true “operating lease” can be excluded.
2. Understand how your ATR applies to your industry. If there is a deviation in your results versus industry, is it stronger or weaker; what is causing it?

What I like about Asset Turnover Ratio:

• it creates a stark illustration of how well a business utilizes its assets (which is a MAJOR draw on capital)
• it is a key driver of ROA (Return on Assets – a KEY profitability ratio) and OPM (Operating Profit Margin – a KEY efficiency ratio) both of which need to be monitored closely
• it shows the DOWNSIDE of asset accumulation (which, in the farm space, is a difficult conversation.)

Trending performed over many years by advisors with experience durations that are multiples of my own suggest that grain farms and cow/calf operations have ATR in the range of 0.33 to 0.17. Feedlots and dairies typically range from 1.0 to 0.5. User beware: these measurements are using the classical textbook definition.

Plan for Prosperity

As with any financial ratio, evaluating only one ratio does not tell the whole story. As with any financial analysis, how the numbers are quantified will have a profound effect on the results. This is not permission to ignore these important financial indicators, but more so a call to action to understand how each one affects your business so that you can make the informed decisions that will lead to profitable growth.

Not understanding the factors that affect your business is no excuse to ignore them…especially when they are within your control.

When considering what your business provides, whether it be products or services (or both), what types of elasticity affect the demand for your offerings?

The most common type of elasticity is price. How does a change in the price of your product or service affect demand?
Another type is supply. How does a change in supply affect demand for your product or service?
Another type is customer income. How does change to your customers’ income affect demand for your product or service?

One factor that contributes to elasticity of your product or service is the availability of a substitute product or service. Who are your competitors? What makes you different from them? Are they local? Do they operate online? Etc.

A business that had exclusive distribution rights on a high quality brand name product felt that its business was immune from price elasticity. While not over-charging, they did become complacent in their marketplace because they believed that their competition provided inferior products. When competition arrived in their marketplace which their customers felt was better value (price vs quality), the business suffered.  At this point, they were forced to react to their market’s pressures. Reactive is never as good in business as proactive.
(How many specific examples can you think of that are aptly described by this generic story?)

If you have experience recent changes in the demand for your product or service, one of the many factors to consider is elasticity (customer service and product/service quality are the foremost factors to understand in this realm.) However, this will be very difficult to quantify without sufficient business record keeping and information.

Plan for Prosperity

There are many factors that affect your marketplace and your position in it. This becomes even more complicated in the current age of technology. How are you planning to stay relevant? Or better yet, how are you planning to innovate, to lead the market and not just keep up with it?

Understanding the elasticity of your product or service is an important piece of knowledge that accentuates your ability to position your business in your marketplace. It will give you more power to prepare for how those multiple factors (such as price, supply, and customer income) will affect your business.

Elasticity is not a perfect function, nor is it the only measurement you should employ. There are anomalies: I think it is sad, and a little dangerous, that new electronic devices (like smart phones) and consumer debt appear to be inelastic, yet should be highly elastic.

“If you benchmark yourself against the average you’ll be out of business in 5 years.”

Dr. David Kohl

What Dr. Kohl is referring to is that “average” is not success. As one client said this past week, “Average is the best of the worst, or the worst of the best; either way it’s not where we want to be.”

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of using averages when analyzing business performance. The sample pool will skew the calculation up or down; extenuating circumstances create anomalies in year-over-year business results; the list could go on. In my opinion, average is a useful tool to make yourself feel better about where you’re at. I prefer to make clients uncomfortable about where they’re at so that they are motivated to “Be Better™”.

Here’s someone we all know about who is never not trying to be better: Warren Buffett. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting the Oracle of Omaha is without flaw or that he is somehow worthy of unwavering praise, but it cannot be denied that his approach to building wealth has enjoyed success beyond most of our wildest dreams. Recent articles in the Financial Post indicate that Berkshire Hathaway is currently sitting on about $116 Billion in cash and other short term investments. This cash is sitting idle for the purposes of making acquisitions, but Buffett has admitted that he’s struggled to find acquisitions at sensible prices. Also, the article states that Buffett is unwilling to load up on debt to finance deals at current prices.

“We will stick with our simple guideline: The less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own,”

Warren Buffett.

It has been written in this series of commentaries that during the elongated commodity super-cycle which ran from about 2007 to 2015 we could find many “average” businesses who appeared to be “excellent”. The appearance of excellence was fed by strong yields and high commodity prices. To translate: everybody was making money, even the worst managers and the high cost operators. To paraphrase Dr. Kohl: when the bottom 20% of producers become profitable, we’re in trouble! It didn’t take much prudence to be profitable during the boom; how did you compare during the boom? How do you compare now?

So when considering who you want to mirror, is it one who has been racking up debt balls-out on the expansion train or one who has been quietly amassing a war-chest of financial strength that can be deployed when the right opportunity presents? Is it one who operates with reckless abandon, or strategic execution? Is it someone who is average, or is it the cream of the crop?

Plan for Prosperity

Benchmarking data is hard to come by; not everyone is willing to share the details of their successes or failures. So to start, benchmark against yourself. How did your most recent year stack up against your best year ever? How do your 2018 expense projections compare to your 2003 expenses? What has been the 10 year trend of your working capital, EBITDA, net profit, total debt, and total equity? Is it something you’d be proud to share? Let me know; I’d love to hear from you on what you learned from this exercise.

Passive aggressive.

Proactive or reactive?

Okay, passive aggressive doesn’t REALLY apply…or does it?

A recent conversation with a banker had him using terms & phrases such as:

• they have no idea what they owe, to whom, or what their payments are;
• they leave out information in what they send to us;
• after a year of battling over their lack of cash management, the bank is viewing their risk profile as ‘high.’
• the promised to put together a plan months ago, but it seems there was always ‘something more important’ to do. Now that the bank is downgrading them, they’re in a hurry to get the plan in place.

The borrowers that this banker was speaking of have consistently displayed a behavior that is reactive. They:

• only provide info to their lender when threatened;
• do not follow the terms set out in their borrowing agreement;
• only got serious about making a plan when the bank indicated that their credit risk profile was being downgraded.

Situations like this are, sadly, not uncommon. All too often, financial professionals see impending challenges and offer advice that is pertinent based on their experience. Whether the advice is heeded or ignored is out of our control.

What can be done? At risk of sounding like a broken record…

1. Preserve cash by building strong working capital;
2. Do not acquire capital assets with working capital…borrowing is still incredibly cheap!
3. Drive down overhead costs so you can produce at the lowest Unit Cost of Production.

The challenge, of course, is now during a period of low commodity prices, how does one go about preserving cash to build working capital. A pessimist might say “that ship has sailed” with the end of the commodity boom. Notwithstanding any significant production issues somewhere on the globe, this may be true. And to bring it back around to the open of this commentary, proactive or reactive, it seems that by and large farms are reacting to the profitability challenges and positive cash flow challenges of the day. Proactive would have acknowledged that the good times were cyclical and would not last forever…

Plan for Prosperity

PUSH yields. In commodity production you need the bushels, but focus on optimum yield for profitability, not maximum yield for coffeeshop bragging rights!

PULL efficiency. You need to do more with less in low margin environments.

PUSH costs down. The lowest Unit Cost of Production (UnitCOP) wins. Period.

PULL management effectiveness to new heights. During times of questionable profitability, it is management that will rise to the top.

Below are three of Godin’s version of “valuable lessons about human behavior” (as excerpted from his blog being referenced above) with my insight in how it applies to family business.

1. The project is now. Investing in long term strategy or knowledge/practice improvement takes time, the results are aren’t always obvious from a quick glance, and usually requires some “not fun” work for the owner/manager. Whereas, that new pickup truck out front or that bigger tractor in the field has immediate impact to our image and our ego. One is tangible (you can see it, smell it, percolate in the feeling you have when driving it) and one is not (no one can see it immediately, or touch it ever…)
2. The project is specific. We have been conditioned to believe that our businesses must get bigger to survive. This is not absolute. Yes, our businesses (and ourselves) must always grow (and grow all ways) but don’t let yourself get pigeon-holed into the thinking that growth is only “size and scale.”
   Analyzing the opportunity to increase in size is fun (and easy if you limit your parameters) because it’s usually done to justify the desire (IE. we can lower our fixed costs per acre.) Whereas, the work required to analyze the opportunity to “Be Better™” is less intriguing, often subjective, and less sexy. 
3. The end is in sight. It is easier to sell ourselves on something where we can see the final result. A building, an upgraded fleet, new computers…versus…creating a culture, implementing systems, strategizing cash flow. 

Godin’s final thought: “For me, the biggest takeaway is to realize that in the face of human emotions and energy, a loose-leaf binder from an economist has no chance. If you want to get something done, you can learn a lot (from) the power of the stadium builders. They win a lot.”

To paraphrase, we get caught up in what some people call “shiny object syndrome.” Our decision to chase that which is new and appealing versus what is boring but meaningful is what contributes to results that are less than what they could potentially be.

Plan for Prosperity

As an advisor to business owners and managers, it is my job to draw out the desired results my clients want for their business. While everyone says they want stronger cash flow and improved profitability, behavior often indicates otherwise (Ref. shiny object syndrome.) When actions deviate from what are declared desired outcomes, then we shouldn’t be surprised when actual outcomes deviate from what was desired.

Last week at a presentation I was giving, a woman in the crowd tearfully shared that her farm profitability was not as high as it could be, but the fact that her teenage children could live and work on a farm to develop life skills and work ethic was something she felt was more valuable. This is an example of how different each business owner views success, and will therefore determine what is a desired outcome. Understanding what is most important for you and your family in business is most often discovered when working on…

(wait for it…)

…A PLAN!

And the (projected) data looks bleak.

With only four crops expecting a net profit to exceed $50 per acre by any respectable amount, the profitable options for 2018 are few and far between. No wonder the common sentiment this winter is “I don’t know what to grow this year; doesn’t look like anything will make a profit.”

Considering the four crops in the Rayglen projection that are close to abundantly profitable are 1 variety of chickpeas and 3 varieties of mustard, it’s pretty clear that your geography becomes part of your challenge. Yes, wheat, barley, flax and canola are also projected to be positive, but are any of them sufficient based on the risk and/or your personal circumstances on your farm?

Here are some questions that I feel must be asked:

1. Is crop rotation holding you back from loading up on what few profitable options are available?
   I recently heard a lender suggest that those who blow up their crop plan to chase the perceived winner, by his account, usually miss out.
   This can be often true because of the long cash conversion cycle in production agriculture. Farmers bet on a crop plan that they expect will make them money, but a lot can happen between February and harvest…the market giveth and the market taketh away! If there is one thing Western Canadian grain farmers can do, it’s produce! We can overproduce a commodity in as little as one crop cycle, and as such in July or August drive down what was a winning price back in February!
   The lender referenced above went on to say that sticking to your proven crop plan is the way to hit a winner most years, maybe even multiple winners!
2. Is $50 per acre or even $75 per acre net profit realistic, or even sufficient?
   How much was expected yield and/or price “padded” in that projection? How much were total costs “softened”? Were there 4-6 applications of fungicide built in to those chickpea projections?
   Generalist type of prognostications like this one need to be taken with more than just a grain of salt. Do the “variable” and “total” expenses displayed reflect your farm? What is included in each category? Are they including all expenses, including the PAPERCLIPS? There is much ambiguity in figures like these.
3. Do whole farm expenses reflect the capability of the crop plan, or is the crop plan now expected to meet the ever-increasing farm expenses?
   Recently, I’ve overheard a couple of pundits suggest that whole farm expenses are now nearing $400 per acre. If true, that relegates many crop plans into the underworld of “operating loss.” I’ve gone on record several times suggesting that the elongated commodity boom recently ended has allowed many bad habits to form at the farmgate. The habits in question surround the insatiable appetite for newer/bigger farm equipment, larger land base, and higher living standards. It wasn’t long ago that top tier farmers kept their operating costs (described by some as labor, power, & equipment) in the range of $90-$100/ac, and these pundits now suggest that the best of the best are in the $140-$150/ac range. That $50/ac increase in what is the most controllable facet of farm expenses clearly has shaken the profitability potential to its core on many farms. And that only applies to those whose operating costs have increased by ONLY $50…

Plan for Prosperity

The recipe for profitability is simple:

• Have a plan (how/why/what you do);
• Run lean;
• Know your numbers & market to your numbers;
• Maintain discipline.

Of course, if it was as simple to do as it is to describe, everyone would simply do it. Also, did you notice that nowhere was there anything in that recipe about production or farm size? In the commodity business, the winner is the one who produces at the lowest cost per unit of production; the best way to achieve that is to have a plan and maintain discipline to it, get lean and stay that way, and finally market your production to your numbers (not to your emotion.) If you’re have challenges with any of the four ingredients in that recipe, why haven’t you picked up the phone and called for help already?

Things aren’t all roses in agriculture lately. Sure there are some who are doing quite well, and of course the recent drought gets the credit for any 2017 results that were sub-par, but what about those who still did okay during the drought? What about those who are still sub-par when everything is firing on all cylinders?

A recent article on DTN titled Skating on Thin Ice summarizes the message of Dr. David Kohl, renowned ag economist, at the National Agricultural Bankers Conference earlier this month. Dr. Kohl has been advising ag bankers for over 40 years. He’s got some chops.

His prediction (in summary): there will be clear winners and losers, the losers being the bottom 30% of all producers.

What makes the bottom 30%? They barely make a profit, have burnt through most (or all) of their working capital, and are beginning to burn through their equity. Dr. Kohl suggests that a farm in this position consider exiting before all equity is gone.

It was back in 2016, over a year ago now, that rumblings were coming out of the US Mid-West about farm lenders tightening up on credit approval criteria. I tweeted the following:

Dear #westcdnag
Does anyone think this can't happen here? https://t.co/LFYEMg1Cb0

— Kim Gerencser (@KimGerencser) September 15, 2016

We’ve already seen an increase in interest rates from the Bank of Canada, and we are to expect more according to messages from our federal government. But do not think that your interest rate can only be changed by the BofC. Lenders set interest rates according to how your business is risk-rated. If you’ve already burnt through your working capital and have moved on to burning equity, you are considered to be high risk and will be charged interest accordingly.

Land value appreciation has propped up many farms that have a history of poor operating profits.

Remember when we talked about how the commodity super cycle (2007-2013) allowed below-average management skills to generate above-average results? (Ref. Vol.3 /No.44 Happy Halloween) Even those producers who were not able to produce a profit from operations could still show that equity levels were increasing because their land was appreciating. This created a false sense of security, and a false sense of accomplishment.

Notwithstanding what is going on in US ag lending, the landscape in Canadian ag lending can change.  The bank’s desire to support businesses that cannot generate profit from operations is limited. Are you on the radar?

To Plan for Prosperity

Allowing your relationship with your lenders to be anchored by land value appreciation only, and not profit from operations, could make you a subject for a change to your borrowing terms. How would your business be affected if your interest rates increased by 1%, or if your credit limits were reduced by one-third? If your current lender views you as high risk, other lenders will too…

In this age of hyper-political-correctness, to hear of some schools that are “cancelling” Halloween because of the risk that some costumes might “offend” or “scare” someone is taking us down a path that we may not be able to come back from. I’m not a proponent of Halloween, but I’ll gladly encourage anyone who wants to take part in it to do so, and anyone who doesn’t can also do so. What we need to remember is why we do it, even if we don’t love it…IT’S FOR THE KIDS!
It’s THEIR imagination and THEIR excitement that must not be squelched just to satisfy our guilt over ________ (fill in the blank).

Thank you; now onto the real business at hand.

Getting dressed up in a costume creates an outlet for us to be something we’re not, or maybe something we wish we could be. (As a kid, I wanted to be a pro-football player and might have dressed up as such for Halloween.)

Over the last several years in western Canadian agriculture, “average management” has been dressed up in a costume of “excellence.” With high yields and high commodity prices, even average managers were more profitable than they had been in the long term…maybe ever.

Dr. David Kohl uses the term “black swan” to describe the recent commodity super-cycle because, like a black swan, it is “not the norm.”

A black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict;

Source: www.investopedia.com

While we might be inclined to associate black swan occurrences with negative deviations from normal, in the case of the last 10 years in agriculture, we’ve experienced a positive deviation from normal. The danger came when many participants in the industry believed that what was happening wasn’t actually a black swan but “the new normal.” Many long term decisions were made based on short term results. True to the black swan definition, the onset of the commodity super-cycle was predicted by very few, and even fewer still predicted it would last as long as it did. Maybe it was the fact that it did last longer than a year or two is why people started to believe it would never end…?

The unpredictability of this black swan continues to cause angst among players in the industry. Some are soldiering forward as they have for the last several years with full expectation that the black swan will return. Others are are in full damage control mode, or even panic mode. Others yet are patiently waiting for the opportunity that always follows the economic cycles.

Market cycles will hurt some, but offer opportunity to others.
The difference between who suffers and who prospers is…Who’s Ready.

– Kim Gerencser

I started making that statement way back in late 2012. The message then was to take advantage of the current up-cycle to solidify your business in preparation for the upcoming down-cycle (because bulls are always followed by bears, which are followed by bulls…it is how cycles work.) Being greedy during an up-cycle brings up another old adage, “Pigs get slaughtered.”

To Plan for Prosperity

When preparing your 2018 projections, compare your projected expenses to your worst revenue in the last 10 years. Is there a negative gap? How big is it? What needs to be done to cover it? Alternatively, is there a positive gap? How big is it? What needs to be done to protect it, or even to leverage it so as to make it wider?

The exercise proposed above is comparable to removing a Halloween costume. While things look one way outwardly, what is actually happening underneath, at the surface, can sometimes be much different and will tell the true story.

Happy Halloween!

PS. Don’t wear your Halloween costume to your banker meeting.