This might be a mere sensationalist, eye-ball trapping media headline but, given the demonstrated propensity for the highly innovative and supremely competitive Chinese to replicate all manner of goods and services around the globe in very short timeframes, if this came to be true, it would come as no surprise to me.
Nowhere is the business economics adage of "Your margins are my opportunity" more the lived reality than in China.
And CSL sure has a lot of fat and juicy margin that is perceived by others as a opportunity.
Evidently, the share price pressure is due to concerns about tariffs.
Frankly, I lose no sleep about that because there are numerous self-moderating mechanisms that will go a long way to insulating CSL's profitability in a tariff regime.
Instead, my concern as a CSL shareholder is the ever-present existential threat of someone - like the Chinese, for example - inventing better mousetraps.
Therefore, to the extent that the probability of CSL's suite of products becomes obsolete is negligible, and to the extent that tariffs will ultimately have limited impact on CSL's margins, the market's current clutching at pearls represents one of those rare opportunities to double- and treble-down.
I suspect CSL directors, if they are awake, would have Share Buyback as an item on the current Board Minutes Agenda.
With Net Debt-to-EBIT approaching 2.0x (down from 2.9x in 2023 after the ill-considered Vifor acquisition), that's not too far from the level it was when the company was last buying back it's stock (in 2017). And the P/E multiple at the time was in the mid 20x level.
So to re-fire up the buyback now would not be a misguided nor imprudent allocation of shareholder capital, given the stock's sub-20x P/E valuation is lower than the level where much of the previous buybacks occurred. And the balance sheet is now back in a state that can accommodate it.
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