MQG in 2025, page-37

I haven't looked at their balance sheet, but debt to capital, debt/debt+equity, shouldn't be hard to work out. I suspect most banks or quasi banks will be levered 50-80%. From what dark orifice was 650% pulled out of ?

But even then, debt is tax-effective finance, and there is such a thing as 'good debt' if it's being applied to inirtiatives that earn > WACC (let alone the cost of debt). The trick is to make sure the rate of return on the assets that the debt is being applied to is hedged by being exposed to the same upwards movements in the cost of debt.......ie. pretty much what happens with bank core biz, whether it be resi mortgages (probably high % of debt & assets in MQG's case, or Bank2B).

On the interest cover....LOL....no, MQG is not "struggling to even pay The interest on their debt".
I'm not suggesting you ignore your broker (AI or human ?), but at least look yourself at the financial stetments. I couldn't help myself....: from p161 onwards of the FY24 report, with fin statements and notes, MQG had interest income of $16.5B and interest expense of $13B, so net interest income of $3.5B.

Given interest income and expense is almost certainly assessable/deductible in all regions the enterprise operates in, it's apples-with-apples to not use NPAT to assess interest cover, but EBT. In fact there's a strong arguement to use EBIT, but lets be conservative and avoid further interest confusion in MQG's case.

But, here's where that becomes a pretty meaningless metric in MQG's context ; they have positive net interest income of $3.5B (which contributed ~73% of EBT of $4.8B). The other $1.3B is trading and fee income less employment costs and other opex.
As per above, what's the point of looking at gross interest exense, if it's more than matched by interest income ?

So, said "broker" probably needs to explain how he/she thinks it's 16.

I wish I had the same metrics 'problems' personally, but I don't, that's why I've given (loaned ?) Shamara's team a lot of my hard-earned to do it for me.....