A simple way to check if a board/CEO wants to extract a lot of future value _now_ is to look into their accounting, and especially how they count physical assets.
If they count physical assets at their current selling price, you can probably get in long-term.
If they count them at their buying prices you might have to worry.
If they do 'future accounting', tying into assets their estimated future added value, you can be sure the current owners are extracting the most they can _now_ and will try to drop the bag into futures investors (or ask for a government bailout)
What is the selling price of physical assets? I would think Intel is not a reseller, so they don't buy and sell stuff but rather buy raw materials and then transform them into a CPU?
And how would counting physical assets at their buying price move money from the company into the pocket of the CEO?
Let's say Company A buy a machine to engrave CPU 10 millions (no idea of the real cost), half of it with debt.
In normal/traditional accounting, you put the selling price of the machine (if you have to liquidate the company) on the side of the asset: let's say 8 millions the first year, and 5 million on the debt side (they bought it with 5 million of investment money, leveraged with debt). Company has 8 millions in assets, 5 million in debt: good ratio, healthy company.
Company B use future accounting: it buy the 10 million dollars machine. On the 'asset' side, you put 16 millions: the machine is worth 8, and is expected to earn the company a net profit of 8 during its lifetime. On the 'debt' side, you put 5. 16/5, the ratio is truly excellent. So good even that you can afford to take another 5 millions, and buy share/issue dividends. Now your asset/debt ratio is 16/10=8/5, same as Company A, except either your current shareholders have already reimbursed the initial investment, derisking themselves totally if the company ends up failing.
I think you have a Republican primary candidate who used that with his drug company, the company failed to produce anything of value, but only late investors lost anything.
