In honor of the valiant sales bros showing up at your door at the worst possible time (i.e. during your Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day pool parties), it’s time we review the poor financial position of Vivint Smart Home. And there’s one word that sums up Vivint…and it’s debt. Unlike Purple and Owlet that I’ve previously posted about, Vivint is not at immediate risk of going under. They look to be fairly cash flow neutral over the past few years. But they probably have the worst balance sheet of any publicly traded company in Utah and they likely won't generate enough cash to pay off that debt any time soon. Let’s look at a few numbers.

Vivint’s 2021 revenue was about $1.5B and they spent $185MM of that on interest expense – so one out of every eight dollars you pay for your whatever-enhanced-you-can-stalk-your-kids-during-the-middle-of-the-night system goes to pay their debt holders. Yikes! That’s because their total debt load is an absurd $2.75B!!! As a reference, Qualtrics has $275MM in debt and their interest expense is fairly negligible on a similar revenue base of $1B+. Reading through their 10K, there’s several pages devoted to outlining the risks of their debt load. And keep in mind that 50% of their debt is based on variable interest rates. So those Fed increases that have been in the news will mean that Vivint will be paying out more each quarter.

So to you Vivint employees and Vivint investors, Vivint will not be going bankrupt, but there’s not a ton of financial upside with the company as-is. Because you can't pay off debt if you don't have the money under your mattress to pay if off. And Vivint's cash balance (~$150MM) is nowhere near enough to pay off a sizable chunk of their debt load. And the longer they struggle with profitability, cash flow, and debt, the more likely they are to have a sizable layoff in the future as they look to cut costs. There's a reason the share price is down 50%+ over the past year, and they're one of the many we-can’t-make-money companies of Utah. Vivint…welcome to the bad Utah company club.