Purchasing Equipment vs. Usage-based Equipment Financing: What Should You Do?

Should a business purchase or pursue usage-based financing (UBF) to acquire new equipment?

The short answer is that it depends on the business's objectives. Usage-based equipment financing can be a good alternative for those who don't have a lot of capital or who frequently exchange their machinery due to trends. Buying equipment is better suited for those businesses who are established or intend to use that specific equipment in the long-run.

Since it's situation-dependent, determining whether one should purchase or finance equipment with the help of a financial institution is an in-depth decision that takes a lot of consideration.

That's why I'm going over this topic alongside a point system so that I can break down each method alongside a head-to-head analysis.

Round 1: Business Objectives

To continue the conversation of business objectives, the first thing an equipment user must identify is their primary business goals, both short-term and long-term.

When is a business is thriving and needs to maintain its longevity, it's probably a good time to purchase new equipment. Decision-makers might also want to consider buying when it’s time to replace old equipment, or their business needs to take advantage of the latest industry technologies.

Basically, if buying won't impact the business or instill any unknown market risks that typically arise with expansions, then purchasing is the right way to go.

If decision-makers plan to expand rapidly in the upcoming years and need to invest heavily in new equipment to grow production capacity, then try to avoid direct purchases. As an alternative, consider a financing route.

Also, if the company is facing a strong market demand for its products in the short-run, but it's uncertain if this demand will persist over the long-run, then acquiring new equipment may not be the best solution to catch the temporary trend.

Equipment users typically try to avoid this high level of uncertainty since there’s no promise of any long-term market commitment.

In this case, pay-per-use financing can be the right option to absorb the benefits of spontaneous high market demand without taking upon the entire financial risk immediately, since repayment rates adjust to the equipment's per-unit production.

Conclusion
Every company faces different short-term and long-term goals, therefore, there is no clear advantage for purchasing or UBF, and thus, both get the point.

Score - Purchasing | 1:1 | UBF

Round 2: Financial Situation & Effects on Financial Statements

The next question equipment users ask themselves is:

What’s my current financial state? And how will an investment in new equipment affect my balance sheet and PnL statement?

By analyzing their financial statements, equipment buyers are better situated to tell how much of financial risk their company can bare at the moment.

Buying equipment out-right opens a door into an enormous up-front investment hurdle; that’s why companies, who are directly purchasing, must have enough cash available.

Machine buyers typically try to avoid this financial commitment for various reasons, such as the immediate cash-out burdens, balance sheet explosions, depreciation challenges, tax disadvantages, and significant PnL effects, to name a few.

Besides the effects on one's financial statements and overall company wellbeing, the equipment buyer must absorb other costs like opportunity costs or take the cost of equity under consideration to fully understand what a direct purchase will look like.

On the other hand, pay-per-use inspired financing introduces zero to little initial investment for machine buyers as payment is pegged to periodic unit production. So there will not be immediate cash out for equipment users if they finance it via usage-based financing.

Aside from eliminating massive investment hurdles, usage-based financing enables possible off-balance-sheet effects (also possible under IFRS 16) and cash flow optimization by transforming capital expenditures (CAPEX) to operational expenditures (OPEX) to positively impact financial statements.

Other UBF related costs include interest rate fees, but this is typical of any other type of loan or leasing structure.

UBF's total expense depends on the overall performance of the financed equipment.

Minimum and maximum forecasts are made to better determine the financing contract's beginning costs. Rest assured, the costs associated between lower and upper parameters cannot be exceeded.

And as a side note, unlike traditional equipment rentals, UBF does not fall trap to the typical rental disadvantage of paying a fixed amount even when machines are not in use for that exact rental period.

Conclusion
Every company must judge its own situation of whether or not they have the financial power and stability to purchase equipment. But even if they have the financial means to do so, they still have to mitigate other potential adverse effects on their financial statements when investing.
In this case, UBF can be an option to treat these investments as neutral in terms of the impact it has on financial statements. Due to the fair treatment of financial statements and no applicable costs, this round goes to usage-based financing.

Score - Purchasing | 1 : 2 | UBF

Round 3: Impact on Cash Flow

With purchasing equipment, buyers risk not being able to quickly spread the upfront costs to coincide with money coming into the business.

As a result, the purchaser undergoes various cash flow challenges like the difficulty of scaling quickly without burning tons of money.

There lies another scenario where too much money is spent during the ramp-up phase when the equipment user is stuck and cannot produce any valuable output with its new machinery.

Rather than deploying cash to purchase new equipment, however, buyers can leverage pay-per-use financing to enable a more flexible and scalable operation since installments are generated variable to equipment utilization.

In other words, buyers can minimize their burn rate during ramp-up phases and economic downtimes to improve cash flow.

Conclusion
Again, I’ll need to give the point to usage-based financing due to the ease of operation scalability, burn rate minimization during ramp-up phases, payment flexibility, and the corresponding cash flow improvements.

Score: Purchasing | 1 : 3 | UBF

Round 4: Ownership

Who will own the equipment?

While I did briefly discuss the question of ownership in round two and its relating balance sheet effects, I want to dive a little deeper into this subject.

When purchasing equipment without any external money, the company owns 100% of the machine.

The advantage behind this route is deciding where and on which projects equipment will be utilized, if it should be insured, and if it should be sold or not. Overall, purchasers get 100% of the flexibility to do what they please with their machinery.

When using pay-per-use financing, or any other financing option for that matter, the lending institutions have the option of fully owning or co-owning the equipment. As a result, the equipment user has some obligations to keep open conversations with the lender. For example, if the user were to sell the equipment during its contractual period, they would need to notify their financial partner.

Also, due to the potential risks of co-ownership, the financial institution can decide whether or not the machine will be insured.

Conclusion
Purchasing equipment introduces more flexibility when determining the machine's future, while UBF requires users to consult with their participating financial lenders before taking any actions. Because of its higher ownership flexibility, purchasing wins this round.

Score - Purchasing | 2 : 3 | UBF

Round 5: Usage-Insights

Through increasing demand for Industrial IoT and real-time data, usage-insights are becoming more important for each equipment user so that they can increase productivity, analyze downtime causes, and monitor maintenance cycles, to name a few.

Unfortunately, when equipment is purchased, the buyers typically don't receive a smart system.

Thus, manufacturers need to either invest additional funds in developing their data management infrastructure or are required to work with a third party and pay monthly fees to get access to their equipment data.

Usage-based financing, on the other hand, comes with an accompanying data system that collects and reports machine performance since financial lenders need this data to even offer UBF in the first place.

With this data infrastructure in place, the equipment user can take advantage of such information and its accompanying reporting system to keep availability and productivity high.

The various costs associated with establishing a robust data infrastructure to enable UBF are already taken into consideration within the equipment and financing price.

Conclusion
UBF's usage-data analytics poses as a huge benefit for equipment users since such critical information increases productivity and can avoid unnecessary downtimes. Thereof it is a clear win for UBF.

Score - Purchasing | 2 : 4 | UBF

Final Thoughts

A buyer's decision of whether or not they should purchase or undergo usage-based financing is quite in-depth - as it should be.

For these given scenarios, usage-based financing beat purchasing by two points. Though, both purchasing equipment and UBF pose clear advantages depending on one's situation.

Any progress to make a decision should ultimately align back to my question in round one:

What are the buyer's business objectives?

Once that answer is reached, the rest becomes more apparent. Reach out to the team at Linxfour to help reach your business objectives and to learn more about which option is right for you.

About Linxfour
Linxfour is a European leasing company, based in Austria, providing Pay-per-Use financing solutions to manufacturing companies. Using proprietary IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) technology and AI-driven risk management, we are unique in underwriting true utilisation risk. Operating across different countries and industries, we are committed to helping businesses finance equipment with our unparalleled solution.

Linxfour: Transforming Equipment Finance