Tool · Debt Stress

The Capital Structure Stress Test

See how revenue and margin shocks could affect your debt payments, loan conditions and cash position.

Enter your actual debt and cash-flow figures. The tool applies three illustrative stress scenarios and a sector-volatility calibration based on general market data and TEOL's frameworks. Its covenant thresholds are illustrative defaults, not your loan agreement or a lender's underwriting. Compare the results with your actual loan terms before acting on them.

What this tool produces
  • Three institutional downside scenarios with breach-point identification
  • Covenant headroom analysis across each scenario
  • Debt service coverage stress reads
  • Liquidity runway under each scenario
  • Capital Structure Resilience Score (0–100)
  • Recommended structural actions with illustrative impact
  • A directional read to discuss with your lender and advisers

Your responses are handled under our Privacy Policy. Data handling: see the Tools page.

Before you begin

Questions this diagnostic answers

How much debt can my business safely carry?

It depends less on a leverage multiple than on how stable your cash flow is. A business with contracted revenue and low fixed costs can carry more than one with volatile revenue and high fixed costs at the same profit. The useful test is what happens to coverage under a revenue or margin shock, not what the multiple is today.

What happens if I breach a loan covenant?

Usually not immediate repayment. A breach gives the lender rights: they can reprice, tighten terms, require additional security, or restrict what you do with cash. The outcome depends heavily on whether you raised it with them first or they found it in your reporting.

What is leverage and how is it calculated?

Your total debt divided by profit, usually EBITDA. Lenders often also look at senior leverage separately, counting only the debt ranking ahead of everything else. The definitions in your loan agreement may differ from how you calculate it internally, and that difference is worth checking.

What is covenant headroom?

The gap between where you are and where you would breach. Knowing it in advance is what separates a manageable conversation from a surprise, because a forecast breach you raise early is a negotiation and one your lender discovers is a problem.

How would a downturn affect my ability to service debt?

That depends on your cost structure. A business with high fixed costs sees profit fall faster than revenue, so a modest revenue drop can produce a large coverage problem. Modelling a revenue shock and a margin squeeze separately is more useful than modelling one combined scenario.

How do I know if my capital structure is too risky?

Look at what happens under stress rather than what the numbers say today. If a plausible downturn takes you through a covenant or leaves you without liquidity, the structure is tight regardless of how comfortable current coverage looks.

What you will be asked

A few of the questions and inputs you will see. Your answers and results stay in the diagnostic.

  • Trailing Twelve Months Revenue
  • Total Funded Debt
  • Gross Margin
  • Maintenance Capex
  • Margin Compression Severity
  • Covenant Cure Mechanism

How to use the Capital Structure Stress Test

Use the Capital Structure Stress Test to make a directional read of your business. This is not a lender quote, valuation opinion or commissioned diligence report.

  1. 01

    Enter your information

    Provide your details and work through financial figures and loan terms across four sections. Allow about 15 minutes; your pace may vary.

  2. 02

    Consider each response

    Enter the figures you can evidence and review how a lender could interpret the inputs and assumptions.

  3. 03

    Review the result

    Read coverage, covenant headroom and stress-scenario results. The output is indicative, not a formal quote or verified diligence opinion.

  4. 04

    Plan the next steps

    Review the recommended actions where gaps qualify. If no areas need remediation, maintain the evidence and revisit the read when your circumstances change.

Plain-language finance glossary
EBITDA
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. A rough measure of operating profit, used because it strips out financing and accounting choices that vary between businesses.
Add-backs
Costs taken back out of profit because they are personal, one-off, or would not continue under new ownership. A buyer will accept some and challenge others.
Quality of Earnings (QofE)
An examination a buyer or seller commissions that rebuilds a business's profit figure from source records, to test whether the reported number is defensible.
Normalising
Adjusting a figure to what it would be in a normal year, by removing one-offs and unusual events.
Trailing twelve months (TTM)
The most recent twelve months of trading, used instead of a financial year so the figures are current.
Run-rate
What the business would earn over a full year at its current level of trading, rather than what it earned historically.
Working capital
The cash tied up in running the business day to day: money owed by customers, plus stock, less money owed to suppliers.
Working capital peg
The normal level of working capital a sale price assumes comes with the business. If actual working capital at closing is below the peg, the price is reduced.
DSO
Days sales outstanding. How long customers take to pay you, on average.
DPO
Days payable outstanding. How long you take to pay suppliers, on average.
DIO
Days inventory outstanding. How long stock sits before it sells, on average.
Letter of intent (LOI)
The agreed outline of a deal, signed before detailed diligence begins. Usually not binding on price.
Data room
The organised set of documents a buyer works through during diligence.
Earn-out
Part of the purchase price paid later, and only if the business hits agreed targets after the sale.
Escrow
Part of the purchase price held back for a period after closing, in case something surfaces.
Covenant
A condition a lender attaches to a loan, such as keeping debt below a set multiple of profit. Breaching one gives the lender rights.
Covenant headroom
How much room you have before you breach a loan condition.
Leverage
Your debt measured as a multiple of profit.
Coverage
Whether profit comfortably covers your loan payments and other fixed commitments.
Fixed charge coverage ratio (FCCR)
Profit divided by everything you are committed to paying: loan payments, leases and similar. Lenders typically want this comfortably above 1.
Collateral
Assets a lender can take if the loan is not repaid.
Lien
A claim someone already has over an asset, which affects what a new lender can lend against it.
Advance rate
How much a lender will lend against an asset's value.
Equity cure
A written right for the owners to put money in and fix a breached loan condition.
Basis points
Hundredths of a percent. 100 basis points is 1%.
Intercompany balances
Money owed between entities you own.
Related-party transaction
A deal between the business and its owners, their family, or another company they own.
Independent sponsor
An acquirer who finds a deal first and raises the money for it afterwards, rather than holding a committed fund.
Enterprise value
The value of the business itself, before subtracting debt and adding cash. Not what the seller receives.

What to look at next

Choose the next question you want to examine:

Methodology

How This Diagnostic Works

The Capital Structure Stress Test applies three institutional downside scenarios to the business's current capital structure to identify covenant headroom, liquidity runway, and breach pathway exposure. The methodology is calibrated to general market data and TEOL's frameworks. Results are general guidance, not advice, and can contain errors.

The Three Scenarios Applied

Revenue Shock Scenario models the impact of revenue decline (mild 5–10 percent, moderate 10–20 percent, severe 20–35 percent) on EBITDA, coverage ratios, and covenant compliance. Flow-through severity is calibrated to fixed cost ratio and gross margin structure.

Margin Compression Scenario models the impact of gross margin reduction and operating expense inflation (mild GM -200bps and opex +5 percent, moderate GM -400bps and opex +10 percent, severe GM -700bps and opex +15 percent) on EBITDA and ratio compliance.

Combined Stress Scenario applies moderate revenue shock and moderate margin compression simultaneously to identify the covenant breach pathway under realistic combined stress.

The Four Outputs Per Scenario

Stressed EBITDA calculation under the scenario assumptions, calibrated to operating leverage from the fixed cost ratio input.

Stressed ratio calculation showing Fixed Charge Coverage Ratio, Senior Leverage, and Total Leverage at the stressed EBITDA level.

Covenant breach identification flagging which covenants breach under the scenario, by what magnitude, and at what point in the duration window.

Liquidity runway projection showing monthly cash position under the scenario including working capital release or absorption and maintenance capex floor compliance.

The Composite Output

The Capital Structure Resilience Score (0–100) weighs covenant headroom (40 percent), liquidity runway (30 percent), maturity wall exposure (15 percent), and contingent liability exposure (15 percent). Band placement: Structurally Fragile (0–25), Stress-Sensitive (26–50), Resilient (51–75), Institutionally Resilient (76–100).

The outputs show what happens under the stated assumptions, not how a particular lender, buyer, board or rating agency will decide. Use the scenarios to investigate covenant pressure and discuss the terms of your actual facility with an adviser.

This is a directional stress test using your inputs and scenario assumptions, not an independent credit assessment or a forecast of actual lender action.

Sector multiples, adjustment ranges and stress factors in this tool are TEOL's illustrative calibrations, based on general market observation and TEOL's frameworks. They are not drawn from a single dataset and do not predict any specific outcome.