Turning Stock Valuation on Its Head

The number one lesson of stock valuation: you are always wrong. To put it statistical terms, when you estimate the current intrinsic value of a firm’s equity – that is the present value of future cash flows to the equity holders – your error term is necessarily large. So to deal with that, we do plenty of sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis and see what kind of value range we can obtain under a variety of circumstances.

One of the exercises I do that I have found to be particularly useful is to reverse engineer the stock valuation to obtain the market-anticipated growth rate. I do this because that’s a number that is much closer to a real value with which we can argue. If someone puts a valuation on Facebook that says Facebook is over/under/correctly valued, that’s one thing. You have to really dig into to the analytics to understand that. But, if I say to you “the market is expecting Facebook to grow by 50% over the next two years” that’s something real you can get your head around immediately.

I use a DCF model to back out growth rates. The DCF looks like so:

Market Price = D(1)/(1+r) + D(2)/(1+r)^2 + … + P(N)/(1+r)^N

where D(t) is the cash flow to equity holders at the time period t, P(N) is the terminal value of all cash flows after time N, and r is the required return. P(N) is:

P(N) = D(N+1)/(r-g)

where N is the last period we directly calculate the cash flow to equity holders (maybe 3 or 5 years away), and then we expect those cash flows to grow at a constant rate g forever after that. The g should be similar to the overall economy’s growth rate.

The main place where growth shows up is going from D(1) to D(2) to D(3) and so on. Normally, we calculate growth rates and then see what kind of valuation we end up with. My way is to start with the market price and find the growth rates that make that market price work. Then I argue with the growth rates rather than the valuation.

Some of you option fanatics out there might realize that these are basically the same principles underlying the implied volatility measure. One takes the option prices as given, plugs in all the option parameters, and finds the volatility that makes that option price work. Then, you argue with the volatility, not the option price.

Once I figure out how I can do this, I plan to post some of my modeling exercises here. So if you’re interested, stay tuned!

Written By

Jeff Oxman

I'm a finance professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. I moved to the U.S. from Canada in 2004 to obtain a Ph.D. in Finance from Syracuse University in upstate New York. In one of the buildings on campus, there was the oath taken by Athenian citizens, and the words of that oath triggered my thinking about what it means to be a good citizen. My interest and passion for liberty, as an intellectual pursuit, began there.

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6 Comments

Edward Perry April 11, 2015 , 10:38 am Log in to Reply Vote0

…but the only cashflows that are available to shareholders are dividends. Further, the dividends are taxable, of course. A capital gain in the stock is also taxable. So my participation in the total return of stock ownership is (let’s say) 75% of the actual total return on the upside. Heaven forbid if the shares decline in value, yep I own 100% of the downside.

Remind me again why I should take that sort of risk, for such a payoff?
- Jeff Oxman April 12, 2015 , 9:01 am Log in to Reply Vote0
  
  Edward,
  Well, not knowing anything about your risk tolerance and life style, I can’t tell you that stocks are right or wrong for you. Stocks have a general upward trend, with a long-run return of 8% per annum, including all the crashes and corrections that have happened.
  
  The tax issue is a big one – the state shouldn’t be taxing anything, much less taxing income twice (or thrice).
Leanne Baker April 11, 2015 , 2:23 pm Log in to Reply Vote0

Always interested in ways to think and re-think valuation — look forward to seeing more ways to be “wrong on valuation” than I already know! In the precious metals sector, with such short reserve/resource lives, options valuation intuitively made sense.
- Jeff Oxman April 12, 2015 , 9:02 am Log in to Reply Vote0
  
  Thanks Leanne! I’ve stayed away from precious metals, personally, so I’d love for you to add any of your insights regarding that industry.
Rick Rule April 11, 2015 , 7:24 pm Log in to Reply Vote0

This will be good “cranky”, there are some decent investors here, lying in the weeds, ready to look at this.
- Jeff Oxman April 12, 2015 , 9:02 am Log in to Reply Vote0
  
  Thanks Rick.