CFA L2 Equity Valuation (Part 1) Flashcards
(115 cards)
What is the purpose of valuation?
Determining the value of an asset.
Intrinsic value (IV) of an asset
The valuation of an asset or security by someone who has complete understanding of the characteristics of the asset or issuing firm. It’s the PV of future CFs (CFs can be either dividends, free CFs, or RI).
- Not necessarily a perfect valuation.
- Most relevant metric for public equities
Estimated Value (VE)
Investors’ estimates of intrinsic value
True or false: Analysts seeking to produce positive risk-adjusted returns do so by trying to identify securities for which their estimate of intrinsic value are the same as the current market price?
False, analysts seeking to produce positive risk-adjusted returns do so by trying to identify securities for which their estimate of intrinsic value differs from current market price.
Relationship: IV of analyst - price = (actual IV - price) + (IV of analyst - actual IV)
True or false: All models studied in CFA level 2 are based on the going concern assumption?
True
Liquidation value
When a firm is no longer a going concern, this is the estimate of what the assets of the firm would bring if sold separately, net of the company’s liabilities
Orderly liquidation value
Same as liquidation value but assumes an adequate amount of time to realize liquidation value.
Fair Market Value
The price at which a hypothetical willing, informed, and able seller would trade an asset to a willing, informed, and able buyer.
Similar to fair value used in financial reporting.
- Over time, the fair market value of a firm should match its market price.
Investment value
The value of a stock to a particular buyer.
- May depend on the buyer’s specific needs and expectations, as well as perceived synergies with existing buyer assets.
- With acquisitions, valuing a firm’s investment value will be more relevant than intrinsic value.
General steps in equity valuation (top-down approach):
- Understand the business
- Forecast company performance
- Select the appropriate valuation model
- Convert the forecasts into a valuation
- Apply the valuation conclusions
Uses of equity valuation
- Stock selection
- Reading the market
- Projecting the value of corporate actions: value projected M&A, MBOs, etc.
- Fairness opinions: is the price in M&A fair to all sides
- Planning and consulting: evaluate the effects of proposed corporate strategies on the firm’s stock price, in order to pursue those that have the greatest value to shareholders
- Communication w/ analysts and investors
- Valuation of private firms
- Portfolio mgmt
Porter’s five elements of industry structure
- Threat of new entrants
- Threat of substitutes
- Bargaining power of buyers
- Bargaining power of suppliers
- Rivalry among existing competitors
3 generic strategies companies use to compete and generate profits:
- Cost leadership: Being the lowest-cost producer of a good.
- Product differentiation: creating a specialized product so that it will command a premium
- Focus: firms can target segment(s) of an industry using either #1 or #2
Cost leadership DOES NOT mean decreasing quality!
Quality of financial statement analysis
Since the basic building blocks of equity valuation comes from useful accounting info, analysts must investigate the issues associated with the accuracy & detail of a firm’s disclosures
True or false: An analyst can often only discern important results of management discretion through a detailed examination of the footnotes accompanying the financial reports?
True
Quality of earnings issues can be broken down into several categories:
- Accelerating or premature recognition of income: firms use a variety of techniques to justify the recognition of income before it traditionally would have been recognized (ex: bill & hold).
- Reclassifying gains & nonoperating income: this involves reclassifying extraordinary gains as operating income.
- Expense recognition & losses: Delaying the recognition of expenses, capitalizing expenses, and classifying operating expenses as nonoperating expenses.
- Amortization, depreciation, and discount rates: these can reduce current expenses.
- Off b/s issues
Warning signs of poor earnings quality:
- Past SEC violations
- Related-party transactions
- Excessive loans to employees.
- Poor accounting disclosures.
- High mgmt and/or director turnover.
- Consulting services provided by an audit firm.
- Disputes w/ or changes in auditors.
- Executive compensation tied to stock price.
- Declining margins or market share.
- Pressure to meet debt covenants or earnings expectation.
Absolute valuation models
A model that estimates a firm’s intrinsic value w/o comparing it to other firms.
- Examples of models include FCFs, residual income models, DDMs, or asset-based models that estimates a firm’s value as the sum of the market value of the assets it owns or controls. Asset-based models are commonly used for natural resource firms.
Relative valuation models
Models that determine the value of an asset in relation to the values of other assets.
- These models are based on the Law of One Price.
Dividend discount model (DDM)
Estimates the value of a firm’s stock today as the PV of all expected dividends discounted at the opportunity cost of capital.
- This is a type of absolute valuation model.
Sum-of-the-parts value/Breakup value/Private market value
Estimates the value of a firm by valuing individual parts of the firm and adding them up to determine the value for the company as a whole.
- Useful when the company operates multiple divisions/product lines w/ different business models & risk characteristics
Conglomerate discount
The idea that investors apply a markdown to the value of a company that operates in multiple unrelated industries, compared to the value a company that has a single industry focus. It is the amt by which MV under-represents sum-of-the-parts value.
3 explanations for conglomerate discounts:
- Internal capital inefficiency: The firm’s allocation of capital to different divisions may not have been based on sound decisions.
- Endogenous (internal) factors
- Research measurment errors: Some hypothesize that conglomerate discounts do not exist, but rather are a result of incorrect measurement.
Criteria for choosing an approach to value a company
An analyst must determine whether the approach fits the characteristics of the company, has appropriate input data, and is suitable for the purpose of the analysis.
- An analyst may use multiple models and see if there are major discrepancies w/ results.