PFE Chapter 19, Stock valuation Page 38
and support in the academic community: If market participants have done their work, then the
current price of a share reflects all publicly-available information, and there’s nothing else to do.
Valuation method 2, discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation, is the method preferred by
most finance academics and many finance practitioners. This method is based on discounting
the firm’s projected future free cash flows (FCF) at an appropriate weighted average cost of
capital. The discounted value arrived at in this way is called the firm’s enterprise value. To
arrive at the valuation of the firm’s equity, we add cash and marketable securities to the
enterprise value and subtract the value of the firm’s debt. Dividing by the number of shares
gives the per-share valuation.
Valuation method 3, the direct equity valuation, discounts the projected payouts to equity
holders (defined as the sum of dividends plus share repurchases) by the firm’s cost of equity r
E
.
The resulting present value is the value of the firm’s equity. Although it appears simpler and
more direct than the FCF valuation, direct equity valuation is usually shunned by finance
professionals. This is primarily because the cost of equity is heavily dependent on a firm’s debt-
equity financing mix, whereas the WACC is not nearly as dependent (and perhaps independent)
of the debt-equity mix.
Valuation method 4, multiple valuation is widely used. This method of valuation arrives
at a relative valuation of the firm by comparing a set of relevant multiples for comparable firms.
When used correctly, multiple valuations can be a powerful tool, but it is often difficult to arrive
at a correct “peer group” for a particular firm.