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Equity Valuation: Science, Art, Or Craft?

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Equity Valuation: Science, Art, Or Craft? Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Published by CFA Institute Research Foundation Authors: Frank Fabozzi Sergio Focardi Caroline Jonas The setting ➢ Fundamental analysts/managers try to determine the intrinsic (fundamental) value of a company’s stock, ➢ Under the assumption that their ability to estimate the difference between a stock’s fundmental value and its market price will allow them to outperform the market ➢ But studies show that on average and over time active traditional managers fail to outperform markets ➢ The result: «a sea change in investors’ preferences» as investors withdraw funds from actively managed equity funds and place them in passively managed equity funds ➢ So what’s all this about equity valuation? 2 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Objective of the monograph Attempt to respond to a number of critical questions on equity valuation: ➢ As public stocks are traded in competitive markets and subject to the law of supply & demand, is there really such a thing as an intrinsic (fundamental) value of a stock? ➢ If yes, can we determine this value using the tools we have? ➢ Or can we determine only relative values? 3 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Critical questions, ctd ➢ What about determining the value of hard-to-value assets, such as IPOs or private equity? ➢ What is the role of “hype” or information asymmetry in determining the value of these asset classes? ➢ Do phenomena such as central banks’ policies or corporate stock buybacks distort market prices, taking them far from a stock’s fundamental value? 4 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Critical questions, ctd ➢ Has the global investment universe changed so much that the role of the fundamental analyst/manager is no longer central? ➢ In other words, are there better ways to generate returns for investors than traditional value investing? 5 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Research methodology ➢ Review of 100s of articles and academic literature of which more than are 160 cited ➢ Interviews with 30 asset managers, academics and other industry players in North America and Europe 6 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? What we will attempt to do ➢ The allotted time will not allow us to cover all the issues in the monograph ➢ So we will limit our discussion here to some of the critical issues in equity valuation and equity investment 7 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Equity valuation & market efficiency ➢ Fundamental analysis is a supporting pillar of the notion of the intrinsic value of a company’s stock ➢ The question of equity valuation is closely related to the question of market efficiency ➢ A proper analysis of valuation issues calls for a minimum of theory and macroeconomic considerations 8 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? A natural approach ➢ Fundamental analysis seems to be an obvious, natural approach to valuation: ➢ As Graham and Dodd advocate (Security Analysis: Principles and Techniques,1934), the investor, after analyzing a firm as a potential investment, will look at the market price to determine whether the firm’s revenue streams are in line with its market price—that is, whether a stock’s market price is in line with its “intrinsic” value 9 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? The theory of valuation ➢ According to classical APT, financial asset prices are equal to the sum of the discounted values of expected future cash flows ➢ The discount rate is determined as the sum of the risk-free rates + a risk premium ➢ The intrinsic price corresponds to the natural rate at which the supply and demand for investment are in equilibrium ➢ A parallel framework relates to the notion of market efficiency and intrinsic prices ➢ A first definition of market efficiency comes from Eugene Fama (1970): unfettered financial markets are efficient ➢ This framework has become important for both theoretical and practical reasons 10 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Analyst’s job: identify mispricings ➢ The job of the analyst: discover whether a financial asset is mispriced, i.e., under- or overpriced with respect to its intrinsic value, ➢ Under the assumption that markets will eventually correct the mispricing ➢ The identification of and the ability to take advantage of mispricings (price anomalies) are believed to generate profit when prices revert to the asset’s fundamental value ➢ Though markets are driven by supply & demand, it is widely believed that intrinsic value still plays a role in “beating the market” 11 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Financial markets are almost arbitrage- free ➢ In free markets, the price of “things” is determined by the interaction between supply & demand—with (possibly complex) links between the characteristics of “things” and their price ➢ Free competitive markets for goods and services should be reasonably free from arbitrage opportunities. So the “law of one price” should hold approximately, though exceptions can be frequent ➢ Financial assets trade in markets that are almost perfectly competitive and free 12 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Intrinsic value depends on macroeconomic considerations ➢ The notion of intrinsic value requires the introduction of macroeconomic considerations: intrinsic value is a concept related to equilibrium in a specific macroeconomic theory ➢ Both the notion of intrinsic value and that of deviations from it can be defined only within a supply-and-demand framework ➢ Simply stated, the intrinsic value is the value financial assets would have in economies where the supply and demand for investments are in equilibrium ➢ Determining the intrinsic value of a stock calls, in turn, for determining (1) the distribution of future cash flows, (2) the true discount rates and (3) the risk premiums 13 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? The natural rate of return ➢ The concept of the intrinsic value of financial assets depends on the possibility of defining a natural rate of return or, more correctly, a “natural rate of interest” + a “natural risk premium” ➢ However, defining a natural rate of interest or a natural rate of return without recourse to macroeconomic considerations is well beyond the realm of pure finance theory ➢ The idea of a natural rate of interest (now gaining the attention of central banks) was introduced by the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell (1898), who defined the natural rate of interest as that rate of interest that guarantees stable asset and consumer prices 14 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? But rates are neglected ➢ Much of the vast literature on stock valuation does not address the problem of rates theoretically but devotes much time to describing how to analyze a balance sheet and, eventually, how to forecast earnings or dividends ➢ As for describing how to choose the discount rate, most authors simply recommend heuristics or historical values ➢ The capital asset pricing model and factor models are also used 15 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Intrinsic vs relative valuations ➢ In practice, only relative comparisons are made ➢ While intrinsic valuation is used only for evaluating situations of strong disequilibrium ➢ In other words, evaluating whether a stock is cheap or expensive with respect to other stocks is possible, but evaluating whether a stock is cheap or expensive in absolute is not, except in situations far from equilibrium ➢ Let’s now take a look at frequently used tools and their relative advantages/limitations 16 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Net present value models ➢ Models used to compute net present value (NPV) require two key steps: ➢ (1) the forecasting of future cash flows ➢ (2) the estimation of discount factors—that is, the risk-free rate + a risk premium ➢ Forecasts of future cash flows are based on the fundamental analysis of a firm + models of projections of future cash flows and their uncertainty ➢ The intrinsic discount factor cannot really be determined without macroeconomic considerations (as mentioned above), including knowledge of the financial and banking system 17 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Required rate of return ➢ In practice, analysts use various techniques for making a reasonable estimate of a required rate of return (equivalent to the discount rate if the market is in equilibrium) ➢ The required rate of return is the benchmark return rate used by investors in their decision-making process ➢ If, on the one hand, the expected return of a stock is higher than the required rate, the stock is considered underpriced and is a candidate for investment; ➢ If the expected return is lower than the required return, the stock is considered overpriced and therefore not a good candidate for investment 18 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? DDM and DCF models ➢ Discounted present value approaches use company fundamentals to try to determine the intrinsic value of a firm, in which the value is the sum of discounted expected future cash flows ➢ Two basic versions of this model: ➢ the dividend discount model (DDM) ➢ and the discounted cash flow (DCF) model 19 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? Problems with the DDM: cash flows as dividends ➢ In the DDM, dividends are considered to be the relevant cash flows but dividends are discretionary, thus their forecasting is problematic ➢ In fact, one has to forecast not only how the company will perform but also the decisions that will be made about the distribution of dividends (versus reinvestment of profits into the company’s operations) ➢ For this reason, many prefer DCF models, which use a different concept of the company’s discounted future cash flows 20 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? The DCF model: Cash is the key quantity ➢ The idea behind a DCF model is that what is important is the cash available, regardless of whether or not it is distributed ➢ Advantage of the DCF model: its applicability to listed and unlisted firms alike 21 Equity Valuation: Science, Art, or Craft? A representative quote on DCF “All models shed light on some aspect of ‘the truth’; they all have their pros and cons.
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