Week 3 Lecture - Stock Valuation
Week 3 Lecture - Stock Valuation
Week 3 Lecture - Stock Valuation
Concepts of Stocks
Stocks, defined
Corporations would normally raise funds by selling stocks. But what do we really mean by stocks and
how it becomes a source of financing or raising corporate capital requirements? Acquisition or buying
stocks from a corporate entity would allow an investor to own a part of the business firm. Corporation
would sell control of the company in the form of stocks to investors or stockholders to raise or acquire
funds to sustain or expand business operations.
Most commonly known types of stocks are common and preferred. Common or ordinary stocks give
the owner to exercise voting rights in corporate decisions while preferred stockholders don't. However,
preferred shareholders are legally entitled to receive a certain level of dividend payments before any
dividends can be issued to other shareholders. A convertible preferred stock refers to a type of stock that
has an option to be converted into a fixed number of common shares, usually any time after a
predetermined date.
Stock prices are dictated based on earnings generated by the company. If the business profits are high or
are inclined to rise in the future, companies will raise stock prices. Stockholders gain from their stock
investment when they buy a stock on a low price and later can sell it on higher price. If the business firm
does not perform well and the stocks' value decreases, then the stockholders might lose part or even all of
their investments when they sell.
Stockholders are also given a share in the company's profit in the form of dividends. This is done to
reward stockholders for their investment.
Thus, it is always a wise and prudent decision to consult a professional stock market expert before
deciding to put investment in stocks.
To illustrate, let us take the dividends and earnings of ADP company below (in Philippine Peso):
The DCF model uses the free cash flows which are forecast for five to years, and then a terminal
value is calculated for all of the cash flows beyond the forecast period. The company should have
predictable positive free cash flows to be able to use this method.
Let us illustrate this method using the given example (in Philippine Peso):
Based on the example, the business shows an increasing positive operating cash flow but the high capital
expenditures indicate that the firm is putting back a lot of its cash into the business to support its
operation. As such the result is negative free cash flows for four of the six years which makes it difficult
(nearly impossible) to predict future cash flows. Thus, in order to use the DCF method most effectively,
the target company should generally have stable, positive and predictable free cash flows which is shown
in the illustration below.
Average 38.03%
There is no perfect valuation method as it changes for every situation, it is necessary to know the
company characteristics in order to determine the valuation method that best suits the situation.
The nature of preferred stocks is that it pays a fixed amount of dividends and this can be used to calculate
the value by discounting each of these payments to the present day. Taking all the dividend payments and
calculating the sum of the present value into perpetuity, then the value of stock can be determined.
Let us illustrate by looking at ADP Company that pays a 25 centavo-dividend every month with a
required rate of return of 6% per year. To calculate for the expected stock value of the stock,
P0.25/0.005 = P50. The discount rate of 6% was divided by 12 to get 0.005.
Where:
V = the value
D. = the dividend next period
r= the required rate of return
Considerations
If the company earnings are not adequate, it might result in a cut off in the payment of preferred stock
dividends. This risk of a cut payment needs to be accounted for. This risk increases as the dividend
payment compared to earnings gets higher.
Preferred shares do not have the voting rights such as those given to common shares. For investors who
have large amounts of shares, this seems to be valuable feature to individuals as compared to the average
investor who looks at this voting right and does not have much value. This feature is needed in evaluating
preferred shares marketability.
Preferred shares possess similar characteristics with that of the bond in terms of valuation. This means the
value will also move inversely with interest rates. When the interest rate goes up, the value of the
preferred shares will go down, holding everything else constant. This is to account for other investment
opportunities and is reflected in the discount rate used.