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Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 6
Lesson 4: Corporate metrics and valuationEnterprise value
Solving the P/E conundrum by looking at a different valuation metric (enterprise value). Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- How do you determine a "good" multiple?(19 votes)
- To determine a good multiple for a sector, look at the median multiple of similar companies within the sector. What you will find is that higher profit margins and growth rates tend to increase a sector's median multiple vis-a-vis lower profit margin and lower growth sectors. The nature of the revenue will also have a large effect. For example, a cloud-based software company will generally have a higher multiple than a retail company because its "recurring" revenue is predictable. Multiples can also move cyclically. A good example is clean tech companies which were getting better multiples than they are today (I believe this is primarily related to investors' risk tolerances, but there are certainly other factors). If you are really interested in valuation, a good resource is Professor Aswath Damodaran of NYU. He has a website and several book dedicated to valuation topics. Hope that helps.(15 votes)
- I did not understand "the multiple" Why did Sal use a multiple of six? Does that have anything to do with the growth of the company?(17 votes)
- the multiple doesn't have to do with the growth, it is an artifact of how companies or valued, or how we determine how much companies are worth. if a company is generating $10,000 in profits this year, we would apply a certain multiple to that profit to determine how much we would pay for the company or how much we would buy the company for. i think sal just uses a very arbitrary multiple here(5 votes)
- What does Sal mean when he applies a multiple. What is a multiple?(11 votes)
- Yes, a multiple is a "rule of thumb". Here's how you would "apply" the multiple: If the best multiple for the sector is price/earnings (P/E) and investors look at the most recent year's numbers, the way to estimate how much the company is to multiply the company's earnings (a.k.a. profit) by the P/E multiple. If a company had $1 million in profit and the P/E multiple for similar companies is ~15x, the estimated worth of the company would be $15 million.(7 votes)
- However, the "Enterprise Valuing Approach" still has not solved the problem! We are still paying for Equity in company B what equals half of what we would pay for Equity in company A (i.e. $9 for B and only $18 for A)though Equity in company A in reality equals 10 times Equity in company B. So, how this approach is supposed to solve the misleading approached described in the previous video?(12 votes)
- I have this same question/problem. I think part of our problem stems from focusing too heavily on book value and not the market price or "going concern" value. The value of a companies assets are not simply the book value of those assets. The book value of the equity in company B is 1/10th of that of company A as you said but we are trying to value the company as a going concern and not simply at liquidation value.
I don't know if this is correct; I'm still trying to work through it myself...(3 votes)
- Hi Sal, I always wonder why people calculate Enterprise Value using Market Cap instead of Equity's book value, since the actual assets being utilized by a firm to earn an operating profit are contributed by initial book value of equity instead of what the market perceives the assets are worth.
However, some people also argue that Market Cap is used so that the future benefits of assets that will benefit the company can be measured more reliably, if so, should not the the assets utilized that are contributed by the creditors also be revalued to market value?
This is why this formula confuses me a lot, as the equity is valued at market price while the debt is valued with historical price.....?
The second reason that I do not agree with the way how people use Market Cap is because, the Market Cap does take volatile movement led by irrational nature of market price into account(although average price may be used, Warren Buffett and other typical value investors still believes that the market does not work as efficient as we thought, which price does not always equal value).
Excuse me, if my explanation does not make sense, as I am a beginner in investment field, so if some of my concepts are wrong please correct me
If possible can Sal or someone who are experts in this field help me out?(7 votes)- A lot of calculations come down to ease of use. Market Cap is used because it is so readily available and because book value of equity doesn't necessarily give an accurate picture. You want the most accurate estimate of what a company is currently worth and the current value of their assets can differ considerably from their initial book value. Also, book values are often just estimates by management (especially when it comes to intangible assets), whereas market cap is an estimate based on the combined opinion of every market participant.
No one is saying you HAVE to value debt at historical prices, but often times it's a lot easier. Corporate bonds trade almost exclusively through dealers, not on exchanges like stocks. They are far less liquid and therefore it is often difficult to find accurate market prices for every single debt instrument a company has issued. A large company can have hundreds of different debt issuance's all at different prices. If more accurate numbers are available, then you can make an adjustment to the equation to reflect that. Adjustments can be made to market cap as well if you feel more accurate information is available. It's often more of an art than a science.(5 votes)
- In what way is the EV different from the (operational) assets of the company? At, Sal circles the operation's assets as if they are the EV, but later on the EV is worth much more in both restaurants. 1:10
Also, Sal says atthat the conundrum is how could the small equity on the right be valued higher than the large equity on the left. To me, it looks like people are looking forward to the large growth that comes from paying off the debt, which is why they're willing to pay the same P/E ratio. What's my mistake? 3:00(3 votes)- The enterprise value is the value to buy the entire company. If you buy an entire company you get all the assets and are responsible for all the liabilities. So, you start with the market cap (the value of all the equity). Then you add debt and preferred shares because if you bought the company you'd also be responsible for paying these liabilities. You subtract the cash because if you bought a company with cash and received the cash the company already had, it would cancel each other out.
Operating assets are different because they are just the assets that are used to generate profits during normal business operations. They don't factor in any of the debt you'd be responsible for paying if you took over the entire company.
In the P/E ratio (price / earnings per share) the denominator is calculated using net income, which is the bottom line on the income statement after taxes and interest payments. If a company has a lot of debt, the interest on their debt is an expense on the income statement which lowers net income and therefore lowers earnings per share. If the denominator in the P/E ratio falls, the P/E ratio increases. So, when two company's are identical in every way, except one has some debt, the company with debt will have a higher P/E ratio. Therefore it is also possible for a smaller company that has some debt to have the same P/E ratio as a larger company with no debt. This is just an accounting metric and has nothing to do with investor expectations. But it goes to show why it is difficult to use P/E ratios to compare two companies with different levels of debt and equity.(11 votes)
- I don't understand. If the P/E was "bad" because it rated two completely different companies (one completely unleveraged, and the other completely leveraged) the same (actually - Sal just decided it's 10 for both), how come the EV is better, when it gives an allmost identical rating to the same companies (200 vs. 190)?(3 votes)
- EV and P/E value different things. P/E values the equity. EV values the whole company.(6 votes)
- I need some help understanding leverage at the beginning of this video and in the last. At point2:16
I understand that in relation to the equity of the company the business is leverage; the value of the assets for company B is 10x the equity whereas company A has no leverage. I understand that the return on equity for the second company will be much larger because of this leverage.
What I'm unclear with is how a given % growth in the top line of company B translates to a greater % growth in the bottom line than it does in company A.
Ex : Op Income grows by 15% for both companies. This translates to a 15% growth in profit for company A and a 16.7% growth for company B. Is this because of the advantage of tax deductibility of the interest expense? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.
Thanks(3 votes)- It's because the interest that company B pays does not increase as its top line increases. A higher proportion of B's total costs are fixed than is true for A. More fixed cost means higher percentage growth as top line grows.
The tax deductibility reduces the cost of the debt but it does not change from year to year so it has nothing to do with the growth rate.(5 votes)
- Hi, I was wondering if you could do a video on DCF Valuation?(4 votes)
- atwhy does Sal subtract the debt to get the market cap? 16:17(3 votes)
- Because EV is market cap + debt.
Therefore market cap must be EV - debt(2 votes)
Video transcript
In the price to earnings
conundrum video we encountered a situation where two different
entrepreneurs bought an identical asset, in this case
it was a pizza parlor or a pizzeria, but they
each financed it in a different way. This guy was a little bit
more conservative. He paid for it outright. The entire asset
was his equity. He had no debt. While this guy, he borrowed
some money and he even had some non-operating assets. So he levered up. For every $1 he put in he
borrowed $10 from the bank in order to buy more assets
that he actually brought to the table. And we saw when you did their
financial statements-- their revenue, cost of goods--
everything up to the operating profit line was the same. And that makes sense because,
if you remember the first introduction to income statement
video, operating profit is really indicative of
what the operating assets are generating. So in this case it's what this
purple area right here is generating. You could also consider
that the enterprise. What the enterprise
is generating. And everything below the
operating line, everything below the operating profit line,
is either coming from non-operating assets, that
would the case of non-operating income. And the entrepreneur on the
right had some of that. He had some of this
non-operating income, $2,000 per year in that case. While this guy didn't
have any. And then you have expenses
associated with interest. Right? In this case this entrepreneur
had 5% of $100,000, so $5,000 a year. And then when you have these
differences in capital structure it changes what
your net income is. And they have slightly different
net income numbers. But what we saw is when we
applied the same price to earnings ratio, and they had
the same share counts-- I didn't change too many variables
here I just really changed how they paid
for the asset. But when you apply the same
price to earnings ratio to both earning streams, to both
companies, you got something that was reasonably
unintuitive. And there's no trick
here really. Because it's not crazy to
assign the same price to earnings ratio. And if you try it out, if you
grow this guy's revenue a little bit, if you actually grow
both of their revenues by the same amount or both of their
gross profits by the same amount or if you grow
both of their operating profits by the same amount,
you're actually going to see that this guy's earnings per
share is growing faster. So given that someone might
say, oh, because of the leverage maybe I'm willing to
pay even a higher multiple. So it's not crazy to pay the
same multiple for both of these guys. But we saw at the end of the
last video, when you apply, let's say, a 10 multiple, or
really any multiple to both of these earning streams, you get
a situation that at first doesn't look crazy. OK, the market cap of this guy
is $210,000 if you apply a 10 multiple to their earnings
stream, while the market cap of this guy is $189,000 if you
apply a 10 multiple to their earning stream. Right? 10 times 18.9 thousand
is 189,000. 10 times 21 thousand
is 210,000. But what was the conundrum, what
really got us thinking, was how can this whole equity
stream right here, or this equity, or this earnings stream
be, worth 210 and this one be worth 189 when this guy
only put $10,000 in initially and this guy put $100,000? He put in 10 times as much. And so when you're paying
$210,000 for this asset, for this equity, you are essentially
saying that this asset is worth $210,000. But if you're saying that this
equity is worth $189,000, right, that's what the
market cap is. It's the value of the equity. Then you're implicitly saying
that this asset, that all of these assets are worth the
value of this market capitalization plus
this debt, right? So that's $289,000. And then if you wanted the value
of this operating asset you would subtract out this
much right here, the cash. So you got something
like $279,000. So when you apply the same price
to earnings to to these similar businesses you've
actually got a situation where you're overpaying for this asset
relative to this one, even though they're identical. So that left us with a question:
what do we do? What can we use other than a
price to earnings ratio? And that's what this
video is for. So the short answer is,
one, you do have to use something different. Price to earnings ratio is a
good a quick way of comparing two companies relative
to their growth or relative to an industry. But it does lose a lot of
information relative to how the companies are capitalized. You saw in the last video that
how you're capitalized, and when I say capitalized
I mean how do you pay for your assets. If you have a lot of debt versus
a lot of equity, what actually happens on
the earnings line is very, very different. And so you lose all of
that information. And so if you want to capture
that information, when you look at the price of a stock
you have to figure out what you're actually paying for the
enterprise of the company, the enterprise value
of the company. So when I talk about the
enterprise, or the enterprise value, I'm talking about
the operating assets. It gets a little bit more
complicated if you're talking about a financial company
like a bank or an insurance company. But if we're talking about a
widget factory, the enterprise is essentially the assets. The enterprise value is the
asset value of the assets that allow the company
to do business. So whatever factories-- well, in
this case it's a pizzeria, so the ovens, the building,
the places, where people actually eat their food, and
even the cash that's necessary to operate the business. The enterprise value shouldn't
incorporate the cash that's surplus, that's not necessary
to operate the business. So that begs the question,
how do you calculate the enterprise value? So you could go backwards and
you say, OK, for a given price how much am I paying for
an enterprise value? So let's say that this stock--
let's say that Company A or this one, let's say the stock
right now is trading at $20. So this is the current price
that you could buy it at. So it's the asking price in
the market is at $20. While this one is at, let's
say it's at $10. It's at $10. So at first glance you might
just do a quick price to earnings ratio. And you'll say, OK, for $20 I'm
getting $2.10 earnings per year, assuming it's not
growing or something. So my price to earnings is
approximately, I don't know have my calculator in front of
me, but $20 divided by $2.10 is going to be 9 point
something, something. Right? While this guy, for $10,
I am getting $1.89 of earnings per year. So what's 100 divided by 18? It's 5 or 6 times. It's going to be 5
point something. 6 times 18 is 60 plus -- Yeah
it's going to be 5 point something, something. So when you superficially just
look at this you're going to say, wow, this is a cheaper
price to earnings ratio, maybe I should buy that. But what we saw in the last
video is that price to earnings isn't a good relative
valuation metric when two different companies are
capitalized very differently. So what you want to do is
instead back out what these prices imply about the
enterprise value. So what does $20 imply about the
enterprise value and what does $10 imply. And how do you do that? Well first you say what
is the market cap? Market cap. So you take the price times
the number of shares. If you remember, we
had 10,000 shares. So in this case $20 times
10,000 shares implies a $200,000 market cap. In this case we have $10 times
10,000 shares so it implies a $100,000 market cap. Now remember, the market cap
is just what's left over. So let me redraw those two
diagrams because I feel like I'm-- So for this entrepreneur
you have the assets and there's no debt. So the assets are kind
of completely represented by the equity. So if the market cap is $200,000
you're essentially saying that these assets, these
operating assets, are worth $200,000. So in this case, at a price
of $20, we know that the enterprise value, the market
enterprise value, so what the market is saying the enterprise
is worth, the operating assets are
worth, is $200,000. Now, in this case, remember the
market is saying that the equity is worth $100,000. Let me draw that. The market is saying that the
equity is worth $100,000. But of course this company
has a lot of debt. It has another $100,000
of debt. Actually let me draw this
a little bit different. All right. So in this situation the market
is saying that its market cap is $100,000. So just to be proportional
let me draw it like that. Not really use that one. So $100,000, this is the
equity or the market capitalization or the market
value of the equity. That's what the market cap is. So that's just the price times
the number of shares. And then it has debt. If I remember correctly it
has $100,000 in debt. We take $100,000 in debt. $100,000. And so what is it saying
about the assets? So the equity plus
the debt, or the liabilities, is $200,000. So it's saying all of the assets
are worth $200,000. This is all of the
assets, $200,000. But what we need to do, we want
to figure out the value of the enterprise. Not just all of the assets. So if we remember there was some
of the assets that were actually operational and some
were non-operational. So we had $10,000 of
cash right there. So we have $10,000 of cash. So when this stock is trading
at $10 it implies a market capitalization of $100,000. It implies that the liabilities plus equity is $200,000. So all of the assets
are $200,000. But if we were to subtract out
the cash or the non-operating assets, what's not necessary
to operate the business, we get $190,000 of enterprise
value. So in this case we're
saying that the enterprise value is $190,000. So in this case, when you look
at the price to earnings you're like, wow, this is half
as expensive as that. This is great deal,
let me buy it. And I just happened to make up
the numbers so even when I did the enterprise value it's
only 5% cheaper. Here it looks 50% cheaper. Here it looks 5% cheaper. And so it might be a
little unintuitive. To figure out the enterprise
value you take, and this will be the formula you see
in a lot of books. Enterprise value is equal
to market cap plus debt minus cash. And you might be like, when I'm
trying to value something why should I add debt back? Debt is a negative thing. Shouldn't debt make my
enterprise worth less? And why am I subtracting cash? Because cash is a positive
thing, shouldn't that make my enterprise value more? And the reason why, first, you
subtract cash is, and it really should be just cash that
is not associated with the enterprise. And you'll see a lot of people
do it in different ways. Some people subtract out all
cash with the argument that the company doesn't need
to use any of it. But the real idea behind it is
to kind of capture the assets that are actually generating the
profits of the enterprise. And the profits of the
enterprise are the operating profits. And the reason why you
add debt is, think about it this way. If you wanted to buy
out this company. Let's say from this company you
wanted to buy his assets at the market price. How would you do it? You would have to pay, what? You would have to maybe
get $200,000. If you got $200,000 you could
buy these guys off. You could pay them $100,000
and own that. And then you could
buy the bank out and pay them $100,000. So if you paid $200,000, you
would own all of this. Right? This would all be your equity. And then you would get $10,000
back if you know if you wanted to take this cash, right? So you would have essentially
paid $200,000 which is the market cap plus the debt. That's what you would have to
do to buy out both of those stakeholders in the company. And then you would get
back the cash. So you would have to pay net
$190,000 to own this enterprise. And hopefully that makes a
little bit more sense as why the enterprise value is actually
described this way. Now the one thing you might say,
OK, Sal, you figured out how to calculate enterprise
value from a share price. But what if I want to go
the other way around. How do I figure out what a
company's enterprise value should be and then figure
out what its share price should be? Well one metric, and there's
two metrics. The most common metric that's
used is EBITDA. EBITDA. I won't cover that now because
it's a new term for you, but it means earnings before
interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. And people look at something
called an enterprise value to EBITDA ratio. And I'll do that in
the next video. But what I like to do is just
think about, OK, what are the real earnings from
the enterprise? Well, that's the operating
profit. That's the operating
profit, right? And then you could apply a
multiple to that based on what other companies are trading at
or how fast it's growing. Let's say in this case we're
saying they're both generating $30,000 in operating
profit per year. Let's say that I want to
apply a 5 multiple to its operating profits. So let's say I want to say that
EV to operating profit, which I frankly think is a
better metric than EV to EBITDA-- and I'll cover EBITDA
in a future video-- let's say that I think for this industry
it should be 5. Let me say it should be 6. 6 times is a good multiple. So in both those cases the
operating profit was $30,000. So that means that EV should be
$30,000 times 6, which is equal to $180,000. Now for the first guy if the EV
is $180,000, if I'm saying that this thing right here, the
market value, should be $180,000, then I'm implying
that the equity should be worth $180,000. And there are 10,000 shares. So essentially I would take that
EV and I would say, well, all of that's equity, there's
no cash there, there's no debt, so all of this
is equity. So I would divide that
by the shares. I would say that the market cap
for the first guy should be $180,000. So the per-share price,
the price I'd be willing to pay, is $18. Because it had 10,000 shares. $18. Now let's take the second
guy's situation. We both agree in both situations
their enterprise value should be $180,000. But in this guy's case,
what are the assets? The assets are the enterprise,
$180,000 plus $10,000. Plus $10,000, right? This whole left-hand
side is $190,000. And then if you wanted to
subtract out, figure out the market cap, you would take
this whole thing and then subtract out the debt to
get the market cap. Right? And then you would be left with
this piece right here. That right there, right? You were just figuring out
this whole distance, subtracting out this distance. So essentially you would say
that the market cap is equal to the enterprise value plus
the cash minus the debt. And it's good to draw those
balance sheets if you ever get confused. Minus the debt. So the market cap is equal to
$190,000 minus $100,000 is equal to $90,000. And so if you divide that by
10,000 shares you'd say that I'm willing to pay
$9 per share. So if you believe that the
enterprise value of these pizzerias are identical and
that they're both worth $180,000, you should
be willing to pay $18 for Company A. And if you're completely
equivalent to it, you should pay $9 for Company B. And now if you're a little bit
more aggressive you might like the leverage, you might
like how Company B is growing, et cetera. Maybe you would like to pay a
premium for that leverage or maybe you wouldn't, because it
also increases your risk. Because you get leverage on the
upside or on the downside. But anyways I wanted to
introduce you to value. On the next video I'll introduce
you to EBITDA.