Auld Lang Syne: Remembering 2011

There are only a couple of hours left in 2011 in New York and it is already the new year in many parts of the world. Let me spend my last post for this year, looking back at the year that was and looking forward to the year to come, using a few of my favorite market props: cash flows/earnings, market prices, risk free rates and risk premiums.It was a good year for earnings at US companies, with earnings on the S&P 500 companies rising about 16%. That makes what happens to stock prices a little puzzling, since the S&P 500 index started the year at 1257.64 and ended the year at 1257.60....

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Do markets punish long term thinking? Amazon as a case study

This morning's New York Times has an article from one my favorite business writers, James Stewart, on Amazon. His focus, largely admiring, is on the fact that Amazon has made decisions that hurt it in the short term but create value in the long term. To provide at least two examples, he talks about Amazon's decisions to cut prices on products and go for a larger market share and to invest in in the Kindle, their book reader. The tenor of the article is that the market has short sightedly punished the company for its long term focus. Stewart uses one piece of anecdotal evidence to back up his claim...

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Living within your limits: Thoughts on Research In Motion (RIM)

I have a sixteen-year old daughter who calls me "old man" and while I know she is using the term lovingly (of course.. I believe the best about my kids), the moniker still strikes home as a reminder that I am older and that age brings limits that I can choose to ignore at my own peril. I know that I can no longer go to bed late and get up early, that I have to watch what I eat and that I need my reading glasses to read restaurant menus. As I watched Research in Motion (RIM) go through painful contortions in the financial markets yesterday, I was reminded that companies also go through an aging...

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How much diversification is too much?

As an investor, should you put all of your money in one stock or should you spread your bets across many investments? If it is the latter, how many investments should you have in your portfolio? The debate is an old one and there are many views but they fall between two extremes. At one end is the advice that you get from a believer in efficient markets: be maximally diversfied, across asset classes, and within each asset class, across as many assets you can hold: the proverbial “market portfolio” includes every traded asset in the market, held in proportion to its market value. At the other is...

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Following up on Groupon

In my last post, I made an attempt to value Groupon and came up with $14.62/share, before the voting right adjustment. Now that the offering is complete and the first day of trading is over, I thought it would be useful to take stock of general lessons that can be drawn from this deal. The offering price was raised to $20/share and the stock jumped another 40% during the course of the day. So, here are a few questions that I am fielding today...1.     Is it possible that you are wrong in your assumptions and that other investors are far more optimistic about revenue growth/...

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Are you ready to value Groupon?

After a series of missteps, it looks like the Groupon valuation is ready to hit the market on Friday, with the final pricing to be done on Thursday. To bring you up to date on this unfolding story, the initial talk during the summer was that the company would be valued at $20 billion or more. In the months afterwards, loose talk from management of how customer acquisition costs were not operating expenses and what should be recorded as revenues got in the way of the sales pitch. As management credibility crumbled, the value dropped by the week and it looks like the company will now go public at...

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Growth (Part 4): Growth and Management Credibility

If you buy a growth company, the bulk of the value that you attach to the company comes from its growth assets. For these growth assets to be valuable, though, not only do you need high growth potential, but the company has to be able to scale up its growth while ensuring that it generates returns that exceed its cost of capital, while delivering this growth. That is tough to do, and it should come as no surprise that most young, growth companies do not make it through these tests. Investors who are able to look at a large group of young, growth companies, and separate those that will survive...

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Growth (Part 3): The Value of Growth

Consider a firm that has $ 100 million invested in capital that generated $ 10 million in after-tax income in the most recent year. For this firm to generate more income next year, it has to do one of two things:Manage its existing capital (assets) more efficiently: Thus, if the firm can cut its operating expenses and increase its income to $12 million next period, it will have a growth rate of 20% for the next period. Let's call this efficiency growth.Add to its capital base: If the firm can add another $ 10 million to its capital base and maintain its current return on capital (10%), its income...

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Growth (Part 2): Scaling up Growth

As companies get larger, it becomes more difficult to sustain high percentage growth rates in revenues for two reasons. The first is that the same percentage growth rate will require larger and larger absolute changes in revenues each period and thus will be more difficult to deliver. The second is that a company's success  will attract the attention of other firms; the resulting competition will act as a damper on growth.I know! I know! You have your counter examples ready: Apple and Google come to mind. First, note that even these exemplars of success have seen growth rates decline over...

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Growth (Part 1): The Limits of Growth

When valuing young, growth companies, a key input into the valuation is the expected growth rate in revenues. For these companies to become valuable, small revenues have to become big revenues (and negative operating margins have to become positive ones...) and revenue growth is the driver of value. It is a tough number to estimate and it is easy to get carried away, especially in hot sectors. In this post, I will look at the information that can be used to put limits on this estimate, reasons why some companies may be able to blow through these limits and the disconnect that often emerges between...

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Growth and Value: Thoughts on Google, Groupon and Green Mountain

In the last week, I noticed three stories that at first sight seem to be unrelated but I think share a common theme:The first was on Google, with the focus being on how much Google is spending to impressive growth numbers.The second and continuing story is on Groupon and it’s imminent or not so imminent IPO, with the emphasis being on the accounting shenanigans and market whiplash.The third story is on Green Mountain Coffee, an incredible success story over the last five years, and the skepticism that some investors are showing about whether it can sustain its growth.While the stories are on different...

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