A few days ago, Groupon filed an S-1 statement with the Securities Exchange Commission, officially signaling its intent to do an initial public offering.http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/06/02/groupon-ipo-its-here/I do know that there are valuation questions that will come up with the IPO but talking about them will lead me to repeat earlier points that I made about the Linkedin and Skype valuations: the value will depend upon revenue growth and potential operating margins. Instead, I want to focus on a claim that Groupon has made, that has opened up the company for some ridicule in the financial...
There is an app for that....
I have a healthy respect for technology. While I don't see it as the cure for any of our problems in valuation, it has made life a lot easier in terms of mechanics. I still remember trying to value companies in the mid-eighties, where data had to be collected by hand (in libraries) and computers were primitive (I started with Visicalc on a Kaypro and it was just a glorified hand calculator, with limited features). I have tried to stay on top of evolving trends, though I have never been cutting edge on any dimension.As I watch my kids and colleagues increasingly abandon their computers for their...
Thoughts on intrinsic value
I know this post will strike some of you as splitting hairs and an abstraction but it is a topic that fascinates me. A few weeks ago, I got an email asking a very simple question: How do you estimate the "intrinsic" value of gold? This, of course, raised two key questions:a. What is intrinsic value?b. Does every asset have an intrinsic value?On the first question, here is my definition of intrinsic value. It is the value that you would attach to an asset, based upon its fundamentals: cash flows, expected growth and risk. The essence of intrinsic value is that you can estimate it in a vacuum for...
