1/ Howard Marks once said that before buying an asset, above anything, he wants to know “the amount of optimism that’s in the price.”

All investors can do this with a handy tool: The Reverse DCF.

I'll also leave a download link to my compact DCF Model at the end of this thread.

@Gautam__Baid He laid down very similar principles a decade ago in his 1976 letter (Source: https://t.co/6Z5v0qEaIg)

What's amazing is how consistent he's been in following his philosophy even after nearly 5

1/ Since "liquidity" has been the buzzword these days, here's an anecdote and a powerful lesson from history about printing unlimited amounts of money. Story time. #fintwit

2/ Our story begins with Mansa Musa or Musa I of Mali, an African king who consistently figures in the list of richest people in the world (Inflation-adjusted). One of his given names was 'Lord of the (Gold) Mines of Wangara'. Lest we forget, Gold was the 'Money' in those days.

3/ One fine day in 1324, Musa decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course, it was easier said than done. Mecca was ~8,500 Kms away from Timbuktu, Mali. Ultimately he did make that journey and it has been recorded in the script "The Chronicles of the Seeker" by Mahmud Kati.

4/ Famously, he took a ton of 'money' (Gold) with him to aid in his journey (Well in his defense, it was ~8,500 Kms). About 60,000 laborers and soldiers carried 2 Kgs each and their camels carried 13 Kgs each, bringing the tally to an estimated ~1,30,000 Kgs of Gold.

5/ Being a generous King, he donated Gold left and right to every poor person he saw on the way. Regions of Cairo, Medina and Mecca became instantly 'rich'. The estimated donation is ~32,000 Kgs of Gold or ~$2 Billion in today's estimate.

@abhishec_s @Sanjay__Bakshi The most rational course of action is to buy below your expected value, hold when it's between your expected value and overvalued zone and sell above overvalued zone (No in-betweens or holding extra cash).

But there are many impediments in executing each step.

1/ I've Valued 150+ companies using the Discounted Cashflow (DCF) Model. Far be it for me to say I am an expert. But if you've done this as much as I have, you start noticing certain patterns.

Here are 10 lessons I've learned from using the Discounted Cashflow Model.

2/ Every investment decision you make follows a Discounted Cashflow calculation.

You let go of X today to earn Y in the future. You wouldn't do that if you didn't expect to earn an expected amount of returns (r).

Nobody wants to let go of X and get back X years down the line.

3/ When you invest in a company, you hold claim over the Assets and the Profits of a Company. Without diluting your ownership, Assets and future Profits are generated out of one thing and one thing alone: Free Cash Flow to Firm.

FCFF is the treasure at the end of the rainbow!

4/ Combining the above two observations, a company may not always make Profits in the present. In fact, if it's a young company or in a new market, losses are a given.

Eventually though, future profits should be large enough to offset or overtake all the past losses in PV terms.

5/ For most companies, generating Returns falls in a spectrum: Have high Margins and generate lower Sales in relation to Capital Employed Vs. Turn Assets faster but have low Margins (Or somewhere in between).

For Indian context, compare the Business Models of D-Mart Vs. NESCO.

A thread: How to value? 🏦💰❓

Sharing my learnings from my journey so far.

Initially when I started out I used to ignore what anybody would have to say about their style of valuing a business and I would blindly copy what Benjamin Graham’s book, The Intelligent Investor had to say.

Later came a stage where I realized Benjamin style was not working.

Before we get into the learning, here is the background to it:

If you have been following me for the past 1 year you would have noticed how my valuation method has changed.

I used to struggle a lot with valuation and it would be at the back of my mind the whole day thinking what are these investors doing to value. I tried DCF but that didn’t work for me. (Don’t hate me for that, its my personal choice)

I used to attend Bloomberg Quint’s talk on Zoom, message investors, read books, etc. to figure out: How to value? (The frustration had got to a level that I took break from investing for 3-4 weeks)

"You don't drive a truck that weighs 9,900 pounds across a bridge that says "Limit 10,000 pounds" because you can't be that sure."- Warren Buffett

@Dinesh_Sairam @a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Questions that are only answered with time haha.

@a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Just to add - sustainable FCF is a faraway concept for most till (if) they gain scale or innovate/add value. Till then, it's generally always a struggle to manage WC and capacity addition. Wouldn't expect that to change for a while.

"An Introduction to Valuation" by Aswath Damodaran is an excellent doc for learning more about Valuation, differences between Intrinsic Value (DCF) and Relative Valuations (their basics, Pros/Cons, when they work better...).

cc: @dmuthuk

Some of my fav slides from the presentation.

✔️Misconceptions about and approaches to Valuation.

Has anyone compared AB Fashion in lieu with Nykaa valuations?

Nykaa FY21 TOTAL sales at around 2500 cr: expected m-cap over 50,000 cr

Aditya Birla Fashion FY21 online e-commerce sales 900 cr (total sales 5600 cr) – has done 8700 cr pre-covid; m-cap is 25,000 cr

#justcurious