@suru27 Just because a company is fundamentally very very strong , doesn’t mean an investor would end up getting rewarded always . The term called “Valuation”needs to be respected which ultimately gives you margins of safety and comfort in panic situations .

One of the best debates I have seen in recent history between @SunilBSinghania and Saurabh Mukherjea.

TOPIC: Has P/E lost its relevance?

I resonate more with Sunil’s side. Here’s a thread 🧵 on the main points made by him:

@varinder_bansal @safiranand @myvaluepicks

1/ Importance of PE

PE is not the only factor but an important factor.

Ultimately the growth has to justify how much PE are you paying for the company.

There cannot be an unlimited PE multiple based on some xyz parameters.

2/ Hindsight Bias:

In hindsight we can say that from 2001 to 2021, a company grew at 25 % and we should have given a very high PE to it.

But on the day when you buy, you don’t know that the company is going to grow at 25% for the next 20 years.

3/ Millennial preference:

Things have become more competitive.

New generation don’t really care much about legacy.

Convenience and affordability matters more.

The longevity and sustainability of growth has changed dramatically.

4/ Company that require a big investment - There is opportunity to invest big.

Company 1: Mkt Cap of 50 cr
Company 2: Mkt cap of 1 lakh cr

50c r company can become 3x, 1 lakh cr company cannot become 2x.

On absolute basis you end up making 5 cr vs 5k cr in 1lakh cr company.

VALUATION MULTIPLES FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES

• There is a lot of misunderstanding & misapplication of valuation multiples, both among retail and institutional investors
• Get clarity on this by revisiting the 1st principles here

Prerequisites:
• Finance 101 knowledge

THREAD 👇

KEY CONCEPT: VALUE STAKEHOLDERS
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
"Value is in the rights of the user"
So it is important to ask, "VALUE TO WHOM?"

There are 2 main types of stakeholders in a company:
1. Equity holders
2. Lenders

KEY CONCEPTS: MCAP and EV

Value to equity holders is represented by the Market Capitalization (MCAP).

Value to equity AND lenders is represented by Enterprise Value (EV):

Notice how you can convert between Enterprise Value to Market Capitalization easily

KEY CONCEPT: FCFF

Free cash flow to the firm (FCFF) = Cash flows available for distribution to both equity holders AND lenders

Related:
Free cash flow to equity (FCFE) = Cash flows available for distribution to ONLY the equity holders

We will focus on EV & FCFF in the examples

KEY CONCEPT: FUNDAMENTAL VALUE OF A COMPANY

The fundamental/intrinsic value of a company is equal to the present value of the cash flows it would generate in future.

The growing perpetuity expression of value is shown below:

A word of advice and caution. When you buy a High Pe stock. Make sure that you are very certain about the growth. Plenty of good and bad examples

Eicher=Growth stopped, Got derated.

Pi Industries= At 52+Pe in 2015, growth continued (5bagger since then)

Symphony=Growth stopped as more competitors copied them, painful time correction.

Astral=Kept growing and entering newer adjacencies since 2015 when it was at 60+ Pe. (Been a 10 bagger since then)

Page Industries=Growth stopped as the company matured. No returns for last 4 yrs.

Bajaj Finance= Kept growing (barring Pandemic). Kept rerating with the earnings growth.

HDFC Life=Been absurdly valued since 2018. Leading to very poor returns.

Relaxo=Kept getting rerated on back of earnings growth.

High Pe means market is expecting strong earnings growth. What happens when it fails to come? Likely derating or painful time correction.

Paying a high multiple, you need to make sure that the growth is certain.

What I do to grasp such opportunities or to ignore them is to have a mix of deeply valued companies (like some financials I own) with Companies where I think they will grow at 30-35%+ (Navin).

This is what my framework is:-

Pf=High Pe+Already seen value+Strong earnings growth

In those days, working capital belonged to the shareholders.

If the employees were no longer useful, you just sacked them all, took the working capital, and stuck it in the owners' pockets.

That was the way capitalism worked

Nowadays, of course, the accounting is not realistic

Fresh out of the @mjmauboussin oven is a paper titled "The Impact of Intangibles on Base Rates"

Key finding: Companies with higher intangibles asset intensity tend to have higher growth rates. The dispersion in growth rates is also higher for them.

Link: https://t.co/0u1dk0h0UK

"The good news is that intangible-intensive companies can grow faster than their tangible counterparts. The bad news is they can also become irrelevant and shrink fast. As a consequence, we should see two effects in the data: higher growth and more dispersion in the outcomes."