IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/iesewp/d-0511.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How to value a seasonal company by discounting cash flows

Author

Listed:
  • Fernandez, Pablo

    (IESE Business School)

Abstract

The correct way of valuing seasonal companies by cash flow discounting is to use monthly data. It is possible to use annual data, but it requires some adjustments. In this paper the author shows that when using annual data in the context of the adjusted present value (APV), the calculations of the value of the unlevered equity (Vu) and the value of the tax shields (VTS) must be adjusted. However, the debt that has to be substracted to calculate the equity value does not need to be adjusted. The author derives the adjustments to be made. The errors due to using annual data without making the adjustments are big. Adjusting the calculations only by using average debt and average working capital requirements does not provide a good approximation. When the inventories are a liquid commodity such as grain or seeds, it is not correct to consider all of them as working capital requirements. Excess inventories financed with debt are equivalent to a set of futures contracts. The author shows that not considering them as such leads to an undervaluation of the company. This paper values a company in which the seasonality is due to the purchases of raw materials: the company buys and pays for all raw materials in the month of December. It is shown that the equity value calculated using annual data without making the adjustments understates the true value by 45% if the valuation is done at the end of December, and overstates the true value by 38% if the valuation is done at the end of November. The error due to adjusting only by using average debt and average working capital requirements ranges from -17.9% to 8.5%.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernandez, Pablo, 2003. "How to value a seasonal company by discounting cash flows," IESE Research Papers D/511, IESE Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0511-E.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "Shareholder value creation of microsoft and GE," IESE Research Papers D/564, IESE Business School.
    2. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "The value of tax shields is NOT equal to the present value of tax shields," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 145-165, July.
    3. Fernandez, Pablo, 2002. "Valuation Methods and Shareholder Value Creation," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780122538414.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "80 common and uncommon errors in company valuation," IESE Research Papers D/550, IESE Business School.
    2. Fernandez, Pablo, 2003. "75 common and uncommon errors in company valuation," IESE Research Papers Db/515, IESE Business School.
    3. Pablo Fernández & Andrada Bilan, 2013. "110 Common Errors in Company Valuations," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 33-78.
    4. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "Most common errors in company valuation," IESE Research Papers D/565, IESE Business School.
    5. Nangia, Vinay Kumar & Agrawal, Rajat & Reddy, K. Srinivasa, 2011. "Business Valuation: Modelling Forecasting Hurdle Rate," MPRA Paper 60420, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2011.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mohsen Afsharian & Anna Kryvko & Peter Reichling, 2011. "Efficiency and Its Impact on the Performance of European Commercial Banks," FEMM Working Papers 110018, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    2. Borell, Mariela & Heger, Diana, 2013. "Sources of value creation through private equity-backed mergers and acquisitions: The case of buy-and-build strategies," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-094, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Seth Armitage, 2008. "Incorporating Financing‐Related Determinants Of Value In The Discounted Cash Flow Model," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 274-298, April.
    4. Fernandez, Pablo, 2006. "The equity premium in finance and valuation textbooks," IESE Research Papers D/657, IESE Business School.
    5. Mario Massari & Francesco Roncaglio & Laura Zanetti, 2008. "On the Equivalence between the APV and the wacc Approach in a Growing Leveraged Firm," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 14(1), pages 152-162, January.
    6. Fernandez, Pablo, 2006. "The correct value of tax shields: An analysis of 23 theories," IESE Research Papers D/628, IESE Business School.
    7. Magni, Carlo Alberto, 2009. "Splitting up value: A critical review of residual income theories," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 198(1), pages 1-22, October.
    8. André Farber & Roland Gillet & Ariane Szafarz, 2005. "A general formula for the WACC," Working Papers CEB 05-012.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    9. Rainer Niemann & Mariana Sailer, 2023. "Is analytical tax research alive and kicking? Insights from 2000 until 2022," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(6), pages 1149-1212, August.
    10. Cooper, Ian A. & Nyborg, Kjell G., 2006. "The value of tax shields IS equal to the present value of tax shields," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 215-225, July.
    11. Christian Bach, 2011. "Conservatism in Corporate Valuation," CREATES Research Papers 2011-32, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    12. Samer Ajour El Zein & Carolina Consolacion-Segura & Ruben Huertas-Garcia, 2019. "The Role of Sustainability in Brand Equity Value in the Financial Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, December.
    13. Fernandez, Pablo, 2003. "Levered and unlevered Beta," IESE Research Papers D/488, IESE Business School.
    14. Peter Reichling & Anastasiia Zbandut, 2017. "Costs of capital under credit risk," FEMM Working Papers 170003, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    15. Marko Volker Krause & Alexander Lahmann, 2016. "Reconsidering the appropriate discount rate for tax shield valuation," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 86(5), pages 477-512, July.
    16. Fernandez, Pablo, 2003. "Equivalence of ten different methods for valuing companies by cash flow discounting," IESE Research Papers D/524, IESE Business School.
    17. H. Qi & Y. A. Xie, 2016. "Cost of capital: spot rate or forward rate?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(40), pages 3804-3811, August.
    18. Ignacio Vélez-Pareja & Rauf Ibragimov & Joseph Tham, 2008. "Constant Leverage And Constant Cost Of Capital: A Common Knowledge Half-Truth," Estudios Gerenciales, Universidad Icesi, June.
    19. Fernandez, Pablo, 2005. "Financial literature about discounted cash flow valuation," IESE Research Papers D/606, IESE Business School.
    20. G. Lumpkin & Todd Moss & David Gras & Shoko Kato & Alejandro Amezcua, 2013. "Entrepreneurial processes in social contexts: how are they different, if at all?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 761-783, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    valuation seasonal companies; seasonality; cash flow discounting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0511. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Noelia Romero (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ienaves.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.