现金流量折现法

这个链接讲的比较详细，对非要用计算器来算公司价值的人来讲肯定会有帮助，我相信大家看完以后会头晕的。在这里，我想举个极端的例子来说明一下用“未来现金流折现的思维方式”去毛估估公司内在价值的方法。假设有家公司，比如叫“美国虎牙”。以下是所有的假设条件：

Source: http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201042701030674/

Discounted cash flow

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2010-05-27 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201042701030674/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20100605062111/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/1269981201042701030674/))

http://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E7%8E%B0%E9%87%91%E6%B5%81%E9%87%8F%E6%8A%98%E7%8E%B0%E6%B3%95

This link explains it in some detail. It will surely help people who insist on using a calculator to work out a company's value; I believe everyone will be dizzy after reading it.

Here I want to use an extreme example to illustrate how to roughly estimate a company's intrinsic value with "the way of thinking of discounting future cash flows".

Suppose there is a company called, say, "American Tiger Tooth". These are all the assumptions:

1. No debt, now or later. (Right now it has net cash.)

2. The number of shares outstanding never changes. (In fact it keeps changing because of options and buybacks.)

3. Every year US$1 billion of cash flow (exactly = net profit) comes in, and every year all the incoming cash flow is paid out to shareholders. (Right now cash flow is above US$1 billion but profit hasn't reached that, and there is no dividend.)

4. It owns 30% of the company "Japan Tiger Tooth". After 2020 its market value is US$50 billion. (Maybe higher, who knows? In Japan, tiger teeth are more popular than dog teeth.)

5. It owns 30% of the Hong Kong company "Yilu Fafa" [Translator's note: 一路发发, "prosperity all the way".]. After 2020 its market value is US$100 billion. (Heh, the CEO has this confidence, and I also think it's possible, but it's not certain.)

6. It owns 40% of the unlisted mainland Chinese company "Ala Nainai" [Translator's note: 阿拉奶奶, "our granny".]. The company goes public in 2015 at an IPO valuation of US$50 billion, and by 2020 its market value is US$150 billion. (Very likely.)

7. In 2020 an American company called "Xiangdang Ying" [Translator's note: 相当硬, "quite hard".] buys the US part of "American Tiger Tooth" for US$20 billion, and at the same time the shares of the other assets (3 listed companies) are distributed directly to all "American Tiger Tooth" shareholders. (It doesn't matter if nobody would buy it; it's just to make the calculation easy.)

8. Taxes on the dividends and shares the shareholders receive are ignored. (How could there be no taxes?)

9. Assume a discount rate of 6%. (If it were 4% or 5%, the difference would be quite big; who has time to work it out?)

Now let's work out how much this "Tiger Tooth" is worth:

a. Income of 1 billion a year for 10 years: 10 + 10/1.06 + 10/(1.06 squared) + ... + 10/(1.06 to the 9th power) = 10 + 9.43 + 8.90 + 8.40 + 7.92 + 7.47 + 7.05 + 6.65 + 6.27 + 5.91 = US$7.802 billion.

b. Discounted value of "Japan Tiger Tooth": 500/(1.06 to the 10th power) × 30% = US$8.376 billion.

c. Discounted value of "Yilu Fafa": 1000/(1.06 to the 10th power) × 30% = US$16.752 billion.

d. Discounted value of "Ala Nainai": 1500/(1.06 to the 10th power) × 40% = US$33.504 billion.

e. Discounted value of "Xiangdang Ying": 200/(1.06 to the 10th power) = US$11.168 billion.

a+b+c+d+e = US$77.602 billion. If all the assumptions above hold, this should be the company's "intrinsic value". The problem is that in fact all the conditions above are assumptions, and a change in any one of them changes the company's intrinsic value. Here we only covered 10 years; in reality, if you can evaluate a company over a longer period, it may become clearer (but harder).

Understanding or judging whether all the conditions hold is very hard; in Munger's words, it is no easier than being an "ornithologist" (or an "economist").

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One point to note specially: if a company holds a lot of cash but can never make it grow, in the long run that cash will lose value. The problem is that if the cash is used badly, it loses value even faster.

The flaw in this example is that b, c and d all use market value, which will deviate from intrinsic value.

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All the figures above are assumptions made for ease of calculation and have nothing to do with any real company.

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The conclusion that follows: the returns of cigar-butt investing may be lower than those of good growth companies. This is said to be Munger's contribution to Buffett.

Also: perhaps the easiest example to calculate with this method is property. Use discounted future cash flows to work out whether the current [Translator's note: a small ASCII-art picture of a house stands here in the original; not reproduced.] price is expensive or not. Here future cash flow means (rent minus expenses). If you don't get it, think about the house. If you still don't get it, go back and read Poor Dad; those who get it may have the chance to be Rich Dad.