He's willing to pay for them. The answer depends on current interest rates. If these figures seem surgically precise, it's because they are. They use a formula called present value to determine the current value of a future stream of payments. As you can see from the chart below, the price for a stream of payments falls as interest rates rise.
Many large investors use a similar logic when determining how much to pay for a stock.
In this case, the future stream of payments is either a company's annual dividends or earnings. Naturally, corporate earnings aren't static, but there are formulas to account for that. But if all of a company's fundamentals remain the same and interest rates rise, the logical conclusion is to lower your price target for that stock. Of course, there are many ways to fiddle with numbers. Investors can assume that a company's earnings will rise even more dramatically than originally thought, which would raise the price.