vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
From http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Business+Fundamentals The facts that affect a company's   underlying value. Examples of business   fundamentals include debt, cash flow,   supply of and demand for the company's   products, and so forth. For instance,   if a company does not have a   sufficient supply of products, it will   fail. Likewise, demand for the product   must remain at a certain level in   order for it to be successful. Strong   business fundamentals are considered   essential for long-term success and   stability. See also: Value Investing,   Fundamental Analysis. For a stock the basic fundamentals are the second column of numbers you see on the google finance summary page,  P/E ratio, div/yeild, EPS, shares, beta.   For the company itself it's generally the stuff on the 'financials' link  (e.g. things in the quarterly and annual report,  debt, liabilities, assets, earnings, profit etc.
P/E ratio is useful but limited as others have said. Another problem is that it doesn't show leverage. Two companies in the same industry could have the same P/E but be differently leveraged. In that case I would buy the company with more equity and less debt as it should be a less risky investment. To compare companies and take leverage/debt into account you could use the EV/EBIT ratio instead. Its slightly more complicated to calculate and isn't presented by as many data sources though. Enterprise Value (EV) can be said to represent the value of the company if someone would buy it today and then pay off all its (interest bearing) debt. EV is essentially calculated like this: (Market Capitalization plus cash & cash equivalents)  minus interest-bearing debt.  This is then divided by EBIT (Earnings before interest and tax) to get the ratio. One drawback of this ratio though is that it can't be used for financials since their balance sheet pretty much consists of debt and the Enterprise Value therefore doesn't tell us very much. Also, like the P/E ratio it is dependent on fresh numbers. A balance sheet is just a glimpse of the companys financial situation on ONE DAY, and this could (and probably will, although not drastically for bigger companies) change to the next day.
"If the time horizon is not indicated, this is just a ""fair price"". The price of the stock, which corresponds with the fair value of the whole company. The value, which the whole business is worth, taking into consideration its net income, current bonds yield, level of risk of the business, perspective of the business etc.. The analyst thinks the price will sooner or later hit the target level (if the price is high, investors will exit stocks, if the price is cheap, investors will jump in), but no one knows, how much time will it take."
Other metrics like Price/Book Value or Price/Sales can be used to determine if a company has above average valuations and would be classified as growth or below average valuations and be classified as value. Fama and French's 3 Factor model would be one example that was studied a great deal using an inverse of Price/Book I believe.
"No, an entrepreneur actually adds value, whereas stock ownership does not. Buying stocks is akin to gambling, except with different rules and an average positive return over time, whereas normal casino gambling always has a net negative result on average.  To put it shortly:  If it doesn't make a difference whether its you or John from across the corner doing the action, then its basically a speculation with ""investment"" as an alias. You're merely the purse.  If you are involved in the running of the project, taking decisions, organizing, putting your time and creativity in, then you're an entrepreneur.  In this case, its clear to see that different persons will have different results, so they matter as persons and not just as purses.  Note that if you buy enough stock to actually have a say in the running of the company, then you're crossing the threshold there."
It seems to me that your main question here is about why a stock is worth anything at all, why it has any intrinsic value, and that the only way you could imagine a stock having value is if it pays a dividend, as though that's what you're buying in that case.  Others have answered why a company may or may not pay a dividend, but I think glossed over the central question.  A stock has value because it is ownership of a piece of the company. The company itself has value, in the form of: You get the idea. A company's value is based on things it owns or things that can be monetized.  By extension, a share is a piece of all that. Some of these things don't have clear cut values, and this can result in differing opinions on what a company is worth.  Share price also varies for many other reasons that are covered by other answers, but there is (almost) always some intrinsic value to a stock because part of its value represents real assets.
P/E can use various estimates in its calculation as one could speculate about future P/E rations and thus could determine a future valuation if one is prepared to say that the P/E should be X for a company. Course it is worth noting that if a company isn't generating positive earnings this can be a less than useful tool, e.g. Amazon in the 1990s lost money every quarter and thus would have had a N/A for a P/E. PEG would use P/E and earnings growth as a way to see if a stock is overvalued based on projected growth. If a company has a high P/E but has a high earnings growth rate then that may prove to be worth it. By using the growth rate, one can get a better idea of the context to that figure. Another way to gain context on P/E would be to look at industry averages that would often be found on Yahoo! Finance and other sites.
Taking inventory of strategic assets: Compiling a list of the major strategic assets of the enterprise; distinguishing between operating and dormant assets (e.g., patents under development or licensed out versus abandoned patents), active brands (enabling the charging of a premium product price) and brands in name only, or producing oil and gas properties and those under exploration versus inactive properties. Such inventory taking establishes the foundation—active strategic assets—of the company’s competitive advantage. 2. Enhancing strategic assets: Without continued investment and replenishment, even highly productive assets will wither on the vine (recall Dell). You should ask, Is the spending on R&amp;D, technology purchases, customer acquisition, brand support, and employee training sufficient to maintain and grow the business? Cutting R&amp;D or employee training to “make the numbers” clearly bodes ill for future growth. 3. Defending strategic assets: These assets are vulnerable to competition (from similar products), infringement, and technological disruption, raising the question of whether the company’s assets are adequately protected by continuous innovation, patent defensive walls, and litigation. A continuous loss of market share clearly indicates a failure to protect assets. 4. Asset deployment and value creation: Are the strategic assets, along with other company resources, optimally deployed to create value (e.g., retail outlets with increasing same-store sales)? And what is this value? Note that in our analysis, the measurement of the periodic value created is a byproduct rather than the focus of the analysis. We prefer to measure value created by cash flows to avoid the multiple managerial estimates embedded in earnings. In contrast to the cash flows generally used by analysts (EBITDA), however, we add to cash flows the company’s investments in value-creating strategic assets, such as R&amp;D, IT, and unusual brand creation expenditures, which are not really operating cash outflows. Now, if we are living in a period of secular stagnation, this could be seen as an attempt to lower the bar to make up for lackluster capital investment. (One academic literature review we found on the topic of strategic assets only cites papers from around the time of the dot-com bubble. Fancy that!)
On a company level ROCE over WACC would be more meaningful in my view but the end result should be be pretty much the same. This concept is closely related to value creation. Value can only be created when a company's ROCE is exceeding its cost of funding - WACC. This is also tightly related with the NPV concept. Value is only created when the NPV on a project is &gt;0.  And to directly answer OP. Study in detail WACC. (weighted average cost of capital). Focus on the Modigliani–Miller theorem with taxes and financial distress costs. Good luck.
Value is one area where economic theories tend to diverge and the (very) basic schools of thought both have excellent points in their favor. You've identified both here; one being that economic value can always be determined by net labor* or at least cost of inputs and the other being that economic value does not exist in and of itself and that only a market can determine value. In some ways it is just a question of world-view as much as anything but the concepts of natural prices or innate worth are difficult to argue against. At the same time, without exchange the concept of value has little meaning. So, as usual, it is some sophistry mixed with some sense.  Both have elements of truth and both are considerably more complex than they seem at first. Interestingly though, neither seems to work very well as predictive models despite providing the basis for some incredibly complex and interesting mathematical workups.       * Note that net labor is the sum of ALL labor involved and is incredibly difficult to quantify accurately.
Specifically I was wondering, how can the founder determine an appropriate valuation and distribution of shares; ie- the amount of equity to make available for public vs how much to reserve for him/herself. This is an art more than science. If markets believe it to be worth x; one will get. This is not a direct correlation of the revenue a start up makes. It is more an estimated revenue it would make in some point in time in future. There are investment firms that can size up the opportunity and advise; however it is based on their experience and may not always be true reflection of value.
"A DCF includes changes in working capital which is a source or use of cash.  I also don't like your characterization of enterprise value as ""cashless"" because it's also ""debtless"".  It's capital structure independent -- just like a DCF is.  **That's the common theme.**"
"One way to value companies is to use a Dividend discount model. In substance, it consists in estimating future dividends and calculating their present value. So it is a methodology which considers that an equity is similar to a bond and estimates its current value based on future cash flows. A company may not be paying dividends now, but because its future earnings prospects are good may pay some in the future. In that case the DDM model will give a non-zero value to that stock. If on the other hand you think a company won't ever make any profits and therefore never pay any dividends, then it's probably worth 0! Take Microsoft as an example - it currently pays ~3% dividend per annum. The stock has been listed since 1986 and yet it did not pay any dividends until 2003. But the stock has been rising regularly since the beginning because people had ""priced in"" the fact that there was a high chance that the company would become very profitable - which proved true in the long term (+60,000% including dividends since the IPO!)."
​​​​​You're not missing anything. Excess cash is somewhat of a nebulous concept. To different people it means different things. The answer is that excess cash varies for each company depending on their business. For instance, some companies need very high amounts of working capital. A company may be increasing their inventories and therefore will require more cash on their balance sheet to fund growth. If a company always needs this extra cash, some investors prefer to leave that cash out of a valuation because the company cannot run profitably without it. Think about what happens to your calculation of Enterprise Value if you subtract excess cash as opposed to cash. Excess cash is always less than cash. Therefore by subtracting excess cash you increase EV. Since one common valuation metric is EV/EBITDA, a higher numerator will make the stock seem more expensive - that is the EV/EBITDA ratio will seem higher when using excess cash as opposed to cash. So using excess cash in your valuation methodology is basically a conservative concept. Depending on the business 20% of revenues seem way too high as a reserve for excess cash. 2% is a much better rule of thumb.
Value to rich &gt; 0% . QED. Your roads argument as an example of poor using more infrastructure than the rich is a bad one. The poor are more likely to take public transportation and/or work within 5 miles of their residence. The rich are more likely to have multiple cars, live in gated areas far from work and take long road trips. Staying at home to work is a function of more than just owning stock. There are at-home-parents, IT professionals, programmers, VOIP operators, etc, all working from home and completely independent of road use. &gt; C) The activities of business owners generate massive tax revenues. These far outweigh their personal utility from infrastructure. C1: ""personal utility"" You are mixing corporate and personal taxes and yet calling out ""personal"" utility. Unless you are talking about business owners flowing income to personal income (e.g. S-Corp) the mixing of terms is unfortunate because both business and people use infrastructure and both should pay for it. C2: ""Far outweigh"" Not true: See examples A1 and A2 above. And I'll go one more. Taxes on businesses are on NET revenue not gross revenue (ignoring things like SS and FICA). You probably invest in businesses with dividends and there is an incentive to keep a net revenue that can be distributed to stockholders. But in the private world there is no such motivation. In fact there is an anti-motivation to show profit as low as possible to limit tax liability. This has led to many ""hacks"" of the tax code/expenses to make sure that businesses end up with negative tax liability or an effective rate that is close to 0. How many poor people can claim negative tax liability? Again 0 &gt; not-zero. &gt;D) Society captures the majority of individual commercial efforts (estimates vary, but typically 85%). In other words, if I generate $10.00 of value as an entrepreneur, I will realistically be able to capture only $1.50 of that. D1: wat? Vague. Not all commercial efforts have a positive impact on the community. Irrelevant since we are talking about use vs cost.
How do we define worth? To stock traders and some investors it has value either as a transaction or as a piece in an asset allocation strategy. Is is likely to generate long term revenues and profits that reflect the historical relationship between those factors and stock price performance? Unlikely.  It might be a good short term play for the nimble investor but the real test of 'worth' will be after the initial hype dies down. It is what happens to the stock 90 days after it goes public that matters for the long term. Forgetting contributions to society, knowledge and culture, the markets will at that point make their determination about value.
I have heard that people say the greater earning means greater   intrinsic value of the company. Then, the stock price is largely based   on the intrinsic value. So increasing intrinsic value due to   increasing earning will lead to increasing stock price. Does this make   sense ? Yes though it may be worth dissecting portions here. As a company generates earnings, it has various choices for what it can do with that money. It can distribute some to shareholders in the form of dividends or re-invest to generate more earnings. What you're discussing in the first part is those earnings that could be used to increase the perceived value of the company. However, there can be more than a few interpretations of how to compute a company's intrinsic value and this is how one can have opinions ranging from companies being overvalued to undervalued overall. Of Mines, Forests, and Impatience would be an article giving examples that make things a bit more complex. Consider how would you evaluate a mine, a forest or a farm where each gives a different structure to the cash flow? This could be useful in running the numbers here.
While there are many very good and detailed answers to this question, there is one key term from finance that none of them used and that is Net Present Value. While this is a term generally associate with debt and assets, it also can be applied to the valuation models of a company's share price. The price of the share of a stock in a company represents the Net Present Value of all future cash flows of that company divided by the total number of shares outstanding. This is also the reason behind why the payment of dividends will cause the share price valuation to be less than its valuation if the company did not pay a dividend. That/those future outflows are factored into the NPV calculation, actually performed or implied, and results in a current valuation that is less than it would have been had that capital been retained. Unlike with a fixed income security, or even a variable rate debenture, it is difficult to predict what the future cashflows of a company will be, and how investors chose to value things as intangible as brand recognition, market penetration, and executive competence are often far more subjective that using 10 year libor rates to plug into a present value calculation for a floating rate bond of similar tenor. Opinion enters into the calculus and this is why you end up having a greater degree of price variance than you see in the fixed income markets. You have had situations where companies such as Amazon.com, Google, and Facebook had highly valued shares before they they ever posted a profit. That is because the analysis of the value of their intellectual properties or business models would, overtime provide a future value that was equivalent to their stock price at that time.
There are two very large negative factors that affect Yahoo's valuation.   The first is that their search business is in decline and continues to lose ground to Google and even Bing.  There's no sign that they have any plan or product in the works to offset this decline, so there's tremendous uncertainty about the company's forward-looking revenues. The second is that the company can't seem to decide what to do with its stake in Alibaba, clearly the company's most valuable asset.  It they sell it, the question then becomes what they plan to do with the proceeds.  Will they do share buybacks or offer a special dividend to reward investors?  Will they use some or all of the money to make strategic acquisitions that are revenue-enhancing?  Will they use it to develop new products/services?   Keep in mind one other thing here, too.  There's a world of difference between what something is valued at and what someone's willing to actually pay for it.  A patent portfolio is great and perhaps holds good value, assuming the buyer can find a way to monetize it.  How exactly was the valuation of the patents arrived at, and are they worthwhile enough for someone to pay anywhere close to that valuation?   There's more to this than meets the eye by using a first-blush look at asset valuation, and that's where the professionals come in.  My bet is that they have it right and there's something the rest of the market doesn't see or understand about it, hence questions like yours. I hope this helps. Good luck!
Yeah, lots of value in companies is much less tangible than it used to be. But then i think we put too much faith in tangible value. EG a coal mining company my buddy invested in cos it had so much tangible value; had precisely zero tangible value when it collapsed tho
"As some others have pointed out, it's key to remember the difference in market value and accounting value.  To simplify things, book value is the only item that specifically depreciates... it happens in the world of accounting to try to time ""when did I use a long term asset?"" with ""when did I obtain value from that asset?"" For a house, governments usually allow owners to claim depreciation of the building over a set period of time. This does not affect your resale value of the house.  Similarly, for a commercial property, governments set laws for how an individual or a company can time the ""use"" of that asset vs. their accounting. Some companies can have totally depreciated (""zero cost"") assets that are still very productive.   Market Property values are derived from 3 specific sources: Value in Trade is an estimate of the value that others would be willing to pay for a similar asset. That's why you can buy a house today, and in a ""normal"" market, the same house should be worth a similar amount of money in the future. Value in Use can be more interesting... this is where a farmer can extract $100,000 in value per year from 10 acres of land. But as a region develops, a manufacturing company can generate $300,000 per year from the same 10 acres of land. The company can buy out the farmer at a 'fair' price (>$100,000 per year) and still net positive from the investment.  Income Approach tends to be focused on properties that have a cash flow, but can be adapted to other property estimates. It evaluates the current ""business case"" for any property with the cost of money down, the overall investment price, and the expected value from any returns.  Remember, the market value is very simply, the price you could obtain if you sold the asset at a given time. It is rarely considered in terms of ""how much will this go down?"".  Book value is an accounting exercise and declines by a set amount every year, because it means you can estimate the ""cost"" of owning an asset vs the value it generates in a particular time period."
"Gold has no ""intrinsic"" value. None whatsoever.  This is because ""value"" is a subjective term. ""Intrinsic value"" makes just as much sense as a ""cat dog"" animal. ""Dog"" and ""cat"" are referring to two mutually exclusive animals, therefore a ""cat dog"" is a nonsensical term. Intrinsic Value:  ""The actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value ...""  Intrinsic value is perceived, which means it is worth whatever you, or a group of people, think it is. Intrinsic value has nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing, to do with anything that exists in reality.  The most obvious example of this is the purchase of a copy-right. You are assigning an intrinsic value to a copy-right by purchasing it. However, when you purchase a copy-right you are not buying ink on a page, you are purchasing an idea. Someone's imaginings that, for all intensive purposes, doesn't even exist in reality! By definition, things that do not exist do not have ""intrinsic"" properties - because things that don't exist, don't have any natural properties at all. ""Intrinsic"" according to Websters Dictionary:  ""Belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing ... (the intrinsic brightness of a star).""  An intrinsic property of an object is something we know that exists because it is a natural property of that object. Suns emit light, we know this because we can measure the light coming from it. It is not subjective. ""Intrinsic Value"" is the OPPOSITE of ""Intrinsic"""