Discover essential financial strategies tailored for your immediate family. Secure their future with budgeting tips, investment advice, and effective planning to ensure lasting financial stability.
Discover essential financial strategies tailored for your immediate family. Secure their future with budgeting tips, investment advice, and effective planning to ensure lasting financial stability.
Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of AUTO1 Group SE (ETR:AG1) by estimating the company’s future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. We will take advantage of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model for this purpose. Believe it or not, it’s not too difficult to follow, as you’ll see from our example!
Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. For those who are keen learners of equity analysis, the Simply Wall St analysis model here may be something of interest to you.
We’re using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company’s growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. To begin with, we have to get estimates of the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren’t available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.
A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today’s value:
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
Levered FCF (€, Millions)
€19.3m
€46.0m
€70.3m
€96.6m
€122.1m
€145.0m
€164.5m
€180.4m
€193.1m
€203.3m
Growth Rate Estimate Source
Analyst x3
Analyst x2
Est @ 52.89%
Est @ 37.31%
Est @ 26.41%
Est @ 18.77%
Est @ 13.43%
Est @ 9.69%
Est @ 7.07%
Est @ 5.24%
Present Value (€, Millions) Discounted @ 5.6%
€18.3
€41.3
€59.7
€77.7
€93.0
€105
€112
€117
€118
€118
(“Est” = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = €860m
The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business’s cash flow after the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield of 1.0%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today’s value at a cost of equity of 5.6%.
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= €4.4b÷ ( 1 + 5.6%)10= €2.6b
The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is €3.4b. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of €16.4, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope – move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.
XTRA:AG1 Discounted Cash Flow December 15th 2024
We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don’t agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company’s future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company’s potential performance. Given that we are looking at AUTO1 Group as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we’ve used 5.6%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.123. Beta is a measure of a stock’s volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.
Strength
Weakness
Opportunity
Threat
Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it ideally won’t be the sole piece of analysis you scrutinize for a company. DCF models are not the be-all and end-all of investment valuation. Rather it should be seen as a guide to “what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?” For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For AUTO1 Group, we’ve compiled three additional elements you should assess:
Risks: Take risks, for example – AUTO1 Group has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of.
Future Earnings: How does AG1’s growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart.
Other Solid Businesses: Low debt, high returns on equity and good past performance are fundamental to a strong business. Why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals to see if there are other companies you may not have considered!
PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the XTRA every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks just search here.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content?Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
