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.
Does the January share price for GFT Technologies SE (ETR:GFT) reflect what it’s really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock’s intrinsic value by taking the forecast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today’s value. This will be done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple!
We generally believe that a company’s value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model.
We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second ‘steady growth’ period. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. 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.
Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate:
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
Levered FCF (€, Millions)
€51.1m
€56.1m
€58.0m
€60.0m
€62.0m
€63.5m
€64.7m
€65.8m
€66.8m
€67.6m
Growth Rate Estimate Source
Analyst x3
Analyst x3
Analyst x1
Analyst x1
Analyst x1
Est @ 2.40%
Est @ 1.97%
Est @ 1.67%
Est @ 1.45%
Est @ 1.31%
Present Value (€, Millions) Discounted @ 6.3%
€48.1
€49.6
€48.2
€46.9
€45.6
€43.9
€42.1
€40.3
€38.4
€36.6
(“Est” = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = €440m
After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the initial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond 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 6.3%.
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= €1.3b÷ ( 1 + 6.3%)10= €687m
The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is €1.1b. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of €22.1, the company appears quite undervalued at a 48% discount to where the stock price trades currently. The assumptions in any calculation have a big impact on the valuation, so it is better to view this as a rough estimate, not precise down to the last cent.
XTRA:GFT Discounted Cash Flow January 1st 2025
The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company’s future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own 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 GFT Technologies 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 6.3%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.306. 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
Although the valuation of a company is important, it ideally won’t be the sole piece of analysis you scrutinize for a company. It’s not possible to obtain a foolproof valuation with a DCF model. Instead the best use for a DCF model is to test certain assumptions and theories to see if they would lead to the company being undervalued or overvalued. For example, changes in the company’s cost of equity or the risk free rate can significantly impact the valuation. Why is the intrinsic value higher than the current share price? For GFT Technologies, there are three pertinent factors you should look at:
Future Earnings: How does GFT’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. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every German stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock 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.
