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 December share price for Phoenix Mecano AG (VTX:PMN) reflect what it’s really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock’s intrinsic value by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. We will take advantage of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model for this purpose. Before you think you won’t be able to understand it, just read on! It’s actually much less complex than you’d imagine.
Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. If you still have some burning questions about this type of valuation, take a look at the Simply Wall St analysis model.
We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company’s cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To start off with, we need to estimate 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, 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)
€24.0m
€32.0m
€32.6m
€33.1m
€33.5m
€33.8m
€34.0m
€34.2m
€34.4m
€34.5m
Growth Rate Estimate Source
Analyst x2
Analyst x2
Est @ 2.02%
Est @ 1.51%
Est @ 1.15%
Est @ 0.90%
Est @ 0.72%
Est @ 0.60%
Est @ 0.51%
Est @ 0.45%
Present Value (€, Millions) Discounted @ 5.6%
€22.7
€28.6
€27.7
€26.6
€25.5
€24.3
€23.2
€22.1
€21.0
€20.0
(“Est” = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = €242m
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 0.3%. 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= €654m÷ ( 1 + 5.6%)10= €379m
The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is €621m. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of CHF425, the company appears quite undervalued at a 31% 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.
SWX:PMN Discounted Cash Flow December 31st 2024
Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual 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 Phoenix Mecano 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 1.286. 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 shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. DCF models are not the be-all and end-all of investment valuation. Preferably you’d apply different cases and assumptions and see how they would impact the company’s valuation. If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. Why is the intrinsic value higher than the current share price? For Phoenix Mecano, we’ve compiled three essential aspects you should consider:
Risks: We feel that you should assess the 1 warning sign for Phoenix Mecano we’ve flagged before making an investment in the company.
Future Earnings: How does PMN’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 SWX 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.
