Aswath Damodaran – Session 10: Growth Estimates and Terminal Value

We started today’s class by talking about estimating sustainable growth in all its forms, from per share equity to operating income and closed the growth section by looking at the most general way of estimating cash flows, starting with revenue growth, moving to operating margins and ending with reinvestment. The heart of today's class, though, was the discussion of terminal value. We began by ruling out using multiples to get terminal values, at least in the context of intrinsic value. To keep terminal values in check, you have to follow four basic rules/principles:
1. Constrain your terminal growth rate to be less than or equal to your riskfree rate (which is a proxy for long term growth in the economy)
2. Don't wait too long to put your company into stable growth (and try not to push past 10 years)
3. The key input in your terminal value computation is your return on capital (and excess return assumption). If your return on capital = cost of capital, your terminal growth rate does not add any value.
4. Give your company the characteristics of a stable growth company in terms of excess returns and cost of capital.
Start of the class test: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pd...
Slides: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/po...
Post class test: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pd...
Post class test solution: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pd...