Aswath Damodaran Session 11 (MBA): Cost of Capital & First Steps on Investment Analysis

We started the class by completing the last pieces of the cost of capital puzzle: coming up with market values for equity (easy for a publicly traded company) and debt (more difficult). We then began our discussion of returns by emphasizing that the bottom line in corporate finance is cash flows, not earnings, that we care about when those cash flows occur and that we try to bring in all side costs and benefits into those cash flows. Defining investments broadly to include everything from acquisitions to big infrastructure investments to changing inventory policy, we set the table for investment analysis by setting up the Rio Disney investment. We will return to flesh out the details in the next session (after the break).
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…