Valuation From Comparables and
Financial Ratios
A Practical Approach
You now know how to read financial statements, how to obtain cash flows from financial
statements, and how to value them. You also know that forecasting cash flows is a very
difficult task. Are there any shortcuts? Are there any good alternatives to NPV? Is there
anything else you can do with financial statements?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes. There is one alternative approach often resorted to by practitioners.
It is called "valuation by comparables," or "comps" for short. Executed correctly, comps
can give answers that are as good as those that you can obtain with a thorough NPV analysis.
In practice, sometimes the method of NPV gives a better value estimate, and sometimes the
method of comparables does.
The basic idea behind valuation by comparables is simple and best understood by analogy:
assume that you want to determine the value of 5 red marbles. If black marbles cost $2 apiece,
and if you......
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