Financial Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions: Amazon’s Purchase of Whole Foods
Updated 8/7/2023 Companies expend more energy on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) than any other means of capital allocation. For many companies, such as Cisco and Intel, M&A is the most effective method for capital allocation and pursuing strategic goals. Even a company as powerful as Amazon pursued a merger and acquisition strategy to purchase Whole […]
Everything You Need to Know About M&A Synergies
Updated 7/6/2023 “Why do mergers and acquisitions carry such a high degree of risk? In almost all cases, the seller, who has operated the business for years, knows much more about it and its weak spots than does the buyer.” Phil Fisher Companies allocate more to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) than any other option for […]
Value-at-Risk (VAR) – CFA Level 2 & 3
Value-at-Risk (VAR) is a critical concept for risk and portfolio management which is often taught during CFA level II and level III. Value-at-Risk is a measure of the minimum loss expected in either dollar or percentage terms as it relates to the portfolio value. VAR is measured both over a period of time (ex. 1 […]
Meta is Now a Value Investment at 10.4x P/E after its 67% Decline!
With the S&P down 16% from 52-week highs, the correction in the market is starting to get me excited about stock valuations again and putting fresh savings to work in my investment portfolio. Technology companies have taken a particularly hard hit with the Nasdaq down 30% over the past year. Meta is one such company […]
Microsoft’s Valuation is Looking Attractive after its 32% Decline
With the S&P down 19.0% from 52-week highs, the correction in the market is starting to get me excited about stock valuations again and putting fresh savings to work in my investment portfolio. Technology companies have taken a particularly hard hit with the Nasdaq down 31.5% over the past year. Microsoft has a strong economic […]
Invested Capital Formula: The Exact Balance Sheet Line Items to Use
Updated: 5/22/2023 Invested capital is one of the main components of the popular Return on Invested Capital, or ROIC, metric. There are two main ways to calculate Invested Capital: I will show you the EXACT line items to use for each approach. Unbelievably, you can’t find this information anywhere on the internet. In this post, […]
Valuing High Growth Companies – A Common Sense Framework
Learning about valuing high growth companies seems almost like an oxymoron. The stock market clearly has two opposing camps – growth and value – and so the idea of putting a valuation on a growth stock can sound heretical to some. But as Warren Buffett once said, “Growth and value investing are joined at the […]
How to Value a Stock With a Reverse DCF (with Examples)
Finding the value of a company matters a great deal; some would argue that it remains the single most important item on anyone’s checklist. Figuring out how much the company is worth or its intrinsic value will help you determine your price and what kind of long-term return you might achieve. Using a discounted cash flow […]
How to Calculate Invested Capital for ROIC (the right way)
Do you know how to calculate Invested Capital the right way? Did you know there are two different equations for the same Invested Capital formula, and they mean two different things? I’ve seen the words Invested Capital tossed around lightly many times online, and while the intentions are good, the execution is not. When Invested […]
WACC vs. ROIC: Is Shareholder Value Being Created or Destroyed?
Measuring a business’s economic moat is a challenge, but a comparison using several metrics allows us to get an economic moat idea. That comparison is the grudge match of finance, WACC vs. ROIC. Warren Buffett speaks numerous times about his fondness for companies with economic moats. His best investments, such as See’s Candies, Coca-Cola, and […]
