The Definitive Guide to Valuing Hard-to-Value Companies: Fully Revised for Today's Financial Markets Valuing money-making companies that have long histories and established business models is straightforward. It is when you encounter difficult-to-value companies that you feel the urge to go over to the dark side of valuation-where you abandon first principles and create new metrics. Aswath Damodaran looks at a range of these companies, from start-ups in new businesses to distressed companies, from banks facing regulatory turmoil to commodity firms, and from emerging market upstarts to multinationals that spread across geographies and businesses. With each grouping, he helps you examine the call of the dark side and its practices and frameworks to value these firms. To answer these questions, Aswath looks at companies across the life cycle and in different markets, from Uber and Shake Shack at one end of the spectrum to Vale, Royal Dutch, and United Technologies at the other end. In the process, you learn how to Deal with "abnormally low" and negative risk-free rates in valuation Adapt to dynamic and changing risk premiums Value young companies that are disrupting existing businesses Analyze commodity and cyclical companies across cycles Value a company as the sum of its parts or as an aggregation of its users/subscribers and customers Determine the difference between pricing and valuation, and why some investments can only be priced

How can a company that has never turned a profit have a multibillion dollar valuation? Why do some start-ups attract large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, finance professor and experienced investor, argues that the power of story drives corporate value, adding substance to numbers and persuading even cautious investors to take risks. In business, there are the storytellers who spin compelling narratives and the number-crunchers who construct meaningful models and accounts. Both are essential to success, but only by combining the two, Damodaran argues, can a business deliver and sustain value. Through a range of case studies, Narrative and Numbers describes how storytellers can better incorporate and narrate numbers and how number-crunchers can calculate more imaginative models that withstand scrutiny. Damodaran considers Uber's debut and how narrative is key to understanding different valuations. He investigates why Twitter and Facebook were valued in the billions of dollars at their public offerings, and why one (Twitter) has stagnated while the other (Facebook) has grown. Damodaran also looks at more established business models such as Apple and Amazon to demonstrate how a company's history can both enrich and constrain its narrative. And through Vale, a global Brazil-based mining company, he shows the influence of external narrative, and how country, commodity, and currency can shape a company's story. Narrative and Numbers reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around numbers and how one can best test a story's plausibility.

Valuation Approaches and Metrics focuses on the theory and practice of valuation of companies and stocks, providing an invaluable overview of the topic from both a practical and scholarly perspective. Valuation Approaches and Metrics reviews the finance literature on valuation and presents three approaches to valuation: .discounted cash flow valuation relating the value of an asset to the present value of expected future cash flows on that asset. .liquidation and accounting valuation built around valuing the existing assets of a firm using accounting estimates of value or "book value" .relative valuation estimating the value of an asset by looking at the pricing of 'comparable' assets relative to a common variable like earnings, cash flows, book value or sales. Valuation Approaches and Metrics should be required reading for both finance practitioners and researchers.