@suru27 Just because a company is fundamentally very very strong , doesn’t mean an investor would end up getting rewarded always . The term called “Valuation”needs to be respected which ultimately gives you margins of safety and comfort in panic situations .

1/ Howard Marks once said that before buying an asset, above anything, he wants to know “the amount of optimism that’s in the price.”

All investors can do this with a handy tool: The Reverse DCF.

I'll also leave a download link to my compact DCF Model at the end of this thread.

2/ We all know a regular DCF. But's what a "Reverse DCF"?

If we consider that a DCF is a Linear Equation, we could say the 'X' (The unknown variable) is the Intrinsic Value.

In a Reverse DCF, we start with the Market Price and try to find some other variable, say Sales Growth.

3/ Let's start by taking an example: VST Industries, a Cigarette-maker based in India.

I valued them on my blog a while ago. I'll be retaining the old assumptions, but using the latest financials.

So please note that the Valuation isn't accurate

4/ This is a "Regular DCF" of VST Industries. The Assumptions I've made indicate an Overvaluation.

The Intrinsic Value is Rs. 3,012, but the Market Price is Rs. 3,492.

Let's not dwell on whether this is correct, since we discussed earlier that this isn't an accurate Valuation.

5/ If we want to do a "Reverse DCF" instead, we need to pick a different variable to 'find'. Say, I will pick the Sales Growth numbers.

I will now remove the Sales Growth numbers from the Model and assume that Sales Growth is the same across the years for ease of calculation.

Never make the mistake of selling a great business just because it's overvalued.

@Dinesh_Sairam @a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Questions that are only answered with time haha.

@a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Just to add - sustainable FCF is a faraway concept for most till (if) they gain scale or innovate/add value. Till then, it's generally always a struggle to manage WC and capacity addition. Wouldn't expect that to change for a while.

@Namajapa In my experience value stocks are the ones with undervalued optionality - the possibility things get unexpectedly better. Expensive story stocks by contrast anticipate and price in all manner of good future outcomes long before they are actually delivered/deliverable.

@ramnath2015 DCF is a lot of bullshit.
5 yrs back u could have run a DCF in ITC and come to great conclusion but over the last 5 yrs the youth globally has moved away from cigarettes to weed