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Comment by radicality | Hacker News Reader

> As of close of market today, the company’s market value was around $2 billion. However, due to its reserves of approximately $1.5 billion of cash on hand, analysts estimate that Zynga is actually worth around $500 million

How does that work? If it has $1.5 billion in cash, surely it's not "worth" just $500 million, then anyone would go buy it and take their cash.

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If I pay $200 for a printer and they immediately send me back $150 as a rebate because of a special deal, then what is the printer worth? It is worth $50 because that is the actual net cost.

If I pay $2B for Zynga and then pay myself back $1.5B from its cash reserve then it has only cost me $0.5B to buy. Hence its net worth is $0.5B.

We have to value the company's assets and liabilities. The $2B market cap is a good perceived value of the company as a whole. If there's $1.5B cash on hand, then we can value that cash at $1 per $1 of face value (it's cash, which is easy). That leaves $500M in net value that the company has not accounting for that cash on hand. If the company owns the building, and the building is worth, say $550M, then factoring that out actually puts the value of the rest of the company at negative $50M.

This made it even more confusing for me.

I'll sell you a piggy bank containing a $10 bill for $10.01 How much does the piggy bank actually cost? Even though you initially need to hand me $10.01, you can immediately crack it open and put the tenner back in your wallet, so the piggy bank actually only costs you a penny

Now suppose the piggy bank is actually a soda bottle. Returning the bottle to the store gets you five cents, plus the ten dollar bill is still inside, so the combination is worth $10.05 when broken up, but only $10.01 when together. Thus the bottle-bank has a negative value.

This might be because a bottle-bank is slimy and disgusting. Read whatever you will into this analogy :-)

Goto walmart, buy a wallet. Put $1.50 inside the wallet. I will buy the wallet+cash from you for $2.

How much is just the wallet worth?

The 1.5B cash is already calculated into the market value. So that, plus the $500 mil the company is worth equals $2B.

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