Companies That Sell for Less Than Their Cash | Hacker News Reader

Companies That Sell for Less Than Their Cash

businessweek.com

14 pointsepi0Bauqu25 comments

I completely agree with Business Week. This stock market is oversold.

For instance, Yahoo is definitely worth more than a 16 X P/E, no internet company of Yahoo's reach and size should be worth 16 X P/E. $2B in cash, $4B in liquid assets, and only $2B in liabilities. $1B in profit, every quarter. It's just a function of the rest of the world going online and using existing web portals, a lot of them are going to use Yahoo. That, or they'll receive another offer for a buyout, which is highly possible.

Another good stock buying technique is to buy small chunks of the stock market over a set amount of time, I believe this is called "averaging down". It relies on the fact that you don't know where the bottom will be, so it averages that risk across multiple investments, which is a lot safer than just placing 1 bet for where you think the bottom will be. I think that if you were to average down into a leveraged index ETF right now (ie. MVV), you'll be making buttloads of money in 5-10 years, with an averaging down investment schedule to take the money you want to invest, and split that investment up over a 2 year span.

Of course, I'm just a lowly tech entrepreneur that has also lost a little bit of money in this recent downturn, so what do I know, haha

> $1B in profit, every quarter.

Well that's gross profit, which isn't really profit at all.

Their net profit for the recent quarter was 131.22 million and $600 million for 2007, a far cry from the 4 billion you specify.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:YHOO

I said they have $4 B of liquid assets on their balance sheet.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=yhoo

(Oh yeah, MS rumors to buy Yahoo, I called it before it happened! haha)

I was referring to this line from your post: > $1B in profit, every quarter. The 4 Billion comes from the $1B you specify in each quarter x 4:)

No worries:)

I heard that the strategy of investing the same amount of money every month ("stock goes up, good, stock goes down, you just bought more shares, good") is not actually a very good strategy at all. Supposedly, brokers use it to get you to spend money with them on a regular basis, especially if the fund or broker makes commission or a fee per trade.

How could it possibly be a good strategy?

The line of thinking is that you spend the same amount of money every month buying the same stock/investment. Since you're making multiple purchases, you are reducing the risk of a steep drop off in your stock since the price paid for all your investments will be averaged over a period of time.

I've also heard that there are no significant benefits to this strategy, although I haven't done very much research on it.

It's all about risk minimization. Assume for a second that you don't read the news and all you see are numbers. (This kind of scenario is kind fairly accurate for most investors because most investors don't beat the index, so they might as well be news agnostic anyways.) Right now, in our hypothetical, you want to invest in the market. You saw that it fell 30 odd % since the top and that if you compare that % to previous great depressions and recessions, it's on par with the bottom of those analogous situations. If you buy in at one single point, you have a high risk that the stock market will drop and you'll lose a lot of money. But if you averaged in, you'll minimize the risk of catching the exact bottom of the stock market, and overall, should increase the average buy-in price.

The main reason why this works as opposed to just reading the news and choosing based on logic is because more than 50% of professional investors fail to out-invest the index. That means that you have a much better chance of catching the lowest buy-in to the stock market than if you were to use "logic".

It's pretty counter-intuitive, but it makes sense if you just come to the realization that we're not that good investing.

I think it's called "Dollar Cost Averaging." One trade a month, especially with a discount broker, is not going to break your bank. It also has the advantage of not being subject to your emotions, and emotions are responsible for untold billions of investor losses.

"Notwithstanding debt"

This entire article hinges on those two words in the second paragraph. Sure, these companies are holding some cash. But if I have $10,000 in my checking account and owe $100,000 in credit card debt, does that make me solvent? No -- especially if I have negative income as many of these companies do.

It doesn't sound like this metric means you could buy one of these companies for the current market price, liquidate it and come out ahead since they don't take debt into account. Or am I reading it wrong?

I still think someone or some group should buy Microsoft outright, halt all R&D and get a nice 20-30% per year in dividends for the next 10-20 years until it dies. (similar idea)

> I still think someone or some group should buy Microsoft outright, halt all R&D and get a nice 20-30% per year in dividends for the next 10-20 years until it dies. (similar idea)

And what happens to the employee's who get part of their pay based on stock grants? How motivated would you be to work there knowing that you will be out of a job when the owners have milked you for all you are worth, and cut back on all the fun parts of your work to keep their dividends up.

This is a neat thought exercise but would be a complete non starter in the real world.

What if they paid you in a different way?

Then you still have the thought that your job won't be around long term, that you aren't building something that will last forever, that all you would be doing is maintenance on the existing releases as now that R & D is no longer, no new versions will go out. Remember that any code writing is considered to be R & D for tax purposes (SRED), etc, etc.

It would be a pretty demoralizing job.

Welcome to the corporate world, my friend.

It's a very high level indicator that has so many * it really should only serve as a starting point to evaluating a companies worth.

Debt, and actual cash on hand (and any toxic investments) are the next levels of analysis.

If you halted R&D, your customers would flock to competitors who are still developing their product lines. It would be more like 5 years before it's effectively dead.

"either the price is too low or the company should be liquidated."

Either one should buy stock of the company, or one shouldn't.

Information gained: zero.

Don't you make money in either case?

I don't know, I was guessing that in case of liquidation, investors only get a fraction of their investment back.

This old PE firm I used to work with (not for), Platinum equity, was notorious for these kinds of deals. Sometimes they would even get paid to take over the company. I don't think they've ever had a losing deal.

Ben Graham was interested in companies selling for less than their net working capital, which is current assets minus current liabilities, not merely less than the cash on their books. Bank of America has 312 billion in cash and 629 billion in debt. The article's "conclusion" does not follow from looking at the market or companies mentioned through the lens of Ben Graham. sigh

This is why Graham consistently says, at least in the "Intelligent Investor", to do your own research. Letting others tell you what to do in such a potentially risky action as investing in particular stocks is just plain dumb. Look at the facts yourself and make your own conclusions.

Benjamin Graham looked for equities trading at less than 66% of their Net Current Asset Value.

Where, NCAV (Net Current Asset Value) = Current Assets - TOTAL Liabilities.

Note that Graham calculated NCAV using total liabilities, and not just current liabilities. By using only current assets he also excluded plant and equipment, and goodwill in his calculation of NCAV. This is important, because during liquidation all creditors will demand repayment, but the valuation of plant and equipment will be impaired.

The 66% discount to NCAV provided Graham a "margin of safety".

The modern-day equivalent of NCAV is "book to tangible book value". What you want is equities that have a "book to tanglible book" ratio less than 1, a debt-to-total-equity ratio of less than 1, a price-to-earnings ratio that is competitive with peers in its sector, and a "book-to-total-free-cash-flow' ratio in the low single digits.

See ExxonMobil, for instance.

You can find all of these valuation ratios on the Reuters website.

Is it possible to access this information reasonably inexpensively without digging into SEC filings?

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