Hacker News Reader

Comment by frogpelt | Hacker News Reader

I have to say I don't understand companies that have very little in the way of tangible assets being valued higher than companies that have mounds of tangible assets.

For instance, Exxon-Mobil has $347 billion in tangible assets while most of Google's value comes from its brain trust and the vision of its leadership. The same could be said of Apple though they do have $40 billion in cash.

In other words, if both companies were offered to you at half of their current valuations and you didn't know how to run either company, Exxon-Mobil would be worth many times more to you just from being able to liquidate the assets.

I realize the market cap is based on more than that but I guess I'm wondering why tangible assets don't play an even bigger role in valuations.

EDIT: AAPL doesn't have as much cash as I thought.

View on HN

If Google disappeared this weekend, we'd wake up Monday morning and our Android phones would still work, a few people would miss Play and the worst part would be listening to people complain about Bing search and everyone else's maps.

If Exxon disappeared I'd be in line at the pump filling up gas cans in addition to the tank and on my way to stockpile canned goods, potable water. and buckshot.

This is exactly how we should value companies. Depending on the chaos it would cause if they disappeared tomorrow.

With your reasoning, for example, the private prison companies would be valued incorrectly high (as do the companies that make the green lights for traffic intersections, the doors to stores, the electric power company, the wireless/phone/cable company, any company with any kind of monopoly, etc). What you're forgetting is to weigh for the difficulty to replace the company with another (that in some cases may already exist and only needs to move into the now vacant market).

I was being sarcastic. It's really hard to do that on the internet.

If phones still work then it's only fair to say that the pumps, stations, etc still work and someone would take it over and provide the same services, disruption would be fairly short term.

This is a pretty bad analogy, and even at that, it's not completely thought through. Google is responsible for a lot of the infrastructure on the modern web. Gmail, ad networks, google apps, data centers, etc... If they disappeared this weekend it would be chaos.

If exxon mobile disappeared, we might see an oil shock similar to the one in the 1970's, but more likely, due to strategic reserves, we would see a gradual increase in prices, followed by a ton of investment into increasing production capacity by the other oil companies.

If Exxon disappeared, I'd ... go to a different gas station.

Google also has a pile of cash. And a fiber optic network. And millions of square feet of data center space.

Exxon: Assets: $350bn Liabilities: $75bn

Apple: Assets: $225bn Liabilities: $53bn

Google: Assets: $110bn Liabilities: $15bn

If you're trying to value a stock on fundamentals alone, you should take these tangible assets (as you call them), back them out of the market cap. Then look at what kind of P/E multiple you're getting. And compare that to other companies in the industry.

The big difference here is in growth rates. Google is priced for growth. And certainly you can imagine Google growing much faster over the next decade than Exxon.

It's sickening to see all these cash rich tech companies being worshipped, yet they don't pay their employees what they're worth, for generating all that value.

http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valley...

I can also envision Google being targeted by regulators and tax agencies and law makers around the globe in the next ten years. In addition their business model is vulnerable as open access networking becomes less advantageous to more businesses and it becomes increasingly feasible to inject advertising locally or strip off Google's customer's ads and replace them at the ISP level.

appl had ~$160B in cash as of their earning report last week: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-28/apple-s-160-billion...

The total of the Cash + Short Term Investments + Long Term Investments is $158 billion+.

I'm not sure if this is the same as cash but it may be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com