The Basics of Multiple Analysis

Capital Investment Analysis

What is multiple analysis?

Multiple analysis is a form of relative valuation that is used to quantitatively compare a companys financial statements to previous years, other companies, the industry, or even the economy in general.

Why is this important?

Relative valuations are the most common valuation measures used on Wall Street
Almost

85% of equity research reports are based on multiples and comparables Nearly 50% of all acquisition valuations are based on multiples Will allow valuations to be tailored or adjusted to meet the current market conditions, or to portray a company in a certain light

It allows different companies to be easily compared through a set of common metrics or ratios Unfortunately, these ratios can often be abused or manipulated in number of ways
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Steps to perform multiple analysis

One common reason for doing multiple analysis is to see if a companys stock is correctly priced in the market
Compare

a number of the firms ratios to that of its competitors to determine if it is trading in an appropriate range Could provide justification for where the stock is currently priced, as well as to determine it is over/under priced
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Steps to perform multiple analysis

First select a company that you wish to value

Dell,

Inc.

Next create a list of comparable companies that are similar in size, maturity, and industry
HP,

IBM, Apple, etc.

For each comparable company, calculate a number of ratios that you wish to compare to the selected company (Dell)
For example: Price/ Earnings Price/ Sales
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MS Excel

Excel can be a very useful tool in multiple analysis

Here are some steps that can help you find a range of appropriate prices using Excel

First: Choose a number of comps

Choose a list of multiples and compute them for a number of comparable companies

Second: Find the price for your selected company

The price will help you to derive a value

Ex: P/E ratio

If Dells P/E ratio is 21.63, and the price is $29.40, then we know the earnings per share must be $1.36

Third: Compare the value that you have found to a series of benchmarks

Fourth: Use the multiples for the comparable companies or the benchmarks as well as a specific value to create a price

To find a price for Dell based on the average P/E ratio of 10 comparable companies, we could do the following:

Find the average P/E ratio for the comparable companies, which is 24.46 (which happens to be close to Dells P/E ratio of 21.63) Then, we take the earnings per share for Dell of $1.36 Next, we multiple the EPS by the P/E ratio to get a relative price of $33.25

This tells us that if Dells price could be about $33.25 if it kept the same earnings of $1.36 per share, and its P/E ratio increased slightly to match that of its closest competition Using this information, someone may be able to say that Dell is slightly under-priced on a P/E basis when compared to its competition
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This process can create a range of prices based off different multiples and benchmarks

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Pricing the stock

As you have seen:

Finding

the range of prices for a stock can be done with individual companies, averages of a large group of comparable companies, or even with benchmarks composed of hundreds different stocks Many different multiples can be used to compare specific metrics or elements of a company on a relative basis to other organizations in order to determine an appropriate price Relative valuation is very useful, and can be used in conjunction with many different forms of valuation

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