CFO News Room

JANUARY 18, 2023

The question of whether a company is making or losing money should be a simple one to answer, especially in an age where accounting statements are governed by a myriad of rules, and a legion of number-crunchers follow these rules to report profits generated by a firm. The numbers yield interesting insights. .

Marketing 130

Marketing Hurdle Rate Investments Accounting 130

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Measuring Profitability The question of whether a company is making or losing money should be a simple one to answer, especially in an age where accounting statements are governed by a myriad of rules, and a legion of number-crunchers follow these rules to report profits generated by a firm. The numbers yield interesting insights.

Hurdle Rate 99

Hurdle Rate Investments Accounting Entertainment 99

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 12, 2021

Last week, was my data week, where I download and analyze data on all publicly traded companies, listed anywhere in the world, and I will post extensively on what the numbers look like after a most tumultuous year. Corporate Finance : Corporate finance is the development of the first financial principles that govern how to run a business.

Valuation 52

Valuation Corporate Finance Finance Investments 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 31, 2024

In my last three posts, I looked at the macro (equity risk premiums, default spreads, risk free rates) and micro (company risk measures) that feed into the expected returns we demand on investments, and argued that these expected returns become hurdle rates for businesses, in the form of costs of equity and capital.

Hurdle Rate 81

Hurdle Rate Profit and Loss Accounting Investments 81

Musings on Markets

MARCH 8, 2023

This is the last of my data update posts for 2023, and in this one, I will focus on dividends and buybacks, perhaps the most most misunderstood and misplayed element of corporate finance. Viewed in that context, dividends as just as integral to a business, as the investing and financing decisions.

Hurdle Rate 102

Hurdle Rate Corporate Finance Investments Finance 102

CFO News Room

JANUARY 7, 2023

Mean reversion : I am not a knee-jerk believer in mean reversion, but the tendency for numbers to move back towards averages is a strong one. Counter made-up numbers : It remains true that people (analysts, market experts, politicians) often make assertions based upon either incomplete or flawed data, or no data at all.

Marketing 130

Marketing Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis 130

Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

After the rating downgrade, my mailbox was inundated with questions of what this action meant for investing, in general, and for corporate finance and valuation practice, in particular, and this post is my attempt to answer them all with one post. Why does the risk-free rate matter? What is a risk free investment?

Investments 98

Investments Currencies Treasury Hurdle Rate 98

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

Mean reversion : I am not a knee-jerk believer in mean reversion, but the tendency for numbers to move back towards averages is a strong one. Counter made-up numbers : It remains true that people (analysts, market experts, politicians) often make assertions based upon either incomplete or flawed data, or no data at all.

Valuation 52

Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis Leverage 52

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

If you have taken a corporate finance class sometime in your past life are probably wondering how this approach reconciles with the Miller-Modigliani theorem, a key component of most corporate finance classes, which posits that there is no optimal debt ratio, and that the debt mix does not affect the value of a business.

Corporate Finance 52

Corporate Finance Finance Marketing Banking 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

In closing, I also want to dispense with the notion that data is objective and that numbers-focused people have no bias. Finally, it is worth noting that, notwithstanding the travails of last year, the number of firms in the data universe increased from 44,394 firms at the start of 2020 to 46,579 firms, a 4.9%

Valuation 52

Valuation Currencies Numbers Corporate Finance 52

Barry Ritholtz

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

I went into what’s called corporate finance, what people would see now as sort of M&A department. CHANCELLOR: Well, I was actually in a sort of subgroup there, which was called corporate strategy. But I didn’t last very long there because I thought I didn’t like corporate finance.

Valuation 59

Valuation Finance Investments Banking 59

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

The numbers that I computed opened my eyes to how much perspective on the high, low, and typical values, i.e., the distribution of margins, helped in valuing the company, and how little information there was available, at least at that time, on this dimension. Aggregate operating numbers 3. Tax rates 4. Financing Flows 5.

Valuation 106

Valuation Financial Analysis Analyzing Data Profit and Loss 106

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 28, 2024

In particular, there are wide variations in how risk is measured, and once measured, across companies and countries, and those variations can lead to differences in expected returns and hurdle rates, central to both corporate finance and investing judgments.

Hurdle Rate 122

Hurdle Rate Concentration Investments Finance 122

Musings on Markets

JULY 24, 2024

Country Risk in Business Most corporate finance classes and textbooks leave students with the proposition that the right hurdle rate to use in assessing business investments is the cost of capital, but create a host of confusion about what exactly that cost of capital measures.

Hurdle Rate 76

Hurdle Rate Currencies Valuation Economics 76