Sunday, August 09, 2020

Changing Fundamentals of Value Investing

 Value Investing has long been postulated as holy grain of investments in public markets. I come from PE (Private Equity) background, where they don't give any weight-age to traditional value investing parameters such as 

  1. Book Value
  2. P/E Ratios
I was always thinking that there is a disconnect between the real economy and market. However, offlate, it has been observed that the analysts in institutional investment funds are more focussed on traditional PE concepts such as 
  1. EBIDTA
  2. De-risking of Cash flows
  3. Stakeholder Analysis (eg. Power Plant, Mining)
  4. Impact - Influence Matrix Analysis
It seems that Post COVID public markets investment is no different than the investment theme of Project Finance / PE Funds where they put in extra efforts to evaluate these parameter

Concepts like book value has totally lost relevance. I am not sure why these people on CNBC or market news media keep on shouting P/B etc. 

Value Investment has moved ahead of traditional / bookish evaluation as we are amid a once-in-century kind of event.

Advisory post COVID public markets

  1. High Retail participation may have propelled the markets to unrealistic valuations, which are absurd
  2. Be focused on staples and tech story
  3. Don't use Value Investing (as it is taught or professed)
  4. Cut the crap and be focused on EBIDTA similar to PE/Project Finance











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