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When I started offering financial modeling training , I never expected to get questions about a methodology like the Dividend Discount Model (DDM). But people who aim for investment banking roles are very much into those bells and whistles, so questions about the DDM and other “exotic” methodologies began rolling in.
The first is the dividends you receive, while you hold stocks, a cash flow stream that provides a measure of stability to investors who seek it. It too requires estimate for inputs, but the range of error is magnitudes smaller than with historical premiums. Actual Returns Your returns on equities come in one of two forms.
When you augment this price change with the dividends on the index during 2021, the total return on the S&P 500 for 2021 was 28.47%. With equities, the cash flows take the form of dividends and buybacks, and in addition to estimating them using future growth rates, you have to assume that they continue in perpetuity.
By the start of 2022, the window for early action had closed and for much of this year, inflation has been the elephant in the room, driving markets and forcing central banks to be reactive, and its presence has already induced me to write three posts on its impact.
Equity RiskPremium Path : The equity riskpremium of 5.24%, estimated at the start of May 2022, is at the high end of historical equity riskpremiums , but we have seen higher premiums, either in crises (end of 2008, first quarter of 2020) or when inflation has been high (the late 1970s).
Exacerbating the pain, corporate default spreads rose during the course of 2022: While default spreads rose across ratings classes, the rise was much more pronounced for the lowest ratings classes, part of a bigger story about risk capital that spilled across markets and asset classes.
In leveraged buyouts (LBOs), a private equity (PE) sponsor acquires controlling ownership of a target company, typically by using a significant amount of bank loans. In a new study, we focus on a controversial issue: Many PE sponsors have prior relationships with law firms representing banks in LBO loan negotiations.
A firm borrows from banks or bondholders and it has to pay the interest. The formula implies the return an investor expects from a risk-free investment plus the return from the stock in relation to market volatility. The market riskpremium is calculated from a market rate of return less a risk-free rate.
In my last three posts, I looked at the macro (equity riskpremiums, 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.
The second is that there are great (and free) sources for macro economic data, ranging from the Federal Reserve (FRED) to the World Bank and I don’t see the point of replicating something that they already do well. The data for 2020 is available under current data, and data from previous years under archived data.
We note that the higher the expected rate (in other words, the greater the risk is perceived as necessary, to the point of requiring a substantial "riskpremium"), the lower the multiple that will apply and therefore the lower valuation: we buy cheaper which is less safe. 11% per year. 10% per year. around 1.5%). -
Thus, as you peruse my historical data on implied equity riskpremiums or PE ratios for the S&P 500 over time, you may be tempted to compute averages and use them in your investment strategies, or use my industry averages for debt ratios and pricing multiples as the target for every company in the peer group, but you should hold back.
In the first five posts, I have looked at the macro numbers that drive global markets, from interest rates to riskpremiums, but it is not my preferred habitat. The second set of inputs are prices of risk, in both the equity and debt markets, with the former measured by equity riskpremiums , and the latter by default spreads.
Equity is cheaper than debt: There are businesspeople (including some CFOs) who argue that debt is cheaper than equity, basing that conclusion on a comparison of the explicit costs associated with each interest payments on debt and dividends on equity.
Thus, my estimates of equity riskpremiums, updated every month, are not designed to make big statements about markets but more to get inputs I need to value companies. In the table below, I show my estimates of the implied equity riskpremium for the S&P 500 at the start of every month, since January 2024, and on March 14, 2025.
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