Investment Valuation in India

India has been able to withstand some of the biggest global financial meltdowns in recent times. This was attributed to a very strong regulatory environment (particular credits to the Reserve bank of India) and the Great Indian Consumption story.  These two factors have led to the world expecting a lot from us. The last couple of years have shown that we have under delivered, badly. The global investors are shying away from investing in India given the government indifference to the industry requirements.  Who's responsible for the mess around? The opposition succeeding in keeping the government's attention away from more core issues by highlighting one issue or the other (read 2G and then Coalgate). They worsened this themselves by trying to override the Supreme Court's judgment on Vodafone case. Unnecessary!  Consequently, the world has been able to blame the government for policy paralysis and lack of judiciary relevance. Only the government is responsible for...

The term dividend refers to that part of after-tax profit which is distributed to the owners (shareholders) of the company. The undistributed part of the profit is known as Retained earnings. Higher the dividend payout, lower will be retained earnings. The dividend policy of a company refers to the views and policies of the management with respect of distribution of dividends. The dividend policy of a company should aim at shareholder-wealth maximization. The essence of dividend policy is: If the company is confident of generating more than market returns then only it should retain higher profits and pay less as dividends (or pay no dividends at all), as the shareholders can expect higher share prices based on higher RoI of the company. However, if the company is not confident of generating more than market returns, it should pay out more dividends (or 100% dividends). This is done for two reasons. One, the shareholders prefer early receipt of cash (liquidity preference theory) and sec...

Gordon Model Current Price = DPS1 / (Ke – g) DPS 1 = Dividend expected to be paid out next year Ke = Cost of Equity (using CAPM as discussed in the previous post "Discount Rate in DCF valuation") g = Growth rate (RoE X Retention ratio) [discussed earlier in "Discount Rate in DCF Valuation"] While the Gordon growth model is a simple and powerful approach to valuing equity, its use is limited to firms that are growing at a stable rate. There are two insights worth keeping in mind when estimating a 'stable' growth rate. First, since the growth rate in the firm's dividends is expected to last forever, the firm's other measures of performance (including earnings) can also be expected to grow at the same rate. Growth rate has to be less than or equal to the growth rate of the economy in which the firm operates. In summary, the Gordon growth model is best suited for firms growing at a rate comparable to or lower than the growth rate in the economy and that...