Impact of Growth and Returns on Multiples
- 03:33
Understand the main drivers of multiples
Glossary
EBIT Multiple Growth Return ROIC WACCTranscript
Multiples are affected by the level of growth in the business and the level of returns earned by that business. Let's have a look at a base case. Here we've got invested capital of 100 and it's earning a return on capital of 11%. Thus, you might notice in the third to last line, EBIAT earnings before interest after tax is 11. In addition, we've got a WACC of 10%. That means as an investor, I require a return of 10%. I'm getting a return of 11%. Fantastic, and the company's growing at 3%. It's got an EV of 114.3. We divide the EV by EBIT, it gets us a multiple of 10.4. We're now going to change one attribute at a time, and we'll see what happens to the multiple. In our first example, let's look at a high return on capital business. So I've got the same invested capital, the same WACC, same growth, but the return on capital is 15%. Wow. As an investor, my required return, my WACC is 10%, but I'm getting a return of 15%. I would really want to invest in this company, and thus its enterprise value is much higher cause it's more desirable. So EV divided by EBIT, thus gives us now a higher multiple as well. So our higher return on capital produces more value. In our next example, we're going to change one more attribute. We're going to give high growth. So if we compare to the base case, we've got the same invested capital, the same return on capital, the same WACC, but the growth now has grown from 3% to 6%. Again, as an investor, I'm really interested in this business. Fantastic. It's gonna be growing and growing and growing, earning me more returns. Thus, it has a higher ev, so higher growth produces more value and a higher multiple. In the next example, the attribute we're going to change is the WACC. We're going to reduce it down. If you look at the base case, the WACC was 10 and the return on capital was 11. There was one percentage point difference. If we look at our low WACC example on the right, the WACC is 8% and the return on capital is 10. That's a 2% point difference. In addition, we've also got higher growth. These two combined now gives us a much higher EV and a much higher multiple. So lower WACC produces even more value. In our final example, what if the return equals the WACC? Well, the WACC is 10% as an investor, I require a 10% return, and the return I get is 10%. This means that growth is irrelevant. The growth could be 6%, 10%, 20%, but as an investor, I won't care what the growth is because I wanted a 10% return. I'm getting exactly that return. I won't pay in excess of some kind of base price for this company, and this thus gives the lowest multiple here of 10.