Yahoo Finance A Look At The Intrinsic Value Of Contact Energy Limited (NZSE:CEN)
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Does the February share price for Contact Energy Limited (NZSE:CEN) reflect it’s really worth? Today, I will calculate the stock’s intrinsic value by taking the foreast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today’s value. I will use the discounted cash flows (DCF) model. Don’t get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model. Please also note that this article was written in February 2019 so be sure check out the updated calculation by following the link below.
Check out our latest analysis for Contact Energy
Is CEN fairly valued?
I’m using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company’s growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have perpetual stable growth rate. To begin with we have to get estimates of the next five years of cash flows. For this I used the consensus of the analysts covering the stock, as you can see below. I then discount the sum of these cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate.
5-year cash flow estimate
2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
Levered FCF (NZ$, Millions) | NZ$573.50 | NZ$342.00 | NZ$331.00 | NZ$316.15 | NZ$301.96 |
Source | Analyst x2 | Analyst x2 | Analyst x1 | Est @ -4.49% | Est @ -4.49% |
Present Value Discounted @ 8.47% | NZ$528.70 | NZ$290.65 | NZ$259.33 | NZ$228.34 | NZ$201.06 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= NZ$1.5b
The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business’s cash flow after the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at an annual growth rate equal to the 10-year government bond rate of 2.4%. We discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 8.5%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2023 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = NZ$302m × (1 + 2.4%) ÷ (8.5% – 2.4%) = NZ$5.1b
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = NZ$5.1b ÷ ( 1 + 8.5%)5 = NZ$3.4b
The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the cash flows, which in this case is NZ$4.9b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. If the stock is an depositary receipt (represents a specified number of shares in a foreign corporation) then we use the equivalent number. This results in an intrinsic value of NZ$6.81. Relative to the current share price of NZ$6.15, the stock is about right, perhaps slightly undervalued at a 9.7% discount to what it is available for right now.
The assumptions
I’d like to point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don’t agree with my result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. Because we are looking at Contact Energy as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighed average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation I’ve used 8.5%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. This is derived from the Bottom-Up Beta method based on comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.
Next Steps:
Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. For CEN, I’ve compiled three fundamental aspects you should look at:
Financial Health: Does CEN have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
Future Earnings: How does CEN’s growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart.
Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of CEN? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!
PS. Simply Wall St does a DCF calculation for every NZ stock every 6 hours, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
