Yahoo Finance A Look At The Intrinsic Value Of Extended Stay America Inc (NYSE:STAY)
In this article I am going to calculate the intrinsic value of Extended Stay America Inc (NYSE:STAY) by estimating the company’s future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. This is done using the discounted cash flows (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the basis for my calcs can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model. If you are reading this and its not June 2018 then I highly recommend you check out the latest calculation for Extended Stay America by following the link below. See our latest analysis for Extended Stay America
What’s the value?
We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second ‘steady growth’ period. To begin with we have to get estimates of the next five years of cash flows. Where possible I use analyst estimates, but when these aren’t available I have extrapolated the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the year before. For this growth rate I used the average annual growth rate over the past five years, but capped at a reasonable level. I then discount this to its value today and sum up the total to get the present value of these cash flows.
5-year cash flow forecast
2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
Levered FCF ($, Millions) | $295.23 | $327.80 | $374.00 | $386.00 | $398.39 |
Source | Analyst x3 | Analyst x2 | Analyst x1 | Extrapolated @ (3.21%) | Extrapolated @ (3.21%) |
Present Value Discounted @ 12.62% | $262.15 | $258.46 | $261.84 | $239.97 | $219.92 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= US$1.24b
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 2.9%. We discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 12.6%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$398.39m × (1 + 2.9%) ÷ (12.6% – 2.9%) = US$4.24b
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = US$4.24b ÷ ( 1 + 12.6%)5 = US$2.34b
The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next five years and the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is US$3.58b. To get the intrinsic value per share, we divide this by the total number of shares outstanding, or the equivalent number if this is a depositary receipt or ADR. This results in an intrinsic value of $18.87. Relative to the current share price of $21.99, the stock is fair value, maybe slightly overvalued at the time of writing.
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. You don’t have to agree with my inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. Because we are looking at Extended Stay America 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 12.6%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.371. 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:
Whilst important, DCF calculation shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company.
For STAY, I’ve put together three important factors you should further examine:
Financial Health: Does STAY 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 STAY’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 STAY? 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 US stock every 6 hours, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.
To help readers see pass 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.
