A Look At The Fair Value Of Journeo plc (LON:JNEO)

Does the March share price for Journeo plc (LON:JNEO) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them to today's value. We will take advantage of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model for this purpose. Believe it or not, it's not too difficult to follow, as you'll see from our example!

We generally believe that a company's value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Journeo

The model

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 ten years of cash flows. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars:

10-year free cash flow (FCF) forecast

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	2027	2028	2029	2030
Levered FCF (£, Millions)	UK£324.8k	UK£505.1k	UK£703.0k	UK£897.9k	UK£1.07m	UK£1.23m	UK£1.35m	UK£1.45m	UK£1.53m	UK£1.59m
Growth Rate Estimate Source	Est @ 78.91%	Est @ 55.54%	Est @ 39.18%	Est @ 27.72%	Est @ 19.71%	Est @ 14.09%	Est @ 10.17%	Est @ 7.42%	Est @ 5.49%	Est @ 4.14%
Present Value (£, Millions) Discounted @ 9.9%	UK£0.3	UK£0.4	UK£0.5	UK£0.6	UK£0.7	UK£0.7	UK£0.7	UK£0.7	UK£0.7	UK£0.6

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)
Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = UK£5.0m

We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (1.0%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 9.9%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF₂₀₃₀ × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = UK£1.6m× (1 + 1.0%) ÷ (9.9%– 1.0%) = UK£18m

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)¹⁰= UK£18m÷ ( 1 + 9.9%)¹⁰= UK£7.1m

The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is UK£12m. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of UK£1.2, the company appears about fair value at a 11% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out.

The assumptions

We would 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 these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Journeo as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 9.9%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.488. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Looking Ahead:

Whilst important, the DCF calculation is only one of many factors that you need to assess for a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For Journeo, we've compiled three essential aspects you should explore:

1. Risks: Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Journeo you should know about.
2. Future Earnings: How does JNEO'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.
3. Other High Quality Alternatives: Do you like a good all-rounder? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the AIM every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks just search here.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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