Dexin China Holdings Company Limited's (HKG:2019) Intrinsic Value Is Potentially 22% Below Its Share Price

Today we'll do a simple run through of a valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of Dexin China Holdings Company Limited (HKG:2019) as an investment opportunity by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. Our analysis will employ the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple!

Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model.

View our latest analysis for Dexin China Holdings

Crunching the numbers

We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To start off with, we need to estimate 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 (CN¥, Millions)	CN¥581.9m	CN¥626.2m	CN¥662.4m	CN¥692.2m	CN¥717.2m	CN¥738.5m	CN¥757.2m	CN¥774.1m	CN¥789.7m	CN¥804.4m
Growth Rate Estimate Source	Est @ 10.23%	Est @ 7.61%	Est @ 5.78%	Est @ 4.5%	Est @ 3.6%	Est @ 2.98%	Est @ 2.54%	Est @ 2.23%	Est @ 2.01%	Est @ 1.86%
Present Value (CN¥, Millions) Discounted @ 14%	CN¥510	CN¥482	CN¥447	CN¥409	CN¥372	CN¥336	CN¥302	CN¥271	CN¥242	CN¥216

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)
Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = CN¥3.6b

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 (1.5%) 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 14%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF₂₀₃₀ × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = CN¥804m× (1 + 1.5%) ÷ (14%– 1.5%) = CN¥6.5b

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)¹⁰= CN¥6.5b÷ ( 1 + 14%)¹⁰= CN¥1.8b

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is CN¥5.3b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of HK$3.0, the company appears slightly overvalued at the time of writing. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out.

Important assumptions

The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the 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 Dexin China Holdings 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 14%, which is based on a levered beta of 2.000. 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.

Moving On:

Although the valuation of a company is important, it 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?" For example, changes in the company's cost of equity or the risk free rate can significantly impact the valuation. Why is the intrinsic value lower than the current share price? For Dexin China Holdings, we've put together three essential elements you should look at:

1. Risks: We feel that you should assess the 3 warning signs for Dexin China Holdings (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) we've flagged before making an investment in the company.
2. Future Earnings: How does 2019'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 SEHK 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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