Applying the Market Multipliers to Valuate the Unprofitable Corporate Enterprises

Abstract

A topical problem and a sought-after task is the assessment of value of the enterprise’s business and a value-oriented management of this business, which is of particular importance for diagnosing the financial condition of unprofitable enterprises, in particular debtor enterprises, at the stage of their financial sanitation and restoration of solvency. The relevance of application for unprofitable corporate enterprises of a common methodology for assessing the value of business with the help of a system of market multipliers is analyzed, which is then classified into groups, including the following: 1) earnings multipliers: «share price/earnings per share» (P/E), «price/sales – P/S», «value of business/sales» (EV/S), «value of business/profit from operating activities» (EV/Sales margin, valuates the enterprise according to the profitability of its core operations), and EV/EBITDA (estimation of the company’s total profit by all types of activities); 2) balance financial indicators: «value of business/balance value of assets» (EV/BV), «shares price/balance value of share capital» or «share price/balance value of net assets» (P/BV or P/BVE), «value of business/cost of buildings, machines and equipment on the balance sheet», or «value of business/value of non-current assets» (enterprise value/property, plant and equipment – EV/PP&E); «share price/net asset substitution value» (multiplier Q, or Tobin’s Q), «share price/net asset value», or P/NAV); 3) natural multipliers: price/volume of production, price/winning, etc. It is determined that each group of financial multipliers has advantages and disadvantages of its relevance to informativeness, and this must be taken into account when choosing multipliers for value assessment. The correctness of the choice of multipliers depends on the task of assessing the value of the share capital or the value of the business of enterprise in general. It is argued that the assessment of any enterprise or group of enterprises is a separate specific case that requires taking into account the key features of the enterprise activities. Taking into account such features, the correct choice of the multiplier and its modification is the key to obtaining a relevant assessment of the value of the enterprise. It is recommended to use a system from several multipliers for a relevant valuation of the enterprise, as well as apply several approaches to such a valuation. In case of valuation of the enterprise that is in the process of bankruptcy or systematically receives losses, the use of EV/S and EV/BV multipliers appears the most correct. To test the carried out theoretical-methodological analysis of the application of the market multipliers to valuate unprofitable enterprises, their application to valuate five unprofitable Ukrainian mines is presented, which serves as a verification of the recommendations developed in the work.