Yahoo Finance Investors Are Undervaluing SEMAFO Inc (TSE:SMF) By 41.65%
I am going to run you through how I calculated the intrinsic value of SEMAFO Inc (TSE:SMF) by taking the foreast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today’s value. I will be using 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. If you are reading this and its not December 2018 then I highly recommend you check out the latest calculation for SEMAFO by following the link below.
Check out our latest analysis for SEMAFO
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 start off with we need to estimate 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 ($, Millions) | $165.74 | $175.93 | $149.00 | $150.64 | $152.30 |
Source | Analyst x5 | Analyst x3 | Analyst x1 | Est @ 1.1% | Est @ 1.1% |
Present Value Discounted @ 16.87% | $141.81 | $128.80 | $93.34 | $80.74 | $69.85 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= US$515m
After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the intial 5-year period we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows beyond the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of the GDP. In this case I have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.3%). In the same way as with the 5-year ‘growth’ period, we discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 16.9%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$152m × (1 + 2.3%) ÷ (16.9% – 2.3%) = US$1.1b
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = US$1.1b ÷ ( 1 + 16.9%)5 = US$492m
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$1.0b. In the final step we 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) or ADR then we use the equivalent number. This results in an intrinsic value of CA$4.11. Compared to the current share price of CA$2.4, the stock is quite good value at a 42% discount to what it is available for right now.
Important assumptions
The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the 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 SEMAFO 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 16.9%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.897. 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:
Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For SMF, I’ve compiled three relevant aspects you should further examine:
Financial Health: Does SMF 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 SMF’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 SMF? 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 CA 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.
