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Is Avalara Inc (NYSE:AVLR) Expensive For A Reason? A Look At The Intrinsic Value

In this article I am going to calculate the intrinsic value of Avalara Inc (NYSE:AVLR) by taking the foreast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today’s 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 November 2018 then I highly recommend you check out the latest calculation for Avalara by following the link below.

Check out our latest analysis for Avalara

The calculation

I use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of varying growth rates for the company’s cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a more stable growth phase. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next five years. For this I used the consensus of the analysts covering the stock, as you can see below. 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 estimate

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Levered FCF ($, Millions)

$-3.49

$23.97

$28.28

$160.00

$185.60

Source

Analyst x4

Analyst x3

Est @ 18%, capped from 23.46%

Analyst x1

Est @ 16%, capped from 23.46%

Present Value Discounted @ 11.02%

$-3.14

$19.44

$20.67

$105.32

$110.05

Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= US$252m

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 11%.

Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$186m × (1 + 2.9%) ÷ (11% – 2.9%) = US$2.4b

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = US$2.4b ÷ ( 1 + 11%)5 = US$1.4b

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$1.7b. The last step is to then 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) then we use the equivalent number. This results in an intrinsic value of $24.91. Compared to the current share price of $31.06, the stock is fair value, maybe slightly overvalued and not available at a discount at this time.

NYSE:AVLR Intrinsic Value Export November 22nd 18
NYSE:AVLR Intrinsic Value Export November 22nd 18

The assumptions

Now 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 Avalara 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 11%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.145. 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 AVLR, there are three fundamental aspects you should further examine:

  1. Financial Health: Does AVLR 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.

  2. Future Earnings: How does AVLR’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: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of AVLR? 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 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.

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