An Intrinsic Calculation For CECO Environmental Corp (NASDAQ:CECE) Shows It’s 49.7% Undervalued
How far off is CECO Environmental Corp (NASDAQ:CECE) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, I am going to take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. I will be 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 September 2018 then I highly recommend you check out the latest calculation for CECO Environmental by following the link below.
See our latest analysis for CECO Environmental
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. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next five years. 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) | $25.57 | $28.69 | $32.19 | $36.12 | $40.53 |
Source | Est @ 12.21% | Est @ 12.21% | Est @ 12.21% | Est @ 12.21% | Est @ 12.21% |
Present Value Discounted @ 8.88% | $23.48 | $24.20 | $24.94 | $25.70 | $26.49 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= US$124.8m
We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after the five years. 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 8.9%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$40.5m × (1 + 2.9%) ÷ (8.9% – 2.9%) = US$703.4m
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = US$703.4m ÷ ( 1 + 8.9%)5 = US$459.6m
The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the cash flows, which in this case is US$584.4m. 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 $16.74. Compared to the current share price of $8.42, the stock is quite good value at a 49.7% discount to what it is available for right now.
The 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 CECO Environmental 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 8.9%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.841. 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:
Whilst important, DCF calculation 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 CECE, there are three key aspects you should look at:
Financial Health: Does CECE 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 CECE’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 CECE? 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.
