Is There An Opportunity With John Laing Group plc’s (LON:JLG) 49.15% Undervaluation?
How far off is John Laing Group plc (LON:JLG) 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 estimating the company’s 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! Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model. Please also note that this article was written in October 2018 so be sure check out the updated calculation by following the link below.
Check out our latest analysis for John Laing Group
Crunching the numbers
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 begin with we have to get estimates of the next five years of cash flows. I then discount the sum of these cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate.
5-year cash flow forecast
2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
Levered FCF (£, Millions) | £179.19 | £187.74 | £196.69 | £206.08 | £215.90 |
Source | Est @ 4.77% | Est @ 4.77% | Est @ 4.77% | Est @ 4.77% | Est @ 4.77% |
Present Value Discounted @ 8.28% | £165.49 | £160.13 | £154.94 | £149.91 | £145.05 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= UK£776m
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 1.4%. We discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 8.3%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = UK£216m × (1 + 1.4%) ÷ (8.3% – 1.4%) = UK£3.2b
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = UK£3.2b ÷ ( 1 + 8.3%)5 = UK£2.1b
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 UK£2.9b. 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 £5.93. Compared to the current share price of £3.02, the stock is quite undervalued at a 49% discount to what it is available for right now.
Important assumptions
I’d like to point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don’t agree with my result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. Because we are looking at John Laing Group 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 8.3%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. 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 JLG, I’ve put together three essential factors you should further research:
Financial Health: Does JLG 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 JLG’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 JLG? 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 GB 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.
