What is valuation of insurance companies?
How to Drives equity Value?
How to identify the primary drivers of the equity value?
This article describes all these questions very briefly.The value of any financial claim is the present value of expected net flows to the owners of that claim. Accordingly, the value of common equity (Equity Value or EV) is the present value of expected net flows to common equity holders (Net Equity Flow or NEF):
re is the cost of common equity capital. Equation (1) assumes that NEF is paid at the middle of each year.
Theoretically, to value existing general equity, NEF should only contain flows linked with currently existing common shares. However, this approach is impractical because future dividends and share repurchases will be paid not only to existing shares but also to shares that will be issued in future. The substitute approach is to suppose that all future share issuance transactions will beat fair price; that is the current value of the cash or other resources or services that will be received when new shares are issued is equal to the present value of the subsequent dividends and share repurchases associated with those shares. Under this assumption, NEF is defined as the total of all common dividends, common share repurchases and non cash distributions, minus the light value of the assets or the services to be received in exchange for issuance of common shares.
Valuation model (1) can be restated in terms of comprehensive income available to common shareholders (CI) and the book value of common equity (CE) by substituting the following relation for NEFt:
Substitute equation (2) into (1),
I next define Return on Equity (ROE) as comprehensive income available to common Share holders divided by beginning-of-period common equity (i.e., ROEt= CIt/ CEt-l), and CUM_CE_Gt-l as cumulative common equity growth from time zero through the beginning of future year t (i.e., CUM_CE_Gt-l= CEt-l/ CE0). Substituting into equation (3) and algebraically manipulating the resulting equation.
Dividing both sides of equation (4) by the book value of equity yields an equation which identifies the determinants of the value-to-book ratio: future profitability (and hence current profitability and accounting quality), growth, and the cost of equity capital.
Valuation equations (4) and (5) emphasize the roles of book value and shareholders’ profitability (CE and ROE, respectively) in determining equity value. For reasons discussed below, these are key valuation metrics when analyzing financial service companies. Another valuation approach, which is used for essentially all companies, is to focus on earnings, earnings growth and payout. The link between these drivers and equity value can be established by expressing Net Equity Flow (NEF) as follows:
The following exhibit summarizes the determinants of the value-to-book and value-to-earnings ratios. To the extent that price reflects intrinsic value; these value drivers also affect the price-to-book and price earnings share ratios in that order.
Determinants of Value Ratios
Value ratio | Value Drivers |
Value-to-book | Profitability, accounting quality, book value growth, equity risk, long-term interest rates |
Value-to-earnings | Earnings growth, accounting quality, earnings payout, equity risk, long-term interest rates |