Applied Equity Analysis: Stock Valuation Techniques for Wall Street Professionals

This is today's most comprehensive practitioner's guide to modern equity analysis. Professional equity analysts must contend with a number of strong forces, each pulling in separate but equally relentless directions. "Applied Equity Analysis" ties these disparate elements into a seamless whole, and presents a clear, complete equity analysis picture. Written from the working analyst's point of view, in a singularly candid style that is both thought provoking and illuminating, "Applied Equity Analysis" covers: how to think, speak, and develop investment recommendations in the language of Wall Street; how competitive forces directly impact financial results and, in the process, drive stock valuation; and, how to use valuation methodologies designed to quantify the growth and earnings assumptions inherent in speculative stock prices. "Applied Equity Analysis" emphasizes techniques that work on a day-to-day basis, rather than traditional but often impractical academic approaches.By combining a solid discussion of finance and investment theory with techniques popular among today's buy- and sell-side analysts, it presents a picture of stock investment analysis that is analytically rigorous, aggressively uncompromising, and based on earnings - the true driving force of Wall Street. "The equity analyst's job is to present a position, supported by financial and non-financial evidence. Data unnecessary to the argument are, in a word, unnecessary. However, the analyst must understand all the data, relevant or not. The ultimate goal of the equity analyst is the exploitation of any difference between a stock's price and its value." - From Chapter 1. "Applied Equity Analysis" is about understanding all the data.Written by former JP Morgan managing director James English - an adjunct professor of finance at the Columbia University School of Business, honored by "The Wall Street Journal" for his stock analysis skills - this innovative book treats valuation as a practical tool rather than a theoretical exercise. Its integrated approach shows you how to build straight-line connections between a firm's fundamental competitive situation and its stock performance, by combining an understanding of a firm's competitive strengths and weaknesses with accurate financial statement analysis - to build a more complete model of a firm's future stock market performance.Combining a solid discussion of finance and investment theory with techniques frequently used by working buy- and sell-side analysts, "Applied Equity Analysis" discusses: specific valuation techniques for identifying stocks that are undervalued relative to their peers; quantitative techniques to link a firm's projected future financial performance to its potential future valuation - based upon the current trading patterns of comparable stocks; a hybrid valuation technique to mathematically calculate a stock's inherent growth expectations; a proven strategy for formulating and successfully presenting an investment recommendation; an entire chapter on the Stern Stewart EVA[trademark] system as an alternative - and potentially useful - way of decoding financial statement information; and, relative and hybrid earnings-based valuation techniques that are more practical than cash-flow methods - and frequently far superior. On today's Wall Street, equity analysts must focus on a firm's ability to produce returns that exceed capital costs, and then estimate the firm's future power to maintain and increase those returns. Let "Applied Equity Analysis" supply you with in-depth examples and explanations of Wall Street's most important equity analysis tools - and give you a hands-on, real-world handbook for equity analysis in today's complex financial marketplace.