Before you go about investing in a stock and spending all your time on a stock tracker app, you need to understand how it performs in the market. Any wise investor will tell you that background research is indispensable.
You will also have to face the choice between choosing a fast-growing company’s stock and an industry leader’s stock. Luckily, you can evaluate both of them using similar techniques. But, how do you do that?
In this blog, we will discuss some of the common ways in which you can evaluate fast-growing companies and incumbents in brief.
1. Revenue growth rate
The revenue growth rate is the simplest way to identify the success of a company. It is the rate at which the company’s revenue grew within a specific period.
You can easily calculate this value by using two sets of data. One is the current year’s revenue compared with the previous year’s. The second set of data is the current quarter’s revenue compared with the last quarter’s.
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2. Margin of safety
For a fast-growing company, you must strictly adhere to this step. You may never know how dramatically fluctuating the market can be.
This stock metric can help you determine whether you can invest in the stock at the moment. The safety of margin is the percentage of the difference between intrinsic value and the market price.
You can calculate it by finding the ratio between the intrinsic value and the market price and converting it into a percentage. When the margin of safety is higher, it is safe to invest and vice versa.
3. Balance sheet
The balance sheet is critical to your evaluation of the company’s value. Every company has a balance sheet that details all the debt and cash flow.
If a company has low debts and high cash, it has better chances of surviving a market turmoil. Therefore, cash is a powerful indicator of the stability of the company in a market.
4. Competitive advantage
Both fast-growing companies and incumbents have an advantage over other firms. Due to the popularity, fast-growing companies charge higher prices.
The incumbents are tough to replace and they already have a higher margin in the sector.
However, the difference is that the latter has lesser risk in comparison. So, look for such metrics that prove that the company has a competitive advantage over others.
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5. Sales figures and cash flows
The price-to-sales ratio is a good metric for you to arrive at a sales figure. You can quickly determine the value of the company at its peak performance. For determining future cash flows, you can use a technical method like the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF).
By using the discount rates obtained from the calculator, you can assess the value of the company. There are portfolio tracker applications in the market that can provide you with these insights.
To conclude, these aren’t the only ways to determine the value of a fast-growing company and an incumbent. But it is crucial to use something that delivers a good forecast to arrive at a suitable decision.