Calculating The Fair Value Of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization S.A. (ATH:HTO)

Today we'll do a simple run through of a valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization S.A. (ATH:HTO) as an investment opportunity by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them to today's value. This is done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward.

We generally believe that a company's value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Hellenic Telecommunications Organization

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 ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars:

10-year free cash flow (FCF) forecast

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

2026

2027

2028

2029

Levered FCF (€, Millions)

€397.3m

€448.6m

€479.4m

€539.7m

€641.7m

€699.9m

€748.3m

€788.9m

€823.4m

€853.3m

Growth Rate Estimate Source

Analyst x4

Analyst x4

Analyst x2

Analyst x2

Analyst x1

Est @ 9.07%

Est @ 6.92%

Est @ 5.42%

Est @ 4.37%

Est @ 3.64%

Present Value (€, Millions) Discounted @ 13%

€352

€352

€333

€333

€350

€339

€321

€300

€277

€254

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)
Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = €3.2b

We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 10-year government bond rate (1.9%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 13%.