An Intrinsic Calculation For Redcape Hotel Group (ASX:RDC) Suggests It's 46% Undervalued

Today we'll do a simple run through of a valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of Redcape Hotel Group (ASX:RDC) as an investment opportunity by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. I will be using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward.

Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Redcape Hotel Group

What's the estimated valuation?

We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To begin with, we have to get estimates of the next ten years of cash flows. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last 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.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, 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 (A$, Millions)

A$75.1m

A$78.4m

A$81.3m

A$84.0m

A$86.5m

A$89.0m

A$91.3m

A$93.7m

A$96.0m

A$98.3m

Growth Rate Estimate Source

Est @ 5.22%

Est @ 4.35%

Est @ 3.74%

Est @ 3.31%

Est @ 3.01%

Est @ 2.8%

Est @ 2.65%

Est @ 2.55%

Est @ 2.48%

Est @ 2.43%

Present Value (A$, Millions) Discounted @ 9.66%

A$68.5

A$65.2

A$61.7

A$58.1

A$54.6

A$51.2

A$47.9

A$44.8

A$41.8

A$39.1

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)
Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= A$532.8m

The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. 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 (2.3%) 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 9.7%.