Digging Into Buffett's Numbers By Jim Schoettler | More Articles May 11, 2005 | Comments (2) Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) The concept of Discounted Cash Flow model valuation is straightforward: We discount all future cash flows the company will produce to the present day, add them up, and voila, we have our company valuation
With that, I present The Discounted Cash Flow Equation
DCF = CF0 x SUM[(1 + g)/(1 + r)]n (for x = 0 to n) OK, OK
That's not as pretty as my initial explanation
Here's the basic interpretation: DCF is Discounted Cash Flow, CF0 is today's cash flow, g is expected growth, and r is the expected rate of return
For the many of you who wish that math had ended in third grade, let that suffice -- we will look at how you can easily translate all that gibb