How Investors Can Factor Negative Cash Flow Into Valuations
It can signal good things or bad things about a company — and it’s up to investors to know the difference.
Negative cash flow can be a truly awful metric for a company — or it can be the sign of a healthy, growing business. How can an investor know the difference? In this episode of “The Morning Show” on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Dec. 21, Fool analysts John Rotonti and Jim Gillies discuss how to employ the metric into your valuations of a stock.
How Investors Can Factor Negative Cash Flow Into Valuations
John Rotonti: If our definition of free cash flow is NOPAT [net operating profit after tax], might this new invested capital. All it means is that in one year, new invested capital is more than NOPAT. Now, this can be a very good thing. This can be, in fact, an incredible, value-generating thing if the company is generating high returns on invested capital. How do you calculate return on invested capital? Same exact numbers. NOPAT over average invested capital. If the company has high underlying profitability, strong business economics. If it generates a high return on its invested capital, then you want the company investing every last dollar it has, and then some, into those high-return investments. …
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