The Compressed Tech Life Cycle: The Investor Challenge
Much of what we learn and practice as investors represent models and methods developed in a different age, one where the market was composed of consumer product, infrastructure and manufacturing companies. While those lessons may have been good ones for old economy markets, I will argue in this post that they can provide misleading signals with short corporate life-cycles, an affliction common among, but not unique to, tech companies. Lest this be construed as an attack on a specific group of investors, I will spread my critique across investor classes, starting with value investors, then moving on to growth investors and market timers and then turning it on intrinsic valuation practitioners (which is where I count myself).The Tech Challenge for Value InvestorsIf you are a value investor, you may have been told that everything you need to know about valuation is in Ben Graham's Security Analysis. I will make a confession. I love Ben Graham for his philosophy and intellect, but I think that using the techniques suggested in it to value tech companies is akin to using a hammer to do surgery. It is not Graham's fault, since he wrote the book at a time when the corporate world was populated with railroads, utilities and manufacturing companies and much of his advice was directed at coaxing investors who were more interested in buying bonds, to consider stocks as an alternative. In fact, in the Graham world, a good stock looks like a perpetual bond, with ever-growing coupons. So, at the risk of arousing the ire of value purists, here is my list of old value investing chestnuts that need to be roasted on the tech fire.
1. Don't trust earnings multiples: There are some pricing metrics that are singularly inappropriate for use with tech companies, and at the top of the list is price earnings (PE) ratios. Early in the life cycle, when growth is explosively high and R&D expenses are rising, the PE ratios for tech companies will be high, as markets price in future earnings, and tech companies will almost always look expensive, even if they are fairly priced. Later in the life cycle, when growth is not just low but often negative and R&D expenses are falling, the PE ratios for tech companies will be low, and tech companies will look cheap, even when they are not.
To illustrate this dynamic, I created two companies, both with 20-year windows and similar risk, but made one a tech company, with intense growth (50%) for the first 5 years, a short mature period of 5 years (10%) and speedy decline thereafter and the other one a non-tech company, with less intense growth (25%) for the first 5 years, a longer mature period of 10 years and a more stable afterlife. The graph below shows the fair PE ratios for these firms, as they move through their lifetimes. The bottom line is that tech companies look expensive on a PE ratio, when they are young, and cheap on a PE ratio basis, when they age, even if they are fairly valued. This problem is exacerbated by the accounting mistreatment of R&D, which makes young tech companies look less profitable than they truly are and old tech companies more profitable. Multiples of revenues and book value are also affected, but not to the same degree.
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I can offer some evidence for this proposition from my post on the aging of tech companies, where I classified all companies based on their age and compare old tech companies (older than 35 years) with old non-tech companies. In the graph below, I compare the earnings multiples at which old tech companies(>35 years) trade, relative to old non-tech companies:
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| Old companies = Age greater than 35 years (since founding) |
...MUCH MORENote that old tech companies look cheap on every earnings metric, relative to old non-tech companies. There may be a reason why companies like IBM and Microsoft keep showing up on the lists of cheapest stocks, when you run value screens.
2. Don't buy and hold "good" companies: Not all value investors subscribe to this notion, but quite a few seem to accept the idea that if you find a good company (well managed, with strong competitive advantages), you should buy the company for your portfolio and hold for the long term (perhaps forever). That is not good advice with tech companies, where today's tech superstar can become tomorrow's dog. If you buy a tech company, you should be revaluing it at frequent intervals, selling it, if the price exceeds the value significantly....
Tech Life Cycle Series
Some of our previous links:
Prof.Damodaran's Handy Uber Valuation Template (or, How to Price a Narrative)
"Discounted Cashflow Valuations (DCF): Academic Exercise, Sales Pitch or Investor Tool?"
As Demonstrations Against Uber Snarl Traffic From London to Berlin NYU Prof Scoffs at Valuation
The Man Who Hated Tesla: Professor Damodaran Revises His "The Stock is Worth $67" Call (TSLA)
Tesla: Even More on Aswath Damodaran's $67.12/share Valuation (TSLA)
Sure, He Called the Top In Apple and He Called the Bottom in Facebook But Tesla Fair Market Value at $67.12? (TSLA)
"Illiquidity and Bubbles in Private Share Markets: Testing Mark Cuban's thesis!"
