USING DISCOUNTED CASH FLOW ANALYSIS IN AN INTERNATIONAL SETTING: A SURVEY OF ISSUES IN MODELING THE COST OF CAPITAL

Abstract

Based on the results of a recent survey of University of Chicago Graduate School of Business alumni, the authors of this article suggest that prevailing corporate practice in valuing overseas investments reflects a flawed understanding of finance theory. Although the survey finds that almost all respondents use the discounted cash flow (DCF) method in some fashion or another, there is significant variation both in the application of DCF and in the weighting that different groups assign to DCF in dealing with segmented markets. Of greater interest, the survey also shows that, as the complexity and uncertainty involved in valuation tasks increases, practitioners appear to place greater reliance on heuristics, or conventional rules of thumb. And in relying on heuristics as perceived risk increases, the authors warn, “people tend to become less consistent, less systematic, and less rigorous in the methods they use to measure and evaluate risk.” Also of interest to the authors, many practitioners doing international valuations appear to be unwitting adherents to a “multi‐factor” asset pricing model. For, in addition to traditional market factor proxies, they tend to incorporate country‐specific risks, such as political and sovereign risk, into the discount rate. The authors attribute this practice to the implicit (and generally mistaken) assumption that there is a significant relationship between systematic risk and the degree of foreign market segmentation. Following presentation of their survey results, the authors explore several important issues surrounding international cost of capital. Perhaps most important is the degree of market “segmentation” and how it affects the pricing model (whether a global or a local version of the CAPM, for example) used to calculate the cost of capital. The article provides a framework to help practitioners decide which pricing model is appropriate for valuing a given investment. Moreover, since the cost of capital affects EVA‐type measures of operating performance that are often used in performance evaluation schemes, the framework also can be used to guide senior management in thinking about the proper hurdle rates for their overseas business units.