Pls help: How to account for Q1 '21 and Q2 '21 actual financials in a DCF?
I'm building a DCF, but all of the templates I've found just have one column for the starting year (2021 in this case). I want my DCF to reflect the most up-to-date financials, and Q1 / Q2 actuals will obviously affect the overall forecast for 2021. Would it make sense to make a column for a stub year with the first two quarters of actuals and the second two quarters of forecasts? Should I make a column for each quarter of the starting year?
How should I go about this?
For a listed stock, consensus reflects the actuals so far, the only thing you may need to adjust is the balance sheet for one-offs you may not have modelled (e.g. goodwill change) In my view a stub view on the year so far and delta to a full year forecast makes sense only if there is a) a strong seasonality b) significant one-offs c) good reasons to doubt consensus / forecast
I think the bigger thing is that Q1/Q2 financials shouldn't be reflected in the DCF itself. You're discounting future cash flows not historicals. The way to do this is to just create a stub year column that is equal to the remaining two quarters of the year. Those get discounted back at 0.25 years (assuming mid-year discount) because it's half of a half. Every year thereafter is just discounted at N + 0.25.
I have to do this since I am in ER and quarters are important. Your financials tab should all be quarterized. then in the actual DCF take the YE values. so for 2021 you'll have 1Q 2Q actual values, projected 3/4Q21.
You should be consistent with this for the future years, 2022+. You can make this simple by making each quarter 1/4th of the YE value, or if you wish to have specific forecasts for each quarter then you can do that.
But GreenGiant is right your discount period should be 6/12ths of a year, since that is all that remains. Add +1 to this for 2022, so keep the discount period consistent
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