Valuation of a company in an emerging market - in USD or in local currency

Need to do a valuation of a company in an emerging market with quite volatile local currency. The business is local.

What would you choose: to value the company in a local currency and then convert the final number into USD with the most current exchange rate, or to value the company in USD? But then comes another question: would you translate each year numbers with , say, the average exchange rate for that particular year or use some sort of common reference rate? What would be the best practice here in setting the reference rate?

Thanks,

8 Comments
 

For IS and CF I'd use the average rate, whilst for BS I'd use EoP rate.

Valuation should not change if you do it in US$ or in local currency.

Watch out for the effect of inflation accounting, it fucks up lots of information not making it comparable to years outside the ones being reported,

 
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You should always value an asset in the currency it operates in/has most of its revenue stream. The asset will produce local currency, not dollars, so you can’t value it in dollars. 10% irr in usd is NOT a 10% irr in emerging market currency.

You should: (i) project the 3 statements as they are, (ii) add a currency/country premium to WACC (check Damodaran/Duff&Phelps valuation guide for that), and (iii) create EV/irr sensitivity table for the USD/local currency rate (+-5%, 10% and etc).

 

There is no use of IRR in a valuation. I have no idea what are you talking about, and what kind of EV/irr table you have in mind.

The discount rate (the cost of capital) is different, of course. It is currency dependent. I actually can value every company in every currency. But I asked a practical question based on the experience that some IBs do valuation in USD and I have noticed a weird use of FX rates to do so.

 

I would always model in local currency if possible - takes out the brain damage on FX depreciation (not all EM FX will revert to mean) and country specific risk work.

On your second question, you can just assume a fixed forward rate for the rest of the the projections. Or if you really want to be accurate, you can use the Fwd rate T+1...T+10 (assuming 10 year TV), both are fine and the variance will not be significant.

 

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