My first DCF...Please Tear it Apart

Would appreciate some advice/criticism/comments from you guys.

I had to do a DCF for a class and decided to try and build one from scratch. I used the Macabacus model as a reference for a lot of the formulas, and although it took a while to build the whole thing, I was able to take away a good amount from the experience. The company is Corning Inc. (GLW)

Any feedback or comments would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Attachment Size
DCF GLW Final.xls 53.75 KB 53.75 KB
 

Yeah it can be tightened up for sure, I had some problems organizing it because I put it together from scratch

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

The formatting for the number of decimal places is inconsistent. Also some of your cells are formatted as accounting, some numbers, and some general.

On your cash flow, the retirement of LT debt has negative numbers formatted with parenthesis and red numbers with a negative sign in front.

Generally just clean up the formatting and make everything look more uniform.

Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.
 

Thanks, appreciate you taking a look. I plan on starting over and cleaning the whole thing up once finals end.

Just as a general starting point, what line items to do you follow when you start the model? Do you use the Bloomberg statements or go to the 10k of the company and use those? They are often different and make it inconsistent if you try and use both

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 
Best Response

Just took a quick look; Why are you adjusting CFO with hard coded numbers in working capital? They seem all wrong. E.g. A/R decreased from '12 to '13, yet you are adjusting CFO by subtracting adjustments for A/R in '13 which would indicate an increase in A/R. Again, inventory increased by 219, not 247 (hard coded in for some reason).

Plus, many of your assumptions are not linked to the properly correlated driver (Capex/Sales is linked to '13 throughout the entire forecast).

I'd suggest building out your model with some generic numbers and making sure they are all clean and linked, and then applying specific company financials. Honestly, it's kind of a mess as is.

Also, only use Bloomberg for sanity check. Not primary source, use Ks.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 

Thanks, I know there are a lot of problems with it but hope to fix most of them with my second try.

When you are covering a new company do you build a model from scratch for each one or do you have a generic model you use and just adjust each statement for the company specific line items?

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

Definitely wouldn't build out a new model, unless perhaps you're looking at a company in a completely different and unique industry, such as financials.

Normally have a template model and make adjustments as needed.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 

Is it necessary to include every line item...even the small insignificant ones...that are given in the 10k on each statement so that it is consistent for the cash flows statement, or is it even OK to combine some items.

It seems like using one model and making adjustments for new companies would cause problems with adding tons of lines on each statement.

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm brand new to modeling and just starting to wrap my head around how all three statement tie together. Thanks for the advice.

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

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People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.

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