How far off is Universal Health Services Inc (NYSE:UHS) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, I am going to take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today’s value. I will use the Discounted Cash Flows (DCF) model. Don’t get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model. Please also note that this article was written in August 2018 so be sure check out the updated calculation by following the link below.
Crunching the numbers
I’m using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company’s growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have perpetual stable growth rate. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next five years. For this I used the consensus of the analysts covering the stock, as you can see below. I then discount this to its value today and sum up the total to get the present value of these cash flows.
5-year cash flow forecast
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| Levered FCF ($, Millions) | $839.47 | $920.50 | $997.48 | $1.08k | $1.17k |
| Source | Analyst x3 | Analyst x2 | Est @ 8.36% | Est @ 8.36% | Est @ 8.36% |
| Present Value Discounted @ 8.59% | $773.06 | $780.63 | $779.00 | $777.37 | $775.75 |
Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= US$3.89b
We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after the five years. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of the GDP. In this case I have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.9%). In the same way as with the 5-year ‘growth’ period, we discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 8.6%.
Terminal Value (TV) = FCF2022 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = US$1.17b × (1 + 2.9%) ÷ (8.6% – 2.9%) = US$21.38b
Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)5 = US$21.38b ÷ ( 1 + 8.6%)5 = US$14.16b
The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next five years and the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is US$18.05b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. If the stock is an depositary receipt (represents a specified number of shares in a foreign corporation) then we use the equivalent number. This results in an intrinsic value of $193.32. Compared to the current share price of $127.42, the stock is quite good value at a 34.1% discount to what it is available for right now.
NYSE:UHS Intrinsic Value Export August 29th 18
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The assumptions
Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. If you don’t agree with my result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. Because we are looking at Universal Health Services as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighed average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation I’ve used 8.6%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. This is derived from the Bottom-Up Beta method based on comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.
Next Steps:
Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For UHS, I’ve put together three essential factors you should further research:
- Financial Health: Does UHS have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
- Future Earnings: How does UHS’s growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart.
- Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of UHS? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!
PS. Simply Wall St does a DCF calculation for every US stock every 6 hours, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.
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