Musings on Markets

JULY 18, 2025

The first is the role that cash holdings play in a business , an extension of the dividend policy question, with an examination of why businesses often should not pay out what they have available to shareholders. In this post, I will bring together two disparate and very different topics that I have written about in the past.

Start-ups 74

Start-ups Book Value Equity Marketability 74

Musings on Markets

OCTOBER 12, 2023

Even when you are successful in dissuading these companies from "bad" investments, but may not be able to stop them from returning the cash to shareholders as dividends and buybacks, rather than making "good" investments. trillion of cumulated enterprise value at fossil fuel companies. in the 1998-2010 time period to 5.95

Market Capitalization 114

Market Capitalization Enterprise Value Start-ups Marketability 114

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

The second was that, starting mid-year in 2020, equity markets and the real economy moved in different directions, with the former rising on the expectations a post-virus future, and the latter languishing, as most of the world continued to operate with significant constraints.

Risk Premium 52

Risk Premium Market Capitalization Equity Start-ups 52

Brian DeChesare

OCTOBER 12, 2022

EXAMPLE: Let’s say you’re planning to have 10 portfolio companies in your first fund, and the average Purchase Enterprise Value will be $50 million. Distributions: How frequently will you distribute dividends, cash flows, interest, and realized gains to your LPs? Finally, the macro environment is now quite unfavorable.

Private Equity Firm 59

Private Equity Firm Equity Start-ups Marketability 59

Musings on Markets

MAY 7, 2023

Consequently, you can only value the equity in a bank, and by extension, the only pricing multiples you can use to price banks are equity multiples (PE, Price to Book etc.). The notion of computing a cost of capital for a bank is fanciful and fruitless, and any attempt to compute an enterprise value for a bank is destined to end in failure.

Banking 92

Banking Price to Book Dividends Book Value 92

Musings on Markets

OCTOBER 25, 2022

An intuitive reading of the FCFE is that it is cash available to be returned to equity investors, either in the form of dividends or as cash buybacks. It is the rare firm that follows a residual cash policy, returning its FCFE every year as dividends and/or buybacks.

Dividends 108

Dividends EBITDA Equity Start-ups 108

Brian DeChesare

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

Performance and Valuations – PE and VC funds raised in the 2011 – 2020 period have performed decently over the past few years (median IRRs of 15 – 20%), but growth equity has been lower, with a median closer to 10%, likely because there was a much bigger valuation reset in the late-stage funding market and a big drop in exits.

Equity 59

Equity Enterprise Value Start-ups Marketability 59