Thursday 14 July 2016

NAV vs Market Value

What is Net Asset Value (NAV)
In layman's term NAV means how much a stock would have "worth", which is calculated by dividing the total value of all the securities in its portfolio, less any liabilities, by the number of fund shares outstanding

What is Market Value
In layman's term Market Value is the value of a company according to the stock market. Buyers and sellers used this price to buy and sell stock at a stock exchange.

Illustration
Stock A
An ice-cream with NAV of $0.50 per scoop selling at $5.00 per scoop to its customers

Stock B
A packet of chicken rice with NAV of $3.00 selling at $3.50 per packet to its customers.

Analogy
Often it would have been the case which we had seen, the newly opened ice-cream shop in town will have a much longer queue than a traditional chicken rice stall. The ice-cream are obviously over-priced and tasted normal or just slightly better than average but the customers willing to pay extra for a try, and also of course of the long queue syndrome. The ice cream price goes up along with its popularity.
A year later, the ice cream customers would have then realised that they had actually paid 10 times more for a normal ice cream. The customer would eventually went back to buy chicken rice for their daily lunch or dinner, which are only 1.17 times more than its value, and the ice cream stall would eventually closed down.

Stock Market
Stock A is a new hot IPO in town, with the price-to-net-asset-value (P/NAV) ratio of 10, or some called it Price / Book Value. Stock B have a P/NAV of 1.17 only.
Based on the P/NAV only, ignoring other factor, Stock B would be a better choice for long term investing.
Often, Stock A's price would goes up during the early stage due to the fact that many would rush to and grab a bite, and some would take this newly IPO stock in town for a try, hoping that it can be a multi-baggers stock. Most of the cases, the trend and popularity dies off eventually, Stock A daily volume drops, and people will turn back to Stock B, a good old dividend stock.

Another example is if we would take a look at our three largest local bank.

NAV, estimated based on Yahoo finance
DBS - $16.72, P/NAV at 0.95x
OCBC - $8.57, P/NAV at 1.03x
UOB - $19.06, P/NAV at 0.97x

Market Value, based on today closed price
DBS - $15.95
OCBC - $8.86
UOB - $18.62

Which is cheaper?
DBS which has the lowest NAV or OCBC with the lowest Market Value?
Which is more expensive?
OCBC which has the highest NAV, or UOB with the highest Market Value?

What's your take?
Want to get a taste of the new ice cream in town which everybody are rushing to queue, or choose to take a boring chicken rice for your daily meals.

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