Woolworths Group Ltd (ASX: WOW), Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL) and Metcash Limited (ASX: MTS) shares offer big dividend yields but knowing the difference between price and value is essential to long-term investing. So before you buy, please keep reading…
As part of our free value investing series, The Value of Everything, I used Woolworths as a case study to demonstrate exactly how to value blue chip ASX shares in the retail, banks, technology and industrials sectors. That is, it can be applied to most of the good companies on the ASX.
Price Vs. Value
First, it’s worth asking before you buy any share, what’s the difference between ‘share price’ and ‘share valuation’. In our Rask Finance video below I answer that question:
Below, I’ve included the ‘101’ of each company you could value, and included my favourite valuation technique for them.
Woolworths was founded in 1924 by Percy Christmas, its first store was opened in Sydney’s Imperial Arcade. Woolworths is Australia’s largest supermarket business, it operates Woolworths supermarkets in Australia and Countdown in New Zealand. It also runs the retail department store Big W. With over 3,000 stores and more than 200,000 employees it’s one of Australia’s largest employers.
After 10 years being owned by Wesfarmers, Coles Group was split from the broader Wesfarmers conglomerate (which owns Bunnings Warehouse) in November 2018. However, the Coles name has operated in Australia for 100 years. Today Coles is one of the largest retailers in the country, serving 21 million customers per week across its supermarkets, Coles Express, Online, Vintage Choice and others.
Metcash is a leading wholesale distributor of supermarket products and the owner of popular retail brands like IGA, Mitre 10 and Foodland. In liquor it owns The Bottle-O, Cellarbrations and Duncans.
As you can imagine because each of these companies operates in the same or similar industries, in Australia, and compete for essentially the same customers, we can value each of these three businesses using similar techniques and comparable figures.
Share Valuation 101
Now that you know why valuation is important and a little about the companies, in the next video, I explain the key phrases, concepts or terms known as intrinsic valuation & margin of safety.
In our full Value of Everything investing course — available here for free — I got into detail about where to source information from annual reports, what’s important and what’s not, and I even provide a free valuation template.
For sake of keeping this article easy to follow and not overcrowd this page with information, I’ve included only my favourite valuation method and the tutorial for it. It’s called a Discounted Cash Flow or DCF analysis. Again, the case study is Woolworths shares but it could be easily amended and applied to Coles Group or Metcash shares or any other company you can think of.
Woolworths DCF Analysis
Finally, I’ll add a few very important notes here. First, it’ll take a few sittings — or a weekend — to get through all of our free investing tutorials. Second, my valuation was a case study only and I did it a few years back. A lot’s changed since then.
And here’s the most important thing: it’s more important to focus on the business than it is to spend hours or days or weeks with your head in a spreadsheet. After all, what’s the point of spending 10 hours filling in a spreadsheet if the company you’re trying to value is a pile of garbage? This is where most DIY investors get it wrong, in my opinion.
Therefore, if you want to know how to sort good from bad companies/shares, filter for the best CEOs and more, we’ve also created a free email series called the Investing Masterclass Series. It’s free and delivered by email over 4 days. Check it out below.
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Disclosure: At the time of publishing, Owen does not have a financial interest in any of the companies mentioned.
