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by nbouscal 3270 days ago
adventured is having a really hard time with your phrase "two identical companies". The answer to your question is yes, if you had two identical companies and then gave one of them $10B in cash, that company would be worth $10B more.
1 comments
kgwgk 3270 days ago
Actually adventured is right on non-operating cash being usually discounted. In general the second company will not be valued at $10bn more than the first.

Would you rather have a $1 in cash and a $9 share in the first company, or a $10 share in the second company where $1 is the cash per share? The second case is more risky so you wouldn't pay the full extra $1 for the second share.

Of course it could also be the case that the spread is larger than $1, if the first company is too short on cash and there is a liquidity risk depressing the valuation.

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nbouscal 3268 days ago
> The second case is more risky

Not if they're otherwise identical companies, it isn't. There may be reasons to expect a correlation between risk and cash holdings, or something to that effect, but ultimately a share in a company is a share of ownership of that company's assets. If a company didn't become $10B more valuable when given $10B in cash, where exactly did that value disappear to? Value doesn't vanish into thin air simply because it's now owned by a company.

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kgwgk 3268 days ago
Your loss is limited to $9 in the first case, but you can lose $10 in the second case. If you think this is not more risky, fine.
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