Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bryanlarsen 2182 days ago
It's not.

Enterprise value of Toyota: $318B

Enterprise value of Tesla: $205B

2 comments

A little more info for the curious:

Toyota Market Cap: 171.994B

Tesla Market Cap: 205.619B

> Market capitalization, commonly called market cap, is the market value of a publicly traded company's outstanding shares

> Market cap is given by the formula MC = N * P, where MC is the market capitalization, N is the number of shares outstanding, and P is the closing price per share

> A more comprehensive measure is enterprise value (EV), which gives effect to outstanding debt, preferred stock, and other factors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization

According to the NYSE, the market cap of $TM is $171.88B and $TSLA is $205.88B.
That's the point. Market cap is only a portion of enterprise value.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/enterprisevalue.asp

Market cap is just a reflection of the total value of shares, enterprise value is a greater reflection of the perception of future cash flows, since it includes debt in the calculation.

Basically, Toyota has more debt, therefore its future earnings are assumed to be greater, because the market is valuing it at the current price, even knowing its debt burden. (Though there is alot of problems with this analysis based on how debt is accounted for, especially given companies like Toyota that have large financial units attached to them for loans).