On July 21, 2021, I valued Zomato just ahead of its initial public offering at about ₹41 per share. The market clearly had a very different view, as the stock premiered at ₹74 per share and soared into the stratosphere, peaking at ₹169 per share in late 2021. The last few months have been rocky, as the price has been marked down, partly in response to disappointing results from the company, and partly because of macro developments. At close of trading on July 26, 2022, the stock was trading at ₹41.65 per share, and the mood and momentum that worked in its favor for most of 2021 had turned against the company. In this post, I will begin with a quick review of my 2021 valuation, then move on to the price action in 2021 and 2022 and then update my valuation to reflect the company's current numbers.
My IPO Valuation
I valued Zomato, soon after it filed its prospectus for its initial public offering, in July 2021. The details of that valuation are in this post, but to cut a long story short, I argued that an investment on Zomato was a joint bet on India (that economic growth would bring more discretionary income to its people), on Indian eating habits (that Indians would eat out at restaurants more than they have in the past) and on the company (that its business model and first move advantages would give it a dominant market share of the food delivery market). I summarized my valuation in a picture:
I valued the company at close to ₹41, and note that this valuation incorporates the proceeds from the IPO and adjusts the share count for the offering. I argued then that notwithstanding the potential growth in the market, and Zomato's advantageous positioning, it was being over priced for its IPO, at ₹76 per share.
In response to the pushback that I got from those who disagreed with my valuation, with half arguing that I was being way too optimistic about the future and the other half that I was ignoring the potential for growth overseas and in new businesses, I followed up with a second post, where I let readers choose their own story line for Zomato, and came up with a table that linked stories to values:
Using my test of whether a valuation story is possible (the weakest test), plausible (a stronger test) and probable (the acid test), I posited that you could justify a value per share for Zomato of ₹40 - ₹50, per share, with plausible stories, but that valuations that were much higher required pushing the limits of plausible narratives.
The Pricing Game
One reason that I enjoy valuing a company just ahead of its market debut is that there is no market price to bias your analysis; in my experience, the market price operates as magnet, drawing intrinsic valuations towards it. The downside is that without a market price acting as an anchor, your valuations can easily come unmoored from reality. No matter what, having a valuation in hand makes the first day of trading much more interesting, as you wait for the market to pass its own judgment on the stock’s pricing, though that judgment reflects more a pricing game than a value estimate.
Staying with the theme that it is demand and supply, mood and momentum that determine what happens to a company’s stock in first few months of trading, the buzz that accompanied Zomato’s listing and its standing as one of the first new age Indian companies to go public, spilled over into the first day of trading, as the stock soared 51% over its offering price of ₹76, and rose as high as ₹137 during the trading day. That opening day glow lasted for the rest of 2021, abetted by easy access to risk capital, and the stock maintained its lofty pricing. If you are tempted to attribute the price performance to good news from the company, its earnings reports continued to report escalating losses and one of its co-founders quit in September 2021.
Updating the fundamentals
Though some have suggested that price dropping to my value is vindication of my valuation, I am not part of that group for three reasons. First, it seems skewed to celebrate only your successes and not your failures, and it behooves me to let you know that I also valued Paytm at close to ₹2000 per share, and the stock is currently trading at ₹713. Second, even if nothing in my valuation has changed, the value per share of ₹41 per share was as of July 2021, and if it is a fair assessment, the expected intrinsic value per share in July 2022 should be roughly 11.5% higher (i.e., grow at the cost of equity), yielding about ₹46 in July 2022. Finally, the company and the market have changed in the year since I last valued it, and to make a fair judgment today, the company will have to be revalued.
Company Fundamentals
In the year since my IPO valuation, there have been four quarterly reports from the company, in addition to news stories about governance and the company's legal challenges, and there is a mix of good and bad news in them.
On the good news front, the food delivery market in India has continued to grow over the last year, and Zomato has been able to maintain its market share. In fact, there are signs that the market is consolidating with Zomato and Swiggy controlling 90% of the market share of restaurant deliveries. As a consequence, Zomato's gross order value and revenues have both jumped over the course of the last year:
In addition, the substantial cash that Zomato raised on its IPO is providing it with a cash and liquidity cushion, with cash and short term investments jumping from ₹15,000 in March 2021 to ₹68746 (including short term investments) in March 2022. Since Zomato is a young, money-losing company, and the likelihood of failure acts as a drag on value, this will benefit the company, since it provides not only a cushion for the firm but also eliminates dependence on external capital for the next few years.
On the bad news front, the take rate, i.e., the slice of gross order value (GOV) that Zomato keeps has dropped substantially over the last year, reflecting increased competition in the market, higher delivery costs and Zomato's entry into newer markets (like grocery delivery) with lower revenue sharing. In addition, the growth has come in fits and starts, and given Zomato's active acquisition strategy, it is not clear how much of the revenue growth is organic and how much is acquired. Not surprisingly, the company's losses have ballooned over the last year:
When I valued Zomato in July 2021, the markets (in India and globally) were in the midst of a boom, with abundant supply of risk capital and optimism about economic growth, pushing up the prices of tech companies, generally, and the youngest, most money-losing tech companies, specifically. Those circumstances no longer hold, with two big developments in global markets, both of which I have talked about in previous posts
- Inflation returns: Inflation is back in almost every part of the globe, and has unsettled markets. In this post, from May 2022, I noted that financial assets (stocks, bonds) lose value when inflation is higher than expected, and that a decade of low and stable inflation has left investors exposed and vulnerable. The effects of inflation show up first as higher risk free rates, across currencies, and next in higher risk premiums, with both equity risk premiums and default spreads rising. In a follow-up post a couple of weeks later, I looked inflation's effects on individual companies and argued that less-risky companies with pricing power and high gross margins would be less exposed than riskier, money-losing companies. (I will leave it to you to judge where Zomato falls on this continuum.)
- Risk Capital flees: In a post at the start of this month, I looked at how the retreat of risk capital, i.e., capital invested in the riskiest assets (from venture capital invested in start ups to investments in the riskiest collectibles) was playing out in higher equity risk premiums in mature markets, and in a later post a few days later, even bigger increases in equity risk premiums in emerging markets. As a company with the bulk of its business in India, Zomato again is more exposed to these developments.
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| Download spreadsheet with valuation (and DIY) |
An Action Plan
So, what now? As with my valuation last year, let me emphasize that this is not the valuation of Zomato, but is my valuation and it will inform my decisions on the company. I have a story for Zomato, and valuation inputs that reflect that story, but I could be wrong on both fronts, and as I did last year, I tried to capture these uncertainties in a Monte Carlo simulation:
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| Oracle Crystal Ball used for simulations |
- The Zomato IPO: A Bet on Big Markets and Platforms! (July 22, 2021)
- A DIY (Do-itYourself) Valuation of Zomato! (August 2, 2021)
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