I read with interest @ogreed's recent valuation of FDV. I have really struggled to come up with any kind of a view about revenue (because of the M&A activity) and margins (because of the diversity of businesses and the rapid pace of change) and seeing @ogreed's approach was very useful to begin thinking more critically about my own. Mine is an admittedly backwards approach of accepting a management view about likely size, giving them five years to achieve it and then demanding a pretty wide margin of safety from my valuation - my buy price is actually the same as @ogreed's, although my valuation is much higher).

The comparison did raise a question for me about how far people tend to go into the future. @ogreed's val adopts a CY24 end-point. Using the same methodology, taking the cashflows a year further out would increase today's estimate of value by 30%. Taking it to extremes, at five years further today's value would be nearly 4x higher.

It's a tricky problem with FDV because, as a not-yet-cashflow-breakeven business, virtually all of its value is in these future years. I am personally quite comfortable with the business model and management, so I'm happy to look a bit further out. Equally, I can fully understand reluctance to take as much on faith. I'd love to hear some different views on the subject.

(edit: on a re-read, I wanted to avoid any perception of criticism of @ogreed's val or approach. I am a complete novice at this and my quesiton is asked in that spirit!)