The following Excel File contains fundamental information on the 240 largest market cap (non-financial service) companies listed anywhere in the world. You have two tasks:
1. Please identify the 5 most undervalued firms in this sample, using a Relative Valuation Method. In making this analysis:
You can pick any multiple you want to make this judgment. This multiple can either be an existing multiple (like PE or EV/EBITDA), a modified version of an existing multiple (like PEGY) or a multiple that you invent. (Just make sure that you put it through the consistency test)
2. Search Online and other resources and identify why are these companies undervalued?
3. Recommend and discuss several corrective actions that management of these companies can take in order to improve the valuation of their firms.
4. Assume that you are an activist investor (Blackstone and KKR's competitor) and are interested in acquiring one of the firms in the sample, which you plan to take private, restructure (operating and financing, if necessary) and take public again. Which company would you pick and why? (Note that it does not have to come from your list of 5 most undervalued companies).