Read more on riskfree rates
|
You can value any company in any
currency. The riskfree rate that you use will reflect the currency
you decided to do the valuation in. For instance, you would use
the U.S. treasury bond rate as your riskfree rate if you were
valuing Nestle in U.S. dollars. If you decided to value Nestle
in Swiss francs, you would use the 10-year Swiss franc government
bond rate. If you shift to a Euro valuation of Nestle, your riskfree
rate has to be a Euro riskfree rate. Since a dozen different
European governments issue 10-year Euro bonds, you should go
with the bond with the lowest interest rate since it is likely
to be closest to being riskfree.
Extending this concept, your valuation
should not be a function of which currency you decide to do the
valuation in; a company should not go from being over valued
in one currency to under valued in another currency at the same
point in time. For this proposition to hold, though, your forecasts
of future exchange rates (which you will need to convert your
cashflows into a base currency) have to be consistent with your
interest rate assumptions. Put simply, valuation will be invariant
to currency choices only if you assume purchasing power parity. |