There are many steps in calculating the fair value of a company. However, before we even do that, it is imperative to know how a company earns its profit. Does it do that by selling to consumers? licensing its technology to other companies? or extracting natural resources from the ground?
The sensible way to do it is by reading the company’s annual report. What is an annual report? Annual report is yearly publication by public companies to better inform investor about the company’s line of business. Annual report gives investors a glance of the company’s line of business, financial health as well as management’s strategies for doing business.
Let’s look at CNET Networks Inc. The company trades in the NASDAQ market with symbol: CNET. What does CNET do? I know CNET owns cnet.com. But do you know that it also owns download.com, MP3.com, ZDnet.com and News.com ? How do I know that? Yep, you guess it. CNET’s Annual Report will gives you all that.
From CNET’s annual report, we can do a little digging for CNET’s internet traffic. As of August 27th 2005, these websites of CNET attracts 3 % of all internet traffic....