The value of a corporation is the discounted present value of future cash
flows provided by the company to the shareholders. The valuation process
requires that the corporate financial decision maker determine the future
free cash flow to equity, the short-term growth rate, the long-term growth
rate, and the required rate of return based on market beta. The objective
of this book is to provide a template for demonstrating corporate
valuation using a real company—Coca-Cola. The data used in this book
comes from the financial statements of Coca-Cola available on EDGAR.
Other data are from SBBI, Yahoo! Finance, the U.S. Bureau of Economic
Analysis, Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation, Market Results for 1926–2010,
2011 Yearbook, Classic Edition, Morningstar, and US Department of the
Treasury.