The Analyst's Path

Glossarytaught in M3.06, M5.04

EV to sales

Also called EV/Sales, EV/Revenue, EV/ARR.

Enterprise value divided by revenue. The multiple of last resort, used when a company has no profit to speak of.

On ₹4,800 crore of revenue, a firm with a ₹13,020 crore enterprise value trades at 2.71 times.

For software the variant that matters is enterprise value to annual recurring revenue, which counts only the contracted, repeating base out of everything invoiced. Marketplaces are valued on net revenue, never on gross merchandise value, because gross merchandise value is somebody else's sales.

EV to sales is only interpretable alongside gross margin and growth. Twelve times revenue on 80% gross margins growing 40% is a different claim from twelve times on 30% margins growing 10%.

Quote the multiple with the margin, or don't quote it.

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