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Aswath Damodaran: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Aswath Damodaran
I teach corporate finance, valuation and investment philosophies at the Stern School of Business at New York University. I have online versions of all three courses here, as well as other finance-related videos. 1. The Corporate Finance Online playlist has an introductory video and 36 sessions that cover all of corporate finance (at least as I see it). 2. The Valuation playlist has 25 sessions that cover valuation approaches, issues and questions.3. The Investment Philosophies playlist has sessions that cover different investment philosophies.4. The Accounting and Statistics playlists reflect my quirky and unorthodox introductions to two disciplines that are critical to my valuation and corporate finance classes.5. The Blog Posts playlist has sessions that go wit my blog posts and reflect my standing as a dabbler, rather than expert, in all things finance-related. If you need the supporting material for any of the classes, check the links below.Links:
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- 2 days ago55 min
The Scaling and Profitability Trade-off: Venture Capital's weakest link!
Every business is faced with the question of whether to become bigger or build a better business model (delivering more in profits) and in this session, I start by looking at the factors that make that choice different for different businesses. I look at the conditions that make scaling up easier at some business than others, and the ingredients that go into a better business model. I also model out how founder characteristics (control versus ambition, longevity versus growth) and investor preference play into the scale vs profitability choice. In particular, I look at venture capital, the first stop for many ambitious business, and how the VC game (more pricing than value, top-heavy in terms of returns, lots of failures) can tilt businesses to prioritizing scaling over business models. I also look at two developments - a gray market, where private businesses can access increasing amounts of public equity, before they go public, and a public equity market, where momentum has stayed strong but reversals have weakened, and how those developments are also putting scaling ahead of business-building. Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/ScalevsProfits.pdfBlog Post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-scaling-and-profitability-trade-off.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 days ago52 min
From Eyeballs to ARR: Buzzy Pricing Metrics and the AI Trade!
As the Anthropic IPO approaches, it is worth remembering that IPOs are priced by VCs and bankers, not valued, and that pricing can often be on metrics that are unfamiliar. That has always been the case for young companies, with pricing scaled to website visitors and eyeballs in the dot com era to the numbers and subscribers in the social media decade. With AI, the metric that companies have latched on to is the annualized revenue run rate (ARR), where you take revenues in a recent period (weekly, monthly) and annualize it. In this session, I start with a look at the characteristics of young companies, which include small and fast-growing revenues, operating losses, negative cash flows and concerns about survival, and why many investors choose to give up on valuing these companies, because of these characteristics. Instead, they price these companies, but pricing is challenging as well, with pricing metrics, peer group choice and company differences all throwing wrenches in your work. All through the session, I use Anthropic and OpenAI was my lab experiments to illustrate both the challenges and solutions. Those expecting a resolution to the question of whether to bid for Anthropic shares at the offer price will be disappointed, but I hope that the framework for pricing endures and helps you make that decision.Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/PricingAI.pdfBlog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/10/from-eyeballs-to-annual-run-rates-arr.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 days ago54 min
The Prospectus is here: My (but not the) Anthropic IPO Valuation!
The long-awaited Anthropic prospectus is now public, and as promised, I value the company. I start with an examination of what we can learn from the prospectus about revenue growth, profitability, reinvestment and risk at Anthropic, noting that both optimists (glass half full) and pessimists (glass half empty) will find reasons to celebrate, but that it is still a snapshot of a young company that is evolving. To value Anthropic, you have to leave the safety of reported numbers, and make your estimates of target revenues, end-game profit margins, reinvestment needed to deliver growth and risk, and I do, with a caveat. These represent my story for the company and I will not only be wrong 100% of the time, but your decision on whether to invest in Anthropic has to come from your story, and value, not mine. During the session, I try (but may fail) to do this, by providing you a framework to make your own choices, and assess your own value!Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/AnthropicIPO.pdfBlog Post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-anthropic-prospectus-arrives-ipo.htmlAnthropic Prospectus: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026067168/anthropicpbc-sx1.htmAnthropic valuation: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/blog/AnthropicIPO.xlsxGoogle shared spreadsheet (for you to enter your numbers): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oux4pQo8bLnx5tvVH25j8yCXrFK0_5qviiAzuXqk-Fg/edit?usp=sharing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 days ago58 min
Heeding the Feedback Loop: A follow-up to my Anthropic Valuation
I valued Anthropic, after its prospectus filing and ahead of its IPO, at $1.475 trillion about a week ago, and was open about the fact that I was telling a big story, with inputs and value to match. I encouraged people to push back and come up with their own stories, inputs and values for the company and many did. In this session, I start by playing devil's advocate with my own valuation, and list what I believe are the five biggest drivers of its value - target revenues tops the list, followed by governance, profitability , reinvestment and regulatory risk. I then look at your valuations and feedback, and note that the input that received the most pushback was my cost of capital of 9.74% , which some thought was too low. Since the cost of capital is much misunderstood concept that many use without frames of reference, I look at what a reasonable cost of equity (capital) is for a US firm in September 2026, and follow up with a table that lists out ranges for costs of capital, by sector. I argue that setting too high a cost of equity (capital) handicaps investors and businesses, creating more harm than good.Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/AnthropicFollowUp.pdfBlog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/11/the-anthropic-feedback-loop-cost-of.htmlCost of capital, by industry group: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/blog/waccUS.xlsxHistorical returns on stocks:https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/datasets/histretSP.xlsxMarket-implied expected returns history:https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/datasets/histimpl.xlsx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 days ago44 min
Deconstructing the AI Trade: Market Meltdown, Correction or Clean up?
The market's sharp drop on November 5, driven by a decline in tech, renewed a question that has been heard all year of whether this is the final call on the AI trade, where investors buy all stocks AI-related and hope to ride the AI buzz to riches. In this session, I argue that as the AI disruption ages, it is time to break the companies in the ecosystem down into AI builders (the hyperscalers and others building the data centers), AI suppliers (the chip and electrical equipment makers, power and real estate) who supply the ingredients for the AI architecture and AI product companies (which use the AI architecture to make AI agents, products and services). These AI groups are linked in operations to each other, with one company's costs becoming the other company's revenues, and have very different business models. To assess how they have moved (together and apart), I look at 35 publicly traded companies and their market cap movements between the end of 2022 and 2026, with a special focus on the most recent year. In a final section, I look at how I see what I call the big market delusion (where the allure of a big market combined with overconfidence) is playing out with AI, and use it to put the market action in context.(I apologize for the noise problems on the video, which I recorded on the road and in a room with a very loud air-conditioner in the background, with no turn off switch.)Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/AITrade.pdfBlog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/11/the-ai-trade-deconstructed-ai-builders.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 4 days ago39 min
Earnings, Cashflows and Stock Prices: The AI Storm blows through!
The key reason that US equities have held their own this year, in the face of rising interest rates, is a surge in aggregated earnings, which some have attributed to the massive investments in AI cap ex. In this session, I start by updating my market views to October 1, by bringing in September's explosive rise in rates and updating my estimates for expected returns and equity risk premiums for US stocks. I then turn to the real focus of this session, which is looking at how the trillions being invested in AI cap ex are playing through income statements, balance sheets and cash flows for the AI builders (who are spending the money on the AI cap ex) and the suppliers of the AI architecture (chips, networking equipment, power, cooling and real estate. Across all publicly traded firms, AI cap ex has significantly bulked up balance sheets, with both book debt and equity rising, and at least in the aggregate, increased earnings, as the amortization of AI cap at the builders (which lowers earnings) is being swamped by the net income generated by the AI suppliers, from providing the ingredients. In the aggregate, US companies are generating less in free cash flows, and dividends and buybacks are growing far more slowly than earnings. I close with an assessment of the choices we face as investors, as the AI storm roils the waters.Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/MktandAI2026.pdfBlog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/10/stock-prices-earnings-and-cashflows-ai.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 4 days ago51 min
AI's Bar Mitzvah Moment? From Hype and Hope to Business Questions!
It is undeniable that AI has taken over business and investing conversations since ChatGPT's debut on November 30, 2022. In addition to pushing up the market capitalizations of the companies that supply its infrastructure (chips, power, electrical equipment), it has also given rise to the largest investment build-up in history, with $2 trillion spent so far on AI architecture, with more to follow. The debate about AI though has been stunted by people talking past each other, with advocates pointing to its potential market being "huge" and skeptics noting that the "massive" cap ex makes value creation impossible. I much confess that I find myself pulled in a dozen different directions, as the debate unfolds on multiple dimensions (open vs closed models, AI as tool or employee replacement, AI as good or bad for society). This session was really meant for an audience of one (me), and during the session, I try to develop a framework for making sense of AI as a business. In the process, I develop tools that I can use to judge whether Anthropic is worth $2 trillion and whether the hyperscalers can get sufficient payoff from their trillion in AI cap ex. I hope that you find my framework and tools useful.Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/AIBusiness.pdfBlog Post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/08/ais-bar-mitzvah-moment-from-hype-hope.htmlSpreadsheet: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/blog/BreakevenEnterprisevalue.xlsx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 4 days ago1h 24m
Session 27: Value Enhancement
In this class, we started by drawing a contrast between price and value enhancement. With value enhancement, we broke down value change into its component parts: changing cash flows from existing assets, changing growth rates by either reinvesting more or better, lengthening your growth period by creating or augmenting competitive advantages and lowering your cost of capital. We then used this framework to compute an expected value of control as a the product of the probability of changing the way a company is run and the value increase from that change (optimal - status quo value). This expected value of control allows us to explain why market prices for stocks rise when corporate governance improves, why voting shares usually trade at a premium over non-voting shares (and why they sometimes don’t).Slides: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/podcasts/valUGspr22/session27slides.pdfPost class test: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/eqnotes/postclass/session27Atest.pdfPost class test solution: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/eqnotes/postclass/session27Asoln.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Aswath Damodaran
I teach corporate finance, valuation and investment philosophies at the Stern School of Business at New York University. I have online versions of all three courses here, as well as other finance-related videos. 1. The Corporate Finance Online playlist has an introductory video and 36 sessions that cover all of corporate finance (at least as I see it). 2. The Valuation playlist has 25 sessions that cover valuation approaches, issues and questions.3. The Investment Philosophies playlist has sessions that cover different investment philosophies.4. The Accounting and Statistics playlists reflect my quirky and unorthodox introductions to two disciplines that are critical to my valuation and corporate finance classes.5. The Blog Posts playlist has sessions that go wit my blog posts and reflect my standing as a dabbler, rather than expert, in all things finance-related. If you need the supporting material for any of the classes, check the links below.Links:
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