The idea of a firm’s competitive life-cycle and its stock valuation is based on the premise that competition and capital flows operate over the longer term to force companies’ economic returns toward the cost of capital. In a nutshell, the pattern of corporate economic returns and reinvestment rates reflects an unending struggle between managerial skills and competition over time. To maintain well above average economic returns and reinvestment rates over decades, companies must continually reinvent themselves to outperform competitors. This book approaches that stock valuation process with a systems mind-set and shows the six fundamental lessons in valuation that can be learned by viewing stock valuation from the company life-cycle perspective.
