Cash Earnings

Analysts and investors sometimes focus more on cash earnings than GAAP/IFRS earnings. To get a sense of the extent to which investors focus on cash earnings for the company you are modeling, look at a few analyst/broker research reports on the company or peers in the company’s industry if not public. Cash earnings add back non-cash expenses, such as amortization and stock-based compensation, as well as one-time charges. Depreciation is not backed out, however, because it is a real expense that is a proxy for capital expenditures.

We add a couple of performance metrics related to the cash earnings we just computed and, while we are here, a handful of margins and returns. Inspecting the margins and returns over the projection period can help us decide whether we need to tweak any of our operating assumptions.