Clay has valued the operating assets of Johnston at $720m. The company also has short-term cash and securities with a market value of $60m that are not needed for Johnsons operations. The noncurrent investments have a book value of $30m and a market value of $45m. The company also has an overfunded pension plan, with plan assets of $210m and plan liabilities of $170m. Johnson has $215 of notes and bonds outstanding and 100m outstanding shares. What is the value of the stock? Right - I understand most of this question but the one mistake I made was taking the book value of the noncurrent investments and not the market value. Now why would you take the market value? The basics of this question are Equity = assets - liabilities. Liquid assets I can understand taking market value but why do you take the market value of non-current when given the book value? Thanks
because book value is an accounting term and doesn’t equate to anything (but can sometimes be used if no other info is available). The question asks for the market value of the stock - so use market value of the assets… What is the answer?
It’s just (720+60+45+(210-179)-215)/100 Whatever that is. So the point here is to use market values where given and book values as a proxy because they are asking for the market value of the stock.