Old school valuations are based on NPV discounts of future cash flows. That obviously includes profit, but also all the other factors around growth and drag along. You'd never get any of the valuations we see today based only on x'ing profit, even for the oldest of old school businesses.
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Old school valuations are based on profit not revenue. Which inherently avoided selling dollars for pennies.
Valuations based on revenue are essentially arbitrary because they are always based on models of potential rater than actual performance.
Old school valuations are based on NPV discounts of future cash flows. That obviously includes profit, but also all the other factors around growth and drag along. You'd never get any of the valuations we see today based only on x'ing profit, even for the oldest of old school businesses.
Sure, you can specify things as estimates of future profit based on past profit adjusted for risk, growth, NPV, and whatnot.
However my point was these calculations are at their core core based on profit.