Narrow-moat Charles River Laboratories announced an agreement with Elliott Investment Management to add four new directors to its board and enhance value creation through a strategic review to optimize the company’s performance and drive efficiencies. Investors were spooked last month by the US Food and Drug Administration’s announcement to reduce animal testing for preclinical safety assessments. However, management provided more details on how it plans to advance hybrid study designs by complementing traditional animal studies with technologies such as artificial intelligence, and it will continue to expand its nonanimal platforms to address evolving regulations. Shares soared almost 19% after the earnings update, as investor confidence increased in the firm’s long-term prospects.
Show me how fair value is derived (00:41)
Morningstar calculates the fair value estimate of a company based on a projection of how much cash the company will generate in the future. Morningstar analysts create custom industry and company assumptions to feed income statement, balance sheet, and capital investment assumptions into a proprietary discounted cash flow modeling template. Scenario analysis, in-depth competitive advantage analysis, and a variety of other analytical tools are used to augment the discounted cash flow process. The analyst discounts future cash flows using the weighted average of the costs of equity, debt, and preferred stock (and any other funding sources), using expected future proportionate long-term, market-value weights.
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