Valuing IPOs
The use of accounting information in conjunction with comparable firm multiples is widely recommended for valuing initial public offerings (IPOs). We find that the price–earnings (P/E), market-to-book, and price-to-sales multiples of comparable firms have only modest predictive ability without further adjustments. This is largely due to the wide variation of these ratios for young firms within an industry. P/E multiples using forecasted earnings result in much more accurate valuations than multiples using trailing earnings.