It doesn't sound like this metric means you could buy one of these companies for the current market price, liquidate it and come out ahead since they don't take debt into account. Or am I reading it wrong?
I still think someone or some group should buy Microsoft outright, halt all R&D and get a nice 20-30% per year in dividends for the next 10-20 years until it dies. (similar idea)
If you halted R&D, your customers would flock to competitors who are still developing their product lines. It would be more like 5 years before it's effectively dead.
> I still think someone or some group should buy Microsoft outright, halt all R&D and get a nice 20-30% per year in dividends for the next 10-20 years until it dies. (similar idea)
And what happens to the employee's who get part of their pay based on stock grants? How motivated would you be to work there knowing that you will be out of a job when the owners have milked you for all you are worth, and cut back on all the fun parts of your work to keep their dividends up.
This is a neat thought exercise but would be a complete non starter in the real world.
Then you still have the thought that your job won't be around long term, that you aren't building something that will last forever, that all you would be doing is maintenance on the existing releases as now that R & D is no longer, no new versions will go out. Remember that any code writing is considered to be R & D for tax purposes (SRED), etc, etc.
I still think someone or some group should buy Microsoft outright, halt all R&D and get a nice 20-30% per year in dividends for the next 10-20 years until it dies. (similar idea)