Book Value to Market Value (BtM) is the ratio of the firm’s Book Value to the Market Price of Equity. Book Value is simply total assets minus intangibles and good will and Market Price is the total common shares outstanding times the market price of the stock.
The problem with the BtM ratio is that it tends to pick stocks that are under attack. However, its an useful measure to make an apple-to-apple comparison between stocks within the same sector.
When we ranked the universe of stocks using BtM, it obviously threw up a lot of stocks that have been hammered down:
SELMCL [stockquote]SELMCL[/stockquote]
MICROTECH [stockquote]MICROTECH[/stockquote]
GAMMONIND [stockquote]GAMMONIND[/stockquote]
UNITEDBNK [stockquote]UNITEDBNK[/stockquote]
UBHOLDINGS [stockquote]UBHOLDINGS[/stockquote]
What’s more interesting is what made the bottom of the list:
DABUR [stockquote]DABUR[/stockquote]
ZYDUSWELL [stockquote]ZYDUSWELL[/stockquote]
BAJAJCORP [stockquote]BAJAJCORP[/stockquote]
TCS [stockquote]TCS[/stockquote]
EMAMILTD [stockquote]EMAMILTD[/stockquote]
HINDUNILVR [stockquote]HINDUNILVR[/stockquote]
GODREJCP [stockquote]GODREJCP[/stockquote]
PAGEIND [stockquote]PAGEIND[/stockquote]
COLPAL [stockquote]COLPAL[/stockquote]
SPARC [stockquote]SPARC[/stockquote]
So basically, the more ‘popular’ the stock, the less of a ‘value’ it is, at least according to BtM. Also, when you work with annual balance sheets later in the year, most of the information tends to be fully priced-in.
