Consultant sees 88% fall in Satyam brand value

That the value of brand Satyam would be eroded many times over, following its former Chairman Ramalinga Raju’s admission that he had cooked the company’s books, was a given.

Now a brand consultant has put a figure to it. From Rs 9,873 crore (Satyam’s internal brand valuation mentioned in its FY08 annual report), Harish Bijoor, brand-strategy specialist and CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults, pegs the current value at around Rs 1,200 crore — a fall of 87.8 per cent.

Satyam had used the Lev & Schwartz model to compute the HR value (present value of future earnings up to retirement age). PBIT (profit before interest and tax) reduced by non-branded income was taken as profit for brand valuation. Profits of the previous two years were considered at present value and weightage factor was applied to arrive at weighted profit.

Around 5 per cent of the average capital employed was provided for non-brand purposes. Income tax at current rate was provided, and brand multiple was estimated, based on certain parameters and internal evaluation.

The company’s future earnings (as on March 31, 2008) were discounted at 14.26 per cent, being the average of weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for the past five years. The associate (employee) cost for 2007-08 at Rs 5,045.54 crore was 9.04 per cent of the human resources (HR) value. Thus the figure was reached comprising tangible and intangible factors.

Bijoor, on his part, has used the discounted cash-flow method and other parameters to arrive at his figure. He starts with the assumption that all the 53,000 employees are “valuable”. Next, he assumes that even after the fiasco, and clients leaving Satyam, “around 60 per cent of the business remains”.

“Let’s also assume that if Satyam remains a going concern, over the next four years, its business will grow. Now, take a five-year average of these figure. My calculation puts the figure at around Rs 2,200 crore,” explains Bijoor.

(with inputs from Seema Sindhu)