Hi, welcome. I wrote my first book in valuation almost 35 years ago. It was called Demodaran Invaluation. An incredible ego trip because I don't think anybody had heard the word demodaran and I insist and I think my publisher insisted on putting my name on there.
Since then, I've written other books on valuation. Investment Valuation, which is a textbook. Dark Side of Valuation is about the difficulty of value companies.
Narrative and Numbers, which is about how to connect stories to numbers. But about a decade ago, John Wiley came to me. me and asked me whether I'd do a book in the little book series. And I said, what's a little book series?
Basically, their response was, it's a book that people can read in a couple of hours rather than spend days on. It's meant for people who really don't have the time to read a thousand page valuation book, which is what my investment valuation book is. I thought about it for a moment. I was initially a little reluctant, but I said, okay. So a decade ago, I wrote the little book evaluation.
It has become the best selling of my books. And I've tried. I tried in 250 pages to tell people what I was telling in thousand pages.
And it wasn't actually that much of a strain, which tells you how much you buff up books when you write them. So that was a decade ago. And a couple of years ago, Wiley approached me again, said, it's been 10 years since you wrote the little book evaluation, and the numbers are looking a little dated. The companies are looking a little dated.
Would you be willing to do a revision and an update? And I did. So basically, this is the revised and updated version of the little book evaluation. What's changed?
Not the first principles. If you have the first edition, the original edition, and your cap budget strain, don't buy the new edition. There's nothing that is, you know, particularly insightful and new in the new book.
But I have updated the examples to reflect the fact that we're in 2024, not 2012. So this is the revised and updated edition. There are a couple of examples from the old edition that are still in the book, but most of the examples have shifted to reflect more. recent ones.
I also have added a chapter to this book called Stories and Numbers. A chapter that I think I should have added the original book about how critical it is to understand that when you value a company you're telling a story about a company. So if you do buy this book I have created a series of webcasts that go with each chapter. So this is the introductory you know webcast saying this is the book and there are 12 chapters in the book. There's a webcast that goes with each of the 12 chapters.
Each of the webcasts is about 20 minutes long. It basically takes what's in the chapter and presents to you as a webcast. It's again, nothing particularly new or insightful in the webcast.
It's a different way of reviewing the material. So I hope you have a chance to watch some of those webcasts, especially for the chapters you're particularly interested in. But I'm glad you're along for the ride. And I wish you the best as we go along. Take care.