Real options valuation of eBusiness

Traditional funding criteria like return on investment (ROI) and net present value (NPV) do not work well with most eBusiness. These corporate budgeting techniques were designed for relatively slow progressing or well-established business models. The Internet marketplace is constantly being redefined and most of these projects have a high velocity of evolution and uncertainty. Firms and investors have yet to possess systematic and quantitative financial evaluation tools. After studying the behavior of Internet firm valuations and exhaustively investigating the conventional ways of valuing an eBusiness, this paper finds that real options valuation is an extremely useful analytical tool for valuing eBusiness projects from the management's perspective. It provides management a powerful extension of the traditional cash flow budgeting models, and a structure to attach and quantify strategies. Real options valuation in its current form, however, is not entirely suitable for the use as a valuation tool for traded stocks.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Tan, Enk Ee, 1968-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jiang Wang.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9154

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9154