Michael Steinhardt is a legendary investor. In 1967, Steinhardt founded the hedge fund Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co. From 1967 to 1995, the hedge fund returned 24.5% annually after fees. After retirement in 1995, Steinhardt became chairman of Wisdom Tree investments, a company providing a variety of exchange traded funds. Steinhardt is profiled in Market Wizards, where he shares keys to his investing success that are summarized and analyzed below.

There are multiple methods investment bankers and other financial analysts use to value a company. One frequently employed relative value method is comparable company analysis. Comparable company analysis is especially useful when valuing the minority, non-controlling interest of a company.

Comparable company analysis is rooted in the idea that companies with similar characteristics should have similar valuation multiples. Typically, a group of comparable companies includes companies from the same industry as the company being valued and companies with similar fundamentals.

Financial statements report the basic shares outstanding. However, when attempting to value a company’s market value of equity, fully diluted shares outstanding is used instead of the basic shares outstanding number. Fully diluted shares outstanding provides a better representation of how the market is implicitly valuing the company. Basic shares outstanding are the total shares that a company issued and are outstanding. This number is directly reported on the financial statements.