January 2009

Just a quick note to say that there is an involved discussion on how to value intangibles as part of a company, which will be expanded in an upcoming issue of IAM by Nir Kossovsky of IAFS. The gist:

[T]hat corporate intangible values in the US … have collapsed over the last 12 to 18 months, from a median of 70% of market capitalisation to under 50% now.

This calculation (looks to me) to use the difference between cost of physical assets and the stock price of the company – broadly any intangibles.  IP makes up part of these intangibles, as does things like confidence of investors and reputation of the company. Pat Sullivan (in the comments and in another upcoming IAM article) proposes a different way of calculating the value of IP, based on its worth to the company.

My perspective it doesn’t matter how you calculate its value: IP is an underutilised and too often unmanaged asset. Calculating the number is an interesting exercise, and useful in a number of contexts, but the actual % still doesn’t change this fact.

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