Founded in 1927, W.W. Grainger originally distributed various motors via a mail-order catalogue. Over the course of the 20th century, the firm expanded into new industrial product categories and launched its first digital catalogue in 1995. Today, the company organizes itself into two segments focused on different customer bases. Its larger segment, high-touch solutions, offers a vast array of maintenance, repair, and operations, or MRO, supplies and bespoke inventory management services to larger businesses. Its smaller segment, endless assortment, operates two online platforms, Zoro and MonotaRO, that offer comprehensive catalogues of MRO supplies to smaller businesses. Grainger has operations throughout the world but primarily generates sales within the US.
Market capitalization, or "market cap", is the aggregate market value of a company represented in a dollar amount. Since it represents the “market” value of a company, it is computed based on the current market price (CMP) of its shares and the total number of outstanding shares.
Enterprise value (EV) measures a company's total value, often used as a more comprehensive alternative to equity market capitalization. EV includes in its calculation the market capitalization of a company but also short-term and long-term debt and any cash or cash equivalents on the company's balance sheet.
The enterprise value-to-revenue multiple (EV/R) is a measure of the value of a stock that compares a company's enterprise value to its revenue. EV/R is one of several fundamental indicators that investors use to determine whether a stock is priced fairly. The EV/R multiple is also often used to determine a company's valuation in the case of a potential acquisition. It's also called the enterprise value-to-sales multiple.
The enterprise value to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization ratio (EV/EBITDA) compares the value of a company—debt included—to the company's cash earnings less non-cash expenses. It's best to use the EV/EBITDA metric when comparing companies within the same industry or sector. Typically, when evaluating a company, an EV/EBITDA value below 10 is seen as healthy.
It follows the same logic as the EV/EBITDA indicator, but instead of EBITDA, EBIT is used, which considers non-cash D&A expenses in the company's operating result.
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