A trove of information for valuation analysts is available from Professor Aswath Damodaran (NYU Stern School of Business) through his Data Page, which is updated annually. What began as a single spreadsheet in 1992 has grown to almost 300 spreadsheets, with more than a thousand data items and data on almost 41,000 listed companies in 131 markets. The data include various measures of operations and leverage, pricing, and risk, including equity risk premiums and country risk.

Worldwide effort: Damodaran spent 80% of his time on this year’s update on non-US data, “a significant jump from the cursory efforts I made a decade ago when I started reporting global numbers,” he says in his blog. “One reason that I have extended and deepened my analysis of global companies over time is to fill in the empty spots in my knowledge on listed companies in many of the smaller markets,” he says.

Also, he has added his estimates of firm-specific costs of capital. In addition, he has converted leases to debt for all companies in the global database. Key measures, including debt ratios, margins, and returns on capital are now adjusted for lease debt.

Data source change: Damodaran no longer uses Value Line for U.S. data updates due to the nature of the agreement between the research firm and NYU. Now, he uses a combination of Morningstar, Bloomberg, and Capital IQ data for all firms, with an overlay of his own modified industry categories. Because of this switch, “much of my archived data, other than the country risk premiums and betas, will be removed from my site. I am sorry!”

BVWire applauds the professor’s generosity in sharing his important research with the BV community.