Tuesday March 22, 2016
We are studying Plant, Property, and Equipment along with intangible assets. But accounting does not account for exisitng intangibles on the books unless the company paid for them.
This article notes that Radio Shack's books did not acknowledge two valuable assets, the brand name and customer data. In a concluding example the market capitalization for Facebook is $320 billion. but the book value is $44 billion. This suggests the market believes the intangible value of FB is $276 billion. The current capitalization of the S & P 500 is $17.9 trillion. There may be another $8 trillion in un-booked intangible assets in the form of trademarks, customer data, real estate, and such. Will the FASB take this issue up? If so it could conceivably bring new value to many companies.
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