The Dark Side of Valuation: Valuing Young, Distressed, and Complex Businesses, Second Edition

Mature Companies in the Economy

Mature companies represent the backbone of most economies. While growth companies may capture our imagination and attention, mature companies deliver most of the current output and employment in an economy. This section begins by looking at how we can categorize companies as mature. It also examines characteristics that mature companies tend to share.

A Life Cycle View of Mature Companies

In the life cycle view of a firm, a business starts as an idea business. If it survives, it goes from being a young growth company, often privately held, to a more established growth company, generally in public markets. As we noted in the preceding chapter, even the best growth companies eventually run into a wall when it comes ...