Enterprise Value is absolutely not the “value” of the company. The Enterprise value is the actual amount a company will cost you if you buy it at Market Cap.

IOW, if you buy a company for a $100bn but it has liabilities of another $100bn that means it’s cost to you is actually $200bn, because you will also have to pay that additional $100bn. That’s why cash reduces the EV of a company, because if you pay $100bn for a company that has $50bn in cash, you effectively paid only $50bn (which is the EV).

Market cap is the value of a company.

Market cap is the market value of a company's equity.

market_cap = total_shares_outstanding * share_price

I passed all three CFA exams a few years back and studied this extensively. I might be remembering incorrectly, but think you're making factually incorrect statements. Appreciate your comment and the motivation to think about this more.

I recommend reading up on these terms: * market value of equity * book value of equity * intrinsic value of equity

Hold market cap constant.

Borrow $1 trillion. Burn the cash.

Is the company now more or less valuable?

By your formula, how has the enterprise value changed?

> Is the company now more or less valuable?

More. Normally burning a trillion dollars would have taken about a trillion off the market cap, so if it held steady that means a trillion dollar gain somewhere else.

"There's a pony here somewhere!"

Yup, there's a pony buried in your assumptions.

This isn't "my formula" - it's the textbook finance formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_value

Less valuable. What you're missing is that the reason debt is counted is because it is used to buy up assets. In this case, if the cash is entirely burned, it means the value of equity dropped to zero because debt typically has collateral. So the trillion dollars you borrowed would need to be paid back by selling the rest of the company's assets. So in reality, if let's say this trillion dollar debt was super senior and first claimant to assets. It'd drop to the previous market value of the company and the rest of the company's capital structure drops to zero.

Absolutely.

Enterprise Value is a metric used for acquisitions to determine the real cost of acquiring a company (that’s why cash lowers enterprise value, since it helps pay off some of the cost of acquiring the company, and liabilities increase the enterprise value because those are additional amounts of money you will Have to pump into the company).