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ok, so I can't post more than 1 link since I'm a noobie noob, and in the course of correcting this, Stack managed to delete my post. so here's the more abbreviated, slightly irritated author version…

I'd like to calculate the fair market capitalization of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York.

Facts: According to their Wikipedia page, they have: a daily ridership of 11.5 million. According to this NY Post article, the average fare price is USD 1.29.

Conclusions: the MTA's daily revenue is is 14.8M, their annual revenue is USD 5.4B.

Layman's bad calculation:

comparing Nike's annual operating revenue (from wikipedia) of USD 2.5 billion and their market capitalization of USD 40 billion, we extrapolate the factor of 2.16 to determine the MTA's market cap of USD 86.4.

Yes, this is wrong. Please show me how you would do it. (is there a way to take into account that the MTA is a pseudo monopoly, and as such: 1) gets access to cheap loans if needed from the state, 2) isn't afraid of losing market share to private companies, and as such, is less under fire of losing revenue)

Thanks!

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Valuations of this nature aren't quant-related. I'm not even sure why you tagged it as an options question. And the italics you're referring to come from the the LaTeX engine since you've included dollar signs without escaping them. – chrisaycock♦ Apr 7 '11 at 17:39
ok, any idea where this would be a good idea to post on stack exchange? i looked at personal finance, that seemed even more off topic. – user708 Apr 7 '11 at 17:56

closed as off topic by Karol Piczak, chrisaycock♦ Apr 7 '11 at 17:36

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