The Valuation of Intangible Assets Based on the Intellectual Capital Leverages Concept

The problem of intangibles valuation in recent years is playing a constantly growing role for companies, both in developed and emerging economies. In Russia, the interest to valuation is related directly with development of legislation protecting intellectual property rights. The standards of intangibles valuation that have been accepted in Russia, are based on the principles of IFRS, thus making appropriate the commonly used approaches, among which the discounted cash flow (DCF) based approach has the most importance. The formula method has become quite widespread in global economic practice, as an approach for assessment of the part of intangible assets that is not accounted in bookkeeping records. For example, the standard procedure of application of this method is presented in depth in Handbook of Business Valuation. Contributors: Thomas L. West - Editor, Jeffrey D. Jones - Editor. (1999). The analysis algorithm is limited to four operations: 1. Determine the value of tangible assets and liabilities. 2. Calculate the size of the representative operational profit. 3. Determine the required rates of return on tangible assets. These indicators are used for calculation of profits on tangible assets, which are then to be deducted from the representative operational profit in order to define the "surplus profit" value. 4. Determine the required rate of return on intangible assets. This value is used for calculation of intangible assets, or "goodwill". Subsequently, total company value may be determined by adding the "goodwill" value to the net tangible assets value determined as described in clause 1. A similar approach is followed by Reilly R. Jr, Schweihs R., Reilly R. (2004) Abrams J.B (2010) Copeland T., Koller.T, Murrn J.et al. (2000). Damodaran A.(2002). The levers concept represented by the authors (Tkachenko et al., 2016) enables the approach to be changed to attributing a value to intellectual assets which are subject to the specific features of a shipbuilding company. The specific nature of shipbuilding products is the small-series production, wherein each vessel in the series can have additional unique characteristics that require significant development work and preparation of design and engineering documentation. The problem of placing a value on the unique technological solutions being created and their inclusion into intangible assets involves modification of the existing methodology of valuation. In their article, the authors propose a modified methodology of valuation based on the formula method taking into account the technological lever, human capital assets lever and the brand lever.