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The discounted cash flow for an investment is calculated by estimating the cash you will have to pay out and the cash you think you will receive back. The times that you expect to receive the payments must also be estimated. Each cash transaction must then be discounted by the opportunity cost of capital over the time between now and when you will pay or receive the cash.
In mathematical terms, discounted cash flow is the product of:
Promoted informally after the market crash of 1929, discounted cash flow was first formally articulated in John Burr Williams' 1938 text 'The Theory of Investment Value' at a time before auditing and pubic accounting were mandated by the SEC. As a result of the crash, investors were wary of relying on reported income, or indeed, any measures of value besides cash.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the value of cash and physical assets became steadily less well correlated with the total value of the company (as determined by the stock market). By some estimates, tangible assets dropped to less than one-fifth of corporate value (knowledge assets such as customer relationships, patents, proprietary business models, channels, etc. comprising the remaining four-fifths).
Several academics are attempting to devise new approaches to the valuation of companies and investment opportunities in order to quantify the impact of factors that have traditionally been considered "intangible". While advances in computational finance have improved the ability to consider multiple options and probability-adjusted scenarios simultaneously and in finer detail, there is not consensus yet for the valuation of intellectual assets.
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