Value investors prefer to estimate the intrinsic value of a company by looking first at the assets and then at the current earnings power of the company.

At the core of most investment approaches lies the practice of valuations, the techniques by which the real or intrinsic value of a company can be estimated.

Most investors want to buy securities whose true worth is not reflected in the current market price of the shares.

There is general agreement that the value of a company is the sum of the cash flows it will produce for the investors over the life of the company, discounted back to the present.  

In many cases, however, this approach depends on estimating cash flows far into the future, well beyond the horizon of event he most pro-phetic analyst.

Value investors since Graham have always preferred a bird in the hand - cash in the bank or some close equivalent - to the rosiest projection of future riches.

Therefore, instead of relying on techniques that must make assumptions about events and conditions far into the future, value investors prefer to estimate the intrinsic value of a company by looking:
1.  first at the assets and 
2.  then at the current earnings power of a company.  

Only in exceptional cases are they willing to factor in the value of potential growth.