How the dean of valuation prices loss-making tech stocks — and his views on Amazon, Netflix and Airbnb

It feels like almost every new company, particularly in the technology space, that is coming to market is loss making. “Most of the old-time metrics we use, price-to-earnings, price to book, EV to EBITDA, were designed for mature companies,” says Aswath Damodaran, the professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business who’s known as the “dean of valuation.”

“To go into the mind-set that’s what the future looks like, already you have three strikes against these stocks,” he says in an interview with Mark…