Clouded Judgement: Medium-Term Software Valuation Setup

Ball analyzes consensus 2024 growth estimates for public SaaS companies, finding that 48% are expected to accelerate despite historical 80% decay patterns, creating valuation risk. The article examines whether 2024 estimates are too high, too low, or properly calibrated, and provides comprehensive benchmarking data on SaaS multiples, margins, and unit economics across the public software universe. Key insight: consensus estimates show NO growth decay for the overall software sector, which diverges significantly from normalized expectations.