No. of Recommendations: 4
I'd use book value per share (BVPS). BVPS captures all earnings, including both realized and unrealized capital gains. While it's true that stock repurchases distort IV/BV slightly, this distortion is small quantitatively. Book value by IFRS rather than GAAP would be somewhat better because IFRS carries properties at market value rather than cost less depreciation, but this distortion is also relatively small. One unknown when calculating IV growth using BVPS is how fast IV/BV is increasing, but the increase in IV/BV tends to be quite slow. BV growth is also less volatile than earnings growth simply because of the large denominator. Just my two cents.
