[mrfredward]

>Comparing their asset balance with the market cap of its stock is complete nonsense.

Ben Graham, one of Warren buffet's mentors, wrote a famous book called the "Intelligent Investor" which has several chapters on doing exactly that.

Think about it...if a company sells $10 billion in stock, the new stock adds $10 billion to their market cap and they get an extra $10 billion in cash which goes on their balance sheet. And likewise, a company can buy back shares and the reduction in marketcap from destroying shares is equal to the amount of cash assets being removed from the balance sheet. There's a link here.