Intelligent Investor - Portfolio Trades (TME - BUY), page-19

I think the consideration of Intangible Assets is one of the most poorly-understood topics of financial analysis.

The carrying value of Intangibles is a purely legacy issue, an outworking of the investment that has been made in the business which was not expensed directly, but which was capitalised. As such, the rate at which those Intangible's are amortised is reflected only in the P&L.

Because I don't put much store of value in P&L accounting (for more reasons than I am able to discuss here), I'm quite agnostic to how much Intangible assets companies carry, or whether they are properly accounted for.

Because that is merely a reflection on historical capital allocation decisions

What is important to me is how much cash flow the business generates going forward, and how the capital it generates is deployed.

So, in that context, that rate at which balance sheet intangibles are amortised, or whether or not they get written down (which is really just a one-off acceleration in amortisation), because those are non-cash accounting adjustments, they are totally incidental to the way I would view TME from an investment standpoint.