Deloitte's 83% overvaluation reading barely moves how CFOs rate debt and equity

A finance chief who thought her own shares were overpriced would, on the usual logic, want to sell more of them, because expensive stock is cheap money for the company issuing it. Deloitte's respondents left equity attractiveness where it was ^[6]. The two results fit once you ask which stock they think is expensive. The 83% figure is a verdict on U.S. equity markets ^[5], and it comes from a group that also reported rising optimism about its own companies ^[3]. I think these CFOs see other companies' shares as rich and their own as roughly fairly priced. A CFO who believes both has no reason to rush an equity sale.

Compare the size of the moves. On a base of 200 respondents ^[1], the overvaluation camp grew from about 98 people to about 166 in one quarter ^[2], a 34-point swing ^[1]. Debt attractiveness rose four points ^[6]. The valuation view moved about 8.5 times as far as the financing preference did ^[4].

Hardy, Deloitte's U.S. financial services leader, said views on the relative appeal of debt and equity financing changed little ^[10]. He put the effect somewhere else. "If they feel it's overvalued, buying might not be the most objective thing to do," he said ^[7]. In his telling, elevated valuations send finance chiefs to "search for the highest use of capital," a dynamic he connects to rising investment in AI ^[8]. So the money that would have bought assets at market prices goes into AI and other projects inside the company, or rather, Hardy expects it to go there. The survey measures attitudes, and the account does not report cash balances, hedges or deals put on hold.

The claim that the people closest to corporate capital are bracing for a correction needs evidence that they are bracing. A four-point change in how attractive debt looks is thin support. The claim could still turn out right in a few ways. The valuation worry may harden into behaviour. "You always wonder whether it's embedded into the psyche of where they think the market's going," Hardy said ^[11]. My distinction between the market and a CFO's own shares is an inference, and if finance chiefs think their own stock is as stretched as the index, the flat equity reading needs a different explanation. A six-point drop in risk appetite alongside a lean toward debt ^[3][6] is also how early caution looks before it reaches the deal pipeline.

On this evidence, I think CFOs are moving cash toward internal uses and tilting slightly toward debt at the margin. The next Deloitte survey would show that view wrong if debt attractiveness climbs again, risk appetite falls below half and the overvaluation share stays above 80%.