Expression (6) reminds us that these restrictive assumptions are sim
ply unnecessary. There is no need for any assumption about how earnings relate either to dividends or to cash flows, aside from the assumption of clean surplus. Beaver's three-step process is thus collapsed into two steps: the link between current information and forecasts of future financial statement data and the link between those forecasts and current value (that is, expression [6]). The first link is not easily developed (it is the essence of fundamental analysis), but that difficulty is unavoidable and must be confronted even under the traditional paradigm. Moreover-and this is the key point-once that link is developed, the remainder of the process is well defined, even without restrictive assumptions on dividend
policy.