Approaching the HF Case Study
Have an upcoming case study with a MM this month and was wondering if anyone has any updated views on approaching the case study. Likely will be 4 hours in length and similar to ones discussed on prior topics with ~2 years of transcripts, 10-q/k's, etc.
Is fine-tuning the model essential? I can confidently build a model within the 4 hours but plugging in the historical cash flows for the year is definitely a time killer. For instance, would skipping the quarters and just filling in the annuals for the CF up until the last few quarters make sense if I could spend more time thinking about drivers of the p/l and business?
Following
No annuals, do it quarterly. And assuming this is citadel, they will care.
Practice building the model but also synthizing information with limited time. You will have to pitch after.
Thanks for the advice, have been practicing for speed. And sorry, to be clear, I was planning on doing it quarterly but I was thinking about inputting the important components: D&A / Dividends, etc and then the sums of investing, financing, and ops for each quarter instead of every line item. Do you think that's a good idea? Thanks!
If this is for a MM platform you should absolutely do it quarterly. That is the more or less the basis of what they do and how you'd model on the job, and that's part of what they're testing so... Yes you need to be quick. Practice quarterly modeling now. Hopefully the Ks, Qs, research reports, etc. are electronic and not physical (lol) so you can copy and paste in quickly. I'd say look to research reports first to get the historicals in as they'll often already have it laid out for multiple years so should hopefully be a bit of a quicker copy and paste.
Yeah makes sense, thanks for the tips! Reposting my comment to a previous reply: And sorry, to be clear, I was planning on doing it quarterly but I was thinking about inputting the important components: D&A / Dividends, etc and then the sums of investing, financing, and ops for each quarter instead of every line item. Do you think that's a good idea? Thanks!
I'd say it probably depends on the company. For example, if they have negative working capital due to some unique accounting or due to the business model, you probably want to project each of those components out and have the historicals laid out clearly. For some of the less important items, it's probably okay to collapse some together, but then you're going to be doing a lot of individual addition in each cell which (i) takes time and (ii) is prone to errors. So you have to decide which is going to be the better approach for you.
Right.. It'll probably just come down to when I'm doing it and if I think I have enough time. Appreciate the input!
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