Does anyone else thing IBD analysis is shallow / not a value-add

I am curious if analysts / associates get the feeling that the analysis we do in IBD is somewhat repetitive / commoditized. For example, have built so many NTM EV / EBITDA charts, peer EV / EBITDA benchmarking etc. 

Can't clients just get this data on their own pretty easily? Even for more technical analyses like DCF / WACC / LBO, it seems to be pretty basic.. 

Interested to hear your thoughts 

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In my experience analysis from banks is used mostly as a "sanity check". A lot of corp dev teams (at least at the F500 level) know this stuff already and can do these analyses themselves and then compare against what a bank will come up with. For example, in a buy side deal a sophisticated client will already know how much they want to pay for a target and use the bank as validation and then have them facilitate parts of the process like diligence, etc. On the other end, in something like a bakeoff, the client is really only interested in seeing what comps your bank comes up with as well as what potential buyer universe you'll shop the company around to. 

 

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