Forward EV/EBITDA multiple?
A few questions on Multiples here:
1) What is the justification for valuing a company off its 1-year forward EV/EBITDA multiple?
2) Why is one year forward more appropriate than current EV/EBITDA Or two, three or four year forward multiple?
3) In practice what EV/EBITDA multiple do you use at your bank? I don’t actually think we’ve used forwards only current at my bank….
4) How does this work with stub periods, say it’s Oct-25 and year end is Jan. Would forward EV/EBITDA be considered Jan-26, Oct-26, or Jan-27.
why is the An2 asking shit like that
Brothers account, I have his old laptop, I’m currently an intern. Would you care to explain?
Hello,
Can try help here.
If you're interning, might be worth asking your analysts / associates how they approach multiple selection.
Hopefully this helps!
3. Typically only LTM multiples are used. Forward multiples are more common at valuation advisory firms if they are looking at an early stage company.
4. If I have LTM 6/30/25 financials and do FY+1, then it would include actual financials from the first half of the year, and projections for second half. Also worth noting, Revenue and ARR multiples are used as well, not just EBITDA.
I think it depends entirely on bank, but we use NTM multiples a lot. We advise more on the buyside than sellside, so the idea is that we're paying for the future of this company, not the past.
Of course, in diligence, we'll vet the hell out of the target company and haircut the forecasts accordingly, but if there is a credible path to a better next twelve months, that's what we're paying for at the end of the day.
The other reason is that LTM is always noisy, and I don't mean just non-GAAP adjustment noisy. We go through cycles and downturns like COVID, the interest rate driven decline in 2022, the rise of AI in 2023, etc. There's always a confounding macro factor influencing things. That's not the case in future periods based on projections assuming a normalized state of business.
Beyond NTM though, there's just too much uncertainty. That's why we don't go beyond that. I don't know any bank that goes beyond that. "Forward" multiples mean NTM for all intents and purposes as far as I know.
We use NTM as in the next four quarters after the last reported quarter. If that's not available (e.g., some international companies that only publish annual reports), then we'll annualize (e.g., if it's currently June 30, 2025, we would take 0.5 of the 2025 projection and 0.5 of the 2026 projection). Some banks may only do the latter.
So to your question, forward EV/EBITDA at October 2025 would be the 12 months ended October 2026.
Edit: Meant "next four quarters" not "next four months"
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