Fuck Industrials
First year analyst, I got blinded by the good culture in my group but damn this industry sucks ass (sweaty as fuck).
Anyone else feel this way or any other group you're in?
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I always thought Industrial & Consumer were less sweaty given that at least the modeling & business models are somewhat simple? On the bright side, you're fortunate to be getting so much experience as an A1. It sucks ass right now, but you'll be glad for the skills/resume building when you cruise to an UMM Industrials PE firm and/or lateral as an Associate to a lifestyle IB group.
Which industries would you say have complex models? I’ve worked on industrial, consumer, tech, real estate, P&U, and downstream gas deals - P&U and real estate have their own lingo and way to model stuff but it’s not rocket science.
I have steered away from mining and metals deals - seen some mining models and they do seem unique, though at this stage in my career don’t care too much to learn about mining.
Healthcare, FIG and the retail-focused parts of Consumer have the most complex models.
Personally would say Healthcare, Energy, and FIG have it the hardest.
would add Upstream O&G
As a generalist, I always find the nichey, industry specific models to be the toughest.
Energy, minerals & mining are all really hard in part because they require a ton of global, market-level assumptions / modeling. I've only ever really looked at a few Power/Energy deals lightly so haven't ever had to build one out in full.
FIG is the toughest I've worked with extensively, there are a lot of wonky accounting nuances regarding amortization of expenses and revenue. It can also be VERY tough to model out certain things formulaically if, for example, you're working with a lender/asset manager who has a ton of outstanding investments/loans, all of which are highly structured and have several different covenants / cure remedies / blah blah blah that have to be incorporated such that no matter what scenario you're running in the model all of the investments change structure automatically. There's just no easy way to do it outside of manually building out the cash flows / accounting for each investment or loan separately.
From my experience straight-forward SaaS business models tend to be the easiest to model. You don't have to know any nichey accounting or methods of modeling that your average generalist IB Analyst wouldn't know.
Maybe it’s just the model template we use at my bank being shit for this, but floorplan financing was brutal to learn/model. But not too bad after a few reps
In my experience oil and gas is pretty complicated
Lifestyle IB groups exist? (Hard mode no ECM / DCM)
congrats on Barclays
Most industrials group have good culture.
Not GS
heard db industrial is miserable
I interned at industrials, going back but legit 5-7 analysts left within the summer
UBS?
Upper tier bank lol
Regulated utilities models are legit the most fucked up excel sheets i have ever seen. I work in PUI and holy shit power and energy models are fucked. 10/10 would not recommend
Wait until you see Infra 😈
the funny thing is the banks kill themselves over regulated utilities
and then on the buyside you just do rate base * allowed ROE less xx bps regulatory lag = net income, and build back up
then just sensitize regulatory lag
life is good
Lol who said industrials was chill? Most banks the sweatiest industry groups are usually industrials, healthcare and tech
What's the least?
Sponsors probably
Industrials is sweaty at every bank on the street, not just Barclays
Come join Tech. Slap on a multiple and you are good to go!
I find tech too abstract I'm a brainlet
Tech makes me laugh so hard. We were trying to sell a tech-enabled services business that was half genuine recurring SaaS / half services business for 5x revenue when the business was barely break-even on EBITDA. I came from a financing background first so I was sitting there like who in their right mind would buy this and why are we focusing primarily on PE buyers when they'd barely be able to put any debt on this thing instead of strategics? Alas, no one did end up buying it.
Industrials generally has a rep of sweaty group but good culture. In my experience people work hard but are generally easy to work with and be around.
What about Real Estate Industry groups? How do they tend to be?
industrials is sweaty because of two primary reasons (i) it's incredibly broad and subsectors within the space can be and often are extremely different which heightens the learning curve and (ii) there as a seemingly endless number of middle market "widget manufacturers" out there that get rolled up into bigger platforms which leads to a plethora of pitching opportunities - significantly more than most other industries which are less fragmented in nature (large-cap Tech, for example).
Never heard of Industrials being anything but sweaty across the Street.
It’s such a broad term and there are so many of these middle market sized businesses. There’s always something to pitch
FIG, Chemicals or Infra seems to be the sweatiest from my experience.
It's also a really dull sector. I started my IB career as a generalist and always hated working on dull cap goods deals.
can you give additional color on your FIG experience?
Industrials banker here. Sweaty, full of socio-/psychopaths, nuanced business models, and (to me) quite interesting. That's why I joined.
It's sweaty everywhere, I'm sticking it out because I actually enjoy the work / the sector.
What are the common exit options from industrial, assuming the nature of work
PE firms take on a lot of industrial bankers?
Correct - analysts in my industrials group (upper BB) exits to UMM / MF PE across sectors (not just industrials).
You joined because you enjoy working with psychopaths? Weird flex.
Industrials is known to be a culture group at MS
Lmao
MS industrials is not a top group tbh
Which has the top industrial out of gs/ms/jpm
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