Let's say that you acquire 80% of a company for $80 million, does the $100 million represent the equity value or enterprise value?

There were two questions that I was looking at and I'm not sure if one is wrong.

Q: A buyer acquires 75% of a company for $1.5bn. The revenue for the seller was $400m and EBITDA was $125m. It had $125m in cash and $75mm in debt. What were the multiples for the deal?

A: The total enterprise value is $2bn. Hence, 5x revenue and 16x EBITDA. The cash and debt don’t matter, it’s about TEV.

Q: You’re analyzing a transaction where the buyer acquired 80% of the seller for $500 million. The seller’s revenue was $300 million and its EBITDA was $100 million. It also had $50 million in cash and $100 million in debt. What were the revenue and EBITDA multiples for this deal?

A: First, calculate the Equity Value: $500 million / 80% = $625 million. That represents the value of 100% of the seller. Then, calculate Enterprise Value: $625 million – $50 million + $100 million = $675 million. The revenue multiple is $675 million / $300 million, or 2.3x, and the EBITDA multiple is $675 million / $100 million, or 6.8x.

They both seem to be asking relatively the same question, but one ignores debt and cash while the other doesn't.

4 Comments
 

I'm currently studying for technicals as well and I would assume that the first question is not necessarily phrased correctly. From the questions I've seen, when you're just talking about acquiring a % of a company, typically you would just assume that its a % of equity rather than its enterprise value. Conversely, if a question specifies that you are purchasing a company at a certain EV/EBIDTA multiple then in that case you would assume that that number is its enterprise value, rather than its equity value. 

 

#2 is the right way to think about it. #1 is wrong or the question did not adequately clarifying that the $1.5bn includes net debt

 

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