Sell-Side Advisory Analyst - How To Prepare?

I understand, if you work for rather smaller regional boutique/middle market IB firms, you are likely to be involved in a lot of sell-side advisory work and little-to-zero buy-side (pls corret me if I'm wrong).

My question is, if you are to work for a firm majority of whose work is sell-side advisory, how can you prepare yourself for the job?

All the financial/valuation modeling prep programs out there (WSP, TTS, AE etc), I'd think they are heavily geared to buy-side advisory work.. Am I correct?

I would love to hear from current/ex analysts who are/were heavily involved in sell-side advisory work - what they did/do each day (Im pretty sure one day is greatly different from the next day, but I just like to get some rough idea) and most importantly, what one can do before starting work, in order to hit the ground running right away.

Thanks everyone.

3 Comments
 

Its all the same shit...you will be putting together pitch books and doing comp spreads just as you would on buy-side advisory. You will pick most of the same skill set:

Comp company analysis, precendent transaction comps, DCFs, financial statement analysis, research, etc.

All of the prep programs are applicable to both as again the skill set is the same

Think about what you are doing sell-side you are valuing the company and preparing it for sale buyside you are valuing the company and advising your client on the purchase

 

Thank you junkbondswap.

I have a follow-up question though.

After winning the mandate, do analysts dive in valuing their client (comp company analysis?), figuring out who could be prospective buyers and running precedent transaction comps for their client with each prospective buyers?

or do they wait until they receive signed confidentiality agreements from some of prospective buyers, then start the process?

Please excuse my ignorance and thanks again.

 

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