Downside Case Modelling
Fellow Monkeys,
When doing scenario analysis how conservative do you typically go on the downside case? This is in the LMM segment and is a sub $20M acquisition.
Currently, modeling no growth and higher COGS/opex. The business has consistently grown revenue.
Any insight is appreciated.
I would say you might be taking the wrong approach. A downside case, in my opinion, should be reasonable and well thought out. Using what you said, why would sales immediately stop if they have always grown?
Is it a small market and they have won it all?
Is the market shrinking?
Is there a new competitor in the market with a better product, lower pricing or both?
Is the sales team disgruntled with their historical comp so they all might leave?
Depending on who the model is for should play a role in how you develop a downside case as well. For a lender I might just take the 20% haircut approach against our/managements high confidence case. For IC I want to think through the actual risks to the business and what a reasonable range of outcomes really is. Saying a business that has always grown will be flat for no real reason other than “it’s a downside scenario” doesn’t really do much. What if the realistic scenario that your IC needs to understand is negative growth?
Thank you for the super insightful response.
My thought process was it is a small market where they have 60% market share and if they want to grow they have to expand geographies or sales will flatline.
This is a relatively recession resistant home services business and now that I think about it the downside risk to sales is employee turnover as its own of those founder owned business where all the employees are like "family".
How do you factor in the downside for going forward or not on a deal. Is it probability weighted or more like if our downside case happens we stand to lose xx amount of capital, break our covenants etc?
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