How to review CIMs efficiently for the most important information?

New associate here.. curious to know the most efficient ways people review 100-200 pg CIMs? I understand it’s a marketing material and that I should focus on the financials for my model but how about the rest? Are there specific areas you think are most important for the buy side that you flip to quickly?

Also, if it’s an industry you’re not super familiar with, is there somewhere you prefer to go to validate some of the industry trends and forecasts. I’m aware how this can be done through the DD phase but thinking of first pass checks.

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historical financials (margin dynamic), business model (how do they make money, recurring element, how much maintenance service etc.), customer concentration, what is revenue split per business unit/geo, market growth/volume - any penetration/whitespace potential, competition (fragmented market, whitespace potential).

quick flip through to get the info; if i got a good feeling whether this is feasible i have re-read and go through each slide - i usually dont spend too much time about the financial projections as numbers are always inflated

 

This is something I’m still working on so curious to hear others’ advice. I feel like it’s my instinct to dig in right away and start taking detailed notes, but have recently started flipping through decks without writing anything down in the first pass, instead solely focusing on trying to comprehend the business model, main areas of interest, etc. and I think this has been helpful. Also agree with whoever said look at how things are presented. The banker is trying to tell the most positive story possible and will frame things in whatever context supports that.

 

Convert PDF to PPT and Word. Take existing Word with "Live" Table of Contents, and organize into key sections. Initially, maybe organize the slide title as a subsection in the TOC / Navigation Pane, so u can quickly scan all at once the top is and jump straight to them. Also, delete any garbage slides/pages.

With Word in Portrait, change the layout settings to 0.25 on every side, to fit more content per page.

Like the above guy said, you wanna eventually bucket good content you find immediately into a section like "customer concentration" or backlog or whatever.

Yeah these 150-200 page CIMs drive me crazyyyy. So obnoxious. Also, if you're just using the PDF, use the highlight button to highlight any good slide. Adobe has a record of which slides u highlighted, so quickly u jump to that slide

 

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