How To Think About CAC For Business With Low S&M, Acquiring Customers Thru M&A?

Posted this in IB forum, but figured may get some more expertise here: 

How does one think about CAC (as well as go about calculating it) for a business with near $0 s&m spend? The company acquired customers by acquiring adjacent businesses. 

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It depends upon what you are actually trying to figure out. Is this because you just need to fill out a metric or are you trying to put together a S&M-driven proforma forecast?

For the latter, you would need to really understand product, customers, market and operations for a precise proforma CAC that incorporates strategic synergies. Will there be cross-sell, new market penetration, higher packaged ASPs, etc.

For the former, just use the simple arithmetic of each AcquiredCo CAC as others have suggested. Most use S&M but there is a school of thought that includes COS as well, especially in an rCAC. 

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