Current 1st year analyst, been on the desk about 5 months:
As someone about to go through on-cycle recruiting, I've been told I need to know my deals super well. I am currently on a live deal but we only got the mandate about a month ago, no buyers have even sent over an IOI yet.
What's the game plan here? How do I approach being interview-ready when this deal is in early stage?
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Had to navigate a similar thing last year during on-cycle as we had to do it during training. The only deal experience I had was something in my internship at a similar stage to yours. I ended up getting an MF offer so think my strategy here worked, but it is a one-off experience.
Focus on the more qualtative aspects and give broad ranges for numbers. In terms of responsibilites, focus on you having done the basic sell-side work / analysis. What you want to show that you know the investment rationale for if someone were to buy this business and understand what the business is fundamentally about (really try to simplify it as much as possible to get to the core of what the business does). I think putting together sell-side materials inherently will help you figure that out, so you are in a much better spot than many others who aren't on any sell-sides and are only on non M&A work or only buyside deals.
I did a firepower analysis for select buyers (strategic) and then have done a type of merger model since. So have "modeling experience" but this business is not looking at sponsors at all. Does that put me at a disadvantage at all? Feel like the usual questions are like "what's the IRR/MoM" and stuff like that
A lot of people's deals are not going to be sponsor sell-side or buy-sides given the state of the M&A market. A lot of deals, especially buy-sides, are representing strategics (probably even sponsor portcos count here). You won't / at least I did not get asked about IRR/MoM given that's what I worked on as IRR really a key metric for a strategic. The deal questions are more so about them trying to have you think through the deal and whether or not it's something that would make sense to invest in. Having an IRR number obviously makes it much easier to justify a deal, but they are really trying to get at: can this deal actually be justified by an investor? Would really focus on trying to figure out if the business in question can justify what valuation and how real are the key investment highlights you put together.
This is very helpful thank you!!
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