PE Case Study - Revenue/Cost Assumptions

Hello everyone,

hope you are all doing we. Currently preparing for a typical PE case study for a MM fund - I expect a CIM, valuation guidance and debt indications with the task to build a three statement model and make a recommendation within 2-3 hours. Given the model build is quite challenging in such a short time, I am wondering how do you model the revenue and cost assumptions in such a setup.

I would probably use the management case as an upside case and model a more conservative case as the base. Since the time to do a proper operating model (sales: price/volume, market share or sales FTE driver; Costs: FTE, salary, COGS units etc.) is usually not sufficient, I lean to use a classical % revenue growth for the topline with some reasoning behind it (e.g. market grows by %, price increases % on top) and % of sales costs build-up for COGS/material, personnel, R&D, marketing costs, D&A, CAPEX etc. Of course, all with some basic reasoning and conservative (e.g. trend projection, normalization of highs/lows in recent years).

A unit based operating build-up would be more elegant of course, e.g. allowing to easily model salary inflation in etc. but I am afraid that this will end up eating too much time in the test situation.

Do you have any tips or caveats with the approach?

Thanks so much in advance.

Best,

Matt

4 Comments
 
Most Helpful

I would focus on having one sound case that is described within your write-up (make sure it deviates from management consensus to an extent with detailed rationale).  In my experience with MM case studies, it was never expected to create multiple cases for a sub 3-hour test.  I also would not worry about a complicated revenue or cost build.  As long as your build is reasonable and you are able to articulate your investment thesis within the write-up, no one will judge the complexity of your build.  At the end of the day, calculated simplicity seems to be the way to approach the timed case studies.  If you feel that everything is down with ample time, feel free to add more detail to the model. 

 

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