Public Software Company Valuation

I’m currently working on an investment pitch of a public $5 billion cybersecurity company whose business model is SaaS based. I’m working on forecasting next 5 years revenue growth and was wondering methods I would use to forecast.

Should I be using a top-down approach – TAM * market penetration * # of companies, etc.. Or should I use a more granular approach by trying to forecast billings + % growth. Given that it’s a public company, a lot of metrics aren’t available. If I were to use billings, I would need to forecast revenue and deferred revenue, which again begs the question of what method to use to forecast those numbers.

I’m stuck and would appreciate advice from someone in PE or HF that has done granular forecasting/modelling for public Saas companies.

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