Investment Banking Pitch Book

An Investment Banking pitch book is primarily a structured PowerPoint presentation created to attract new businesses. The pitch narrates why the bank is best for transaction procedures and why the client should use it.

The initial steps of the pitching process can vary greatly depending on the relationship with the customer and the type of traction.

Banks and investment firms prepare pitch books to facilitate the sale of products and services by listing the company's key characteristics. In addition, pitch books are a guideline to the selling force when advertising their products and services. 

Presentation books are helpful guides for sellers to remember key benefits and provide visual aids when presenting to customers.

In investment banking, pitch books refer to the selling point used by a bank to persuade a prospective client to take action and pay for the bank's services. 

Pitch books frequently feature sections on:

• The transaction's virtues
• Analysis of prospective buyers or sellers
• Price and rating information
• Important risks to consider. 

There is no way to "measure" how important pitch books are, but it's safe to say that they are less important than the time spent on them would suggest. 

Most of the time, bankers close deals through enduring relationships. The strong relationships between the chief executive and chief financial officers, built on trust and prior experiences, are more important than a strong presentation before a company goes public.

Sample Draft Investment Banking Pitch Book

In general, the process of creating a pitch book is fairly standard and follows the structure below:

1. Format: Title, Date, and Title logos 

2. Index: All sections of the pitchbook 

3. Executive Summary/Situation Summary: Explain why you keep the presentation and CTA/Recommendation on one page 

4. Introduce the team and the bank along with the people at the meeting and discuss the history of the bank with the customers 

5. Market Overview: Tables, charts, and analysis outlining the state of the market and consumer trends.

6. Valuation: Valuation methods include comparative analysis of companies, historical transactions, and DCF analysis

7. Transaction strategy: details of the bank's strategy

8. Summary: Summarize why the team and bank are best suited to conduct the transaction and how the environment can do so, e.g., that the market is relevant, the valuation it deems feasible, and the bank's strategy. There may be problems with trading, but it does not belong in the ledger queues

9. Annexure: may contain a variety of information within the offer but mainly supporting information that the bank deems questionable but which is not pertinent to the main stock ledger, e.g., assumptions/model details

PitchBook Presentations

As briefly mentioned, an investment bank, corporate finance firm, or other M&A intermediary that advises on the sale or disposal of shares or assets of a business uses a pitch book (or pitch deck) as a marketing presentation.

Presentations like this serve as information layouts and usually consist of the following elements:

a) Introducing Your Team as a Preferred:

1. Advisor, The first section of the Investment Banking Pitch Books introduces your firm's platform, recent transactions, and the team.
2. You can add statistics about your company's position in the rankings or explain your growth story and how you differ from your competitors.
3. You can also discuss distribution alliances and other strategic developments in this section. 
4. The credentials in the next section include information on transactions your rivals have carried out that are comparable to yours. These lists frequently contain transactions done by staff at other banks due to the high rate of bank turnover.
5. These pages look simple, but putting them together can be time-consuming as you have to find the most relevant offers and rearrange elements from other presentations. 
6. You can also go into some agreements in more detail and devote entire pages to them. 
7. This part concludes with a biography of the team, detailing former employers, pertinent transactions, and clients.

b) Providing Background and Context:

Before moving on to the specific situation of the company you are meeting with, you typically share some news about the industry and recent business activity. 

c) Choose Your Adventure:

1. Sell-side mandates (i.e., persuading a company to sell itself) 
2. Acquisition mandates (convincing a company to acquire another company) 
3. Financing mandates (raising debt or capital).

Types of Pitch Books

The pitch book's creation involves junior and senior bankers, with analysts and investment banking personnel doing most of the actual work.

Typically, a director (who has a relationship with the client) sits down with the vice president to conduct a general review of the bid book. 

The vice president or director then puts together the structure of the presentation and has the associate work with the analyst to pull together all the numbers and create the analysis used to complete the presentation. 

For an investment firm, the presentation book would be more product-oriented. For example, it could show the history of an investment portfolio through charts and comparisons with an appropriate benchmark.

If the investment strategy is more advanced, it will show the stock selection method and other information to help the prospective client understand the strategy.

Example: In 2011, Autonomy was acquired by several larger competitors. Hewlett-Packard and Oracle were interested, but HP ultimately prevailed and acquired the software infrastructure company. 

Oracle has decided to publish an IPO launch book developed by Qatalyst Partners on its website. 

In the introductory book, Qatalyst provides examples of how Oracle would benefit from the acquisition of Autonomy and shows that it would increase its competitive advantage in areas where Oracle could not gain a foothold. 

It also showed the company's key financials and how it had positive revenue and margin growth. The book also introduced the partners and customers Oracle would acquire immediately after purchasing the company. 

It also went into detail about the Autonomy of the management team and the directors.

Sell-Side Pitch Books for Sell-Side Mandates 

First, provide a few slides outlining how your bank will market the business and make it appealing to potential purchasers. 

Next, present the company's valuation and the price you might expect to sell it. This evaluation section can be as little as 12 slides in a short presentation book or more than 20 slides in a longer one. 

Common elements include the "soccer field" valuation chart, DCF model output, comparable public companies, and historical transactions. These all make the presentation more visually appealing and comprehensible.

"Soccer field" or rating summary pages range from the simplest to the most interesting and complicated enough to be eye charts. 

Including a Contribution Analysis or M&A Analysis in this section is common if the business is very specific or advanced. 

Last but not least, longer investment banking presentation books frequently tend to include an appendix with more thorough models, statistics, and relatively longer lists of potential buyers.

Buy-Side PitchBook 

Investment banking submission books for M&A purchase transactions follow a similar structure, with a few key differences, the primary one being that your bank helps close it. 

In sales contracts, the key goals are to value the buyer, determine how much a potential stock issue would be worth, and get funding for the transaction. Additionally, it may involve a fast evaluation of probable targets. 

You will profile potential targets rather than potential buyers. Given that a large firm might select hundreds or thousands of possible targets to purchase, this list is typically broader than the list of potential buyers.

Buy-side deals tend to have a similar structure to what we have explained about generic pitch books.

Nevertheless, they are more focused on the type of acquisition, and their valuation structure is relatively different as they tend to determine the stock distribution based on their estimation of the buyer's value.

Moreover, their profiling algorithm tends to be significantly more inclusive, as they emphasize potential targets rather than just acquirers.

Hence, the importance of this stage cannot be stressed enough, as it lays the foundation for the business flow operation and is thus typically conducted by senior analysts. 

To avoid falling into the default error of having repetitive acquisition targets, large companies occasionally use out-of-company bankers to consolidate their targets' authenticity.

If you propose a concept that the firm has heard many times before, they are unlikely to be enthusiastic; yet, if you suggest a business they have not thought of or have an original idea, they will be interested.

It is difficult to find genuine investment bank records for these transactions as most M&A purchase agreements are never completed, so the banks do not disclose any documents.

But here are some company profiles and related commentary slides similar to those found in buyer bid books.

Other Types of Pitch Books

Other varieties of pitchbooks are also frequently employed. The following are some examples of when pitch books might be used for debt and equity finance mandates. 

1. No Profiles 

This alternative simply markets the business to raise capital or restructure equity without discussing potential buyers or sellers.

2. Financing models instead of/in addition to the valuation 

The valuation remains important for capital and restructuring transactions but must also provide analysis relevant to the transaction. 

For example, if you are starting an IPO, you can show the range of multiples the company could take public, the range of revenue it could receive, and how its value could change after the transaction.

Many other submissions are referred to as "Proposal Books," even if not created by the banks offering their services. For example, management presentations to introduce clients to potential buyers are often called "proposal books." 

Not all tender books take days or weeks to complete; shorter ones may require only a few work hours. 

However, they can easily turn into endless projects that require all night and extraordinary efforts to complete due to the high level of attention and numerous alterations required to reach a final version.

3. Conflicting changes 

The employee wants one thing, the VP wants another, and the CEO wants something else. And if you implement the seniority-based version of MD, the others can fight back.

Random graphic design work is more of a problem for boutique companies that don't have presentation departments. Still, sometimes you have to spend time creating fancy graphics on slides that end up being useless if your CEO changes his mind and breaks them.

Researched and authored by Ayoub Mresa | LinkedIn

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