Tl;dr: Part of a collection of real examples of M&A investment banking slides. This blog covers Comparable Companies. See the PowerPoint presentations investment bankers are paid millions for. No matter your job, or your aspirations, you can learn from these slides.
This is part of a collection of 67 free M&A presentations from the top 20 banks (based on ranking, and also the quality of presentation for you to learn from).
Collection of M&A slide examples
The main page for all the M&A resources is here.
I have broken out 827 examples of slides across 32 sections. You can click through to the section you want to learn about next here:
Is this blog for you?
Why the heck should you care? Investment banks (historically) attracted the best and the brightest.
- Slide structure/design: Learn how complicated concepts are structured and designed in PowerPoint
- Analysis approach: See exactly how complex financial methods are presented
- Strategy and communication: M&A deals are not (normally, other than many Duff and Phelps decks) cookie cutter. There’s a host of topics that need to be dealt with
- Morbid interest: I used to do this for a living, but it’s still interesting to see how PPT are made… but then maybe it’s just me and so FML 😉
Who this will help:
- You want to work in banking: There’s a lot of applicants. Knowing the job helps you answer questions
- You work in banking: Even if you’re an MD, you need to know how the best are structuring their thoughts/analysis
- You write presentations: You can’t buy learnings like this. You can learn from the slides
- You have a curious mind: Good for you
About Comparable Companies
Comparable companies are about comparing similar public companies. Comparable transactions are about comparing similar deals that were done. Other than a DCF these two analyses are the absolute core analysis you need to learn to do as you will do them all the time!
In principle, this is a really simple analysis to do, but it can be a bit of work.
- You pick the companies which are comparable to your client (you won’t have a clue at the start but you’ll learn everyone over time)
- You pick the variables to compare them to (These are almost always revenue and EBITDA, and market cap and enterprise value)
- Then you do a min/max/median/average summary
Americans have it a little harder as you might calandarize (compare apples to apples) your numbers as Americans post quarterly.
It’s important to understand the difference between market cap (equity value) and enterprise value (firm value). You need to know this cold for doing your multiples.
Why these slides are made
Comparable companies are really useful as they show how the public markets are valuing peers. This is great if your client is private and you don’t have many benchmarks, but you need to add a liquidity premium of 25% to a private valuation.
One caveat is that you need to pick the right kinds of companies to compare them to. For example, hedge funds charge higher fees than the big boring passive income managers. You wouldn’t compare the two. You might do a Sum of the Parts analysis for different parts of the revenue if your asset management client was large and diversified though.
Comments on making these slides
The only real challenge is not fecking up your numbers 😉 Once really important thing to learn if you are new is to sense check numbers. If you see a list of comparables and one number is super different, it is very likely you messed something up. It would be an extraordinary charge you didn’t notice and adjust for. Sense checking will save your boss staring at you and thinking you’re a moron.
Examples of Comparable Companies
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