Private Equity Bootcamp
Combine the 360-degree view of the overall mergers and acquisition (M&A) process and how private equity (PE) firms commonly operate from M&A Bootcamp with the detailed financial modeling and LBO skills necessary to add value to the deal team and overall investment process from the M&A Financial Modeling Toolkit to create a powerful foundation for private equity professionals.
Private Equity Bootcamp Course Overview
Private Equity Bootcamp is the combination of M&A Bootcamp plus M&A Financial Modeling Toolkit. Depending on the experience level and needs of your team, Intro to Financial Accounting Concepts / Financial Accounting Basics and/or Intro to Excel for Private Equity Professionals can also be added to the course.
Essential Business Skills
- Habits That Create Value & Their Applicability to Careers in M&A
- Personal Execution Process: Imagining & Managing the Day©
- Fundamentals: Active Reading, Listening, & Note-taking
- Fundamentals: Synthesize & Reflect
- Fundamentals: The Art of Asking Good Questions
- Fundamentals: Framing, Language, & Communication
The M&A Process
- Cast of Characters: Buyers & Sellers, and Their Many Advisers
- Financial vs. Strategic Investors
- Different Types of Investors & Form of Investment
- Where Investors Sit Along the Risk / Reward Continuum
- Primary vs. Secondary Capital
- Pre-Money vs. Post-Money Valuations
- Business Lifecycle & The Investment Continuum
- Major Milestones in the Transaction Process
- Common Diligence Workflows & Third-Party Advisers
- M&A Process Considerations & Impact
- Diligence Advisory Firms & Process Type
Foundational Questions©
- Introduction to Foundational Questions©
- Foundational Questions© as the Question Behind the Question
- Project / Client Foundational Questions©
- Company / Target Foundational Questions©
- Foundational Questions© Exercise
Learning to Think Like an Investor
- How Businesses are Valued
- Relative and Absolute Value
- Free Cash Flow (“FCF”)
- Three Sought-After Attributes of FCF
- Desirable Business Traits & Their Impact on FCF
- The Importance of Perspective
- Risk & Opportunity
- Billionaires Brawl
Case Study: Applying Pattern Recognition*
- Identifying Business Characteristics & Their Impact on Value
- Team Exercise and Class Discussion / Presentation
Intro to Private Equity
- Private Equity vs. Institutional Private Equity
- Private Equity vs. Public Equity Comparison
- Other Investor Types Similar to Private Equity
How Private Equity Works
- Private Equity’s Prominence & Reach
- How a Buyout Works
- How Institutional PE Works
- Investment Horizon / Hold Period
- How PE Firms are Structured: A Simplified Example
- PE Firms as Broader Multi-Strategy Asset Managers
- PE Firm Activities
- The Investment Box
- The PE Deal Funnel
- AUM vs. Fund Size vs. Dry Powder
- Other People’s Money
- How PE Returns Are Measured
- The Three Ways PE Firms Make Money
Due Diligence Defined
- Due Diligence Defined
- Intuition Building: Due Diligence Applied to Other Asset Purchases
Select Diligence Frameworks
- Foundational Questions©
- Perspective & Point-of-View
- Prioritization & Decision Gates
- Build Intuition: Establish Bookends & Fermi Math
- Finding Insights in Contradictions
- SOPs & Checklists
Case Study: Prioritizing Diligence to Enhance Decision Making*
- Prioritizing & Identifying Key Business & Diligence Issues
- Team Exercise and Class Discussion / Presentation
Financial Modeling Overview
- Foundational Skill Sets for Modeling
- Understanding The Relations Between Business Attributes, Free Cash Flow, & Net Present Value
- Telling the Quantitative Story
- The Problem with Averages
- Purpose-Driven Approach to Modeling
- Annual vs More Granular Time Series
- Horizontal vs. Vertical Models
SOPs, Best Practices, & Foundational Exercises
- Sample SOPs & Best Practices
- Formatting Standards
- Custom Formatting
- Common Excel Shortcuts
- Conceptualizing the Model
- Spreading Financial Data
- Reconciling Data Sources
- Thinking Through Adjustments
Understanding KPIs
- Business Model Understanding
- Building Intuition of the Business
- Understanding Unit Economics
- Seasonality
- Financial Metrics & Analysis
- KPIs & FCF
- Understanding Customer Churn
- Data Analysis & Forecasting
- Historical Data & Forecasting
- Correlation vs. Causation
- Understanding Variation in Datasets
- Industry-Specific KPIs
- Sales Pipeline Analysis
- Geographic Footprint Impact
- Financial Modeling Case Studies
Developing the Initial Model
- Defining the Model’s Purpose
- Foundational Questions
- How A Buyout Works
- Laying Out the Analysis
- Simplicity vs. Granularity of a Model
- Differences in Types of Capital
- Capital Structure Assumptions
- Determining the Leverage on the Business
Building an Accurate Operating Model
- Creating the Adjusted Historical Financials
- Common Sized Income Statement
- Creating Roll-Forward Schedules
- KPI Driven Side Analysis
- Forecasting Revenue & Gross Profit
- Forecasting Operating Expenses
- Calculating & Forecasting Earnings, EBITDA, & FCF
Creating the LBO
- The Basics of LBO Modeling
- Overlaying the Transaction
- Balance Sheet Modeling
- Cash Flow Modeling
- Returns & Performance Evaluation
- Build Your Own Three Statement Model
- Troubleshooting The Model
