Valuation & M&A
The craft of pricing businesses and structuring transactions.
Explanatory research across corporate valuation and M&A — educational content, never personalised professional advice.
01
Corporate Valuation
Valuation is the disciplined estimate of what a business is worth. It blends cash flow analysis, market evidence and judgement — and its honesty depends entirely on the transparency of its assumptions.
02
Enterprise Value & Equity Value
Enterprise value prices the whole business; equity value prices what remains for shareholders. The bridge between them — net debt and other claims — is where many valuations quietly go wrong.
03
DCF Valuation
The discounted cash flow method values a business as the present value of its future free cash flows. It is the most fundamental approach — and the most sensitive to the discount rate and terminal assumptions.
04
Weighted Average Cost of Capital
WACC blends the cost of equity and after-tax cost of debt into a single hurdle rate. Every basis point matters: small WACC changes move valuations by double-digit percentages.
05
Terminal Value
Often 60–80% of a DCF's total value sits in the terminal value. Growth rate and exit multiple choices here deserve more scrutiny than any forecast-year assumption.
06
Market Multiples
EV/EBITDA, P/E and EV/Revenue translate market prices into valuation benchmarks. Multiples are fast and intuitive — and dangerous without careful peer selection and normalisation.
07
Comparable Company Analysis
Comps value a business against listed peers. The craft lies in choosing genuinely comparable companies and adjusting for scale, growth, margin and accounting differences.
08
Precedent Transactions
What acquirers actually paid for similar businesses — including control premiums. Precedents anchor valuation in transaction reality, adjusted for market cycles.
09
LBO Analysis
The leveraged buyout lens: how much debt can the cash flows carry, and what return does the sponsor earn at exit? LBO analysis is the private equity industry's core framework.
10
Merger Modelling
Accretion/dilution analysis tests whether a deal creates or destroys per-share value for the acquirer — combining two P&Ls under one capital structure.
11
Transaction Analysis
Sources & uses, purchase price allocation, synergy cases and financing structure — the arithmetic of how deals actually get done.
12
Due Diligence
Where models meet reality. Diligence challenges every assumption: quality of earnings, working capital norms, debt-like items and the sustainability of projections.
13
Capital Structure
The mix of debt and equity is a strategic choice. Optimal structure balances the tax shield of debt against the cost of financial distress.
14
Investment Returns
IRR and money multiples translate cash flow timing into a single comparable measure of performance — the language in which investors judge opportunities.
15
Scenario Analysis
Deals rarely fail on the base case; they fail on the downside nobody modelled. Coherent scenario sets — not single-point forecasts — are how professionals price risk.
Put the theory to work
Run a DCF with sensitivity analysis in the Finance Lab, or read the deep-dive on enterprise value versus equity value.