Double Counting: Earnings Growth and Multiple Expansion

what is multiple expansion

Value in buy-and-build deals often results from traditional synergy levers—such as scale effects in procurement and in selling, general, and administrative expenses—and from improved sales force effectiveness and pricing. The study also sheds light on how buy-and-build deals create value. For instance, small portfolio companies often have the most to gain from add-on acquisitions, and using acquisitions to build depth, rather than breadth, generates higher returns. Taken together, the findings of the analysis suggest the capabilities that are crucial for PE firms and platform companies and reveal the circumstances in which buy-and-build deals lead to superior performance. Private equity investors typically do not rely on multiple expansion, however. The entry and exit multiples can fluctuate substantially, so expecting to exit at a set multiple five years from the present date can be a risky bet.

What is Multiple Expansion?

Individually, these companies might sell for six times their EBITDA, equating to a $6 million valuation each. If the firm acquires ten such companies, they would collectively generate $10 million in EBITDA. However, a single company with $10 million in EBITDA might sell for ten times its EBITDA, resulting in a $100 million valuation for the aggregated entity.

Cost Management

It’s important to recognize that this inconsistency stems from how we treat operating cash in the LBO. It is not a new assumption introduced in the value creation analysis. A paper LBO is a simplified LBO that can be completed with pen and paper quickly (ten minutes tops). The move from 24x to 39x earnings explains almost half of Costco’s returns over the past 10 years. For instance, Boyd Group, Constellation Software, Monster Beverage, Xpel, and even recently with one of our current nanocap favourites Inventronics. We’re talking about the homeruns that turn $10,000 into $1 million, producing the kind of windfall that changes lives and creates investing legends.

  1. At that point, the transportation company has $10 of LTM EBITDA.
  2. The secret is to embrace the negative sentiment, move counter to emotions and look for the high-growth, low-value companies that are toiling in obscurity.
  3. While each equity waterfall is unique, it’s important to understand this concept, because it surprises many ex-bankers.
  4. Because we’re calculating how much money the sponsor needs to invest, and they need to pay for fees.

LBO Value Creation

The chart shows the change in Apple’s earnings per share (EPS) and stock price over the last 10 diagnostic value of adenosine deaminase in nontuberculous lymphocytic pleural effusions years. Early on, the stock price tracked the growth in EPS fairly closely. In the long run, a company’s stock price reflects its growth in earnings. But when we dissect the long run into short runs, we see how investor psychology drives prices. Although buy-and-build activity is more common among platforms acquired as primary deals, occurring in 43% of cases (compared with 32% of secondaries), buy-and-build deals among secondary platforms generate higher IRRs.

Not only are many of these companies trading at extremely low multiples, but they are also mostly local, reflecting the growing trend to de-risk the global supply chain and bring crucial products and services back onshore. There are many complicated calculations to justify this approach, including the Price/Earnings-to-Growth (PEG) Ratio, which notes that the faster a company is growing the more this should impact its multiple. While it’s important to be prudent and reasonable with growth expectations, it’s also good to remember that smallcap stocks can produce phenomenal gains. Dividend recaps are performed to monetize profits from the LBO prior to a complete exit, and the timing of the recap has the additional benefit of increasing the fund’s IRR since the proceeds are received earlier. Most acquisitions multiples are based on EBITDA (i.e. EV/EBITDA), either on a last twelve months (LTM) or next twelve months (NTM) basis.

LBO Multiple Expansion Scenario Example

what is multiple expansion

Calculating the mandatory amortization is not as simple as multiplying the % by the beginning principal amount. You should try to follow along, step-by-step, building your own model from the blank file. If you don’t have a decent understanding of the different types of debt used in LBOs, spend ~15 minutes perusing the guides below.

SaaS business are usually assigned much higher multiples than average contract manufacturing 7 powerful forex risk management strategies firms. But anyone can buy a company and increase its multiple by increasing its profitability and overall size. Buyers who know how to run certain types of companies profitably can make a living buying companies in their sector and improving their cash flow and operations and then resell them, thus achieving multiple expansion. The phrase “multiple expansion” can also refer to any type of increase in a given company’s valuation multiple.

These multiples are financial metrics that investors use to assess the attractiveness of an investment. The most common multiple is the Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio, which compares a company’s stock price to its earnings per share (EPS). A higher P/E ratio signifies that investors are willing to pay more for each dollar of a company’s earnings. In a striking finding, we observed that the buy-and-build deals 5 ways to buy stocks for free or very cheap of small platforms performed significantly better than those of larger acquirers. The deals of small platform companies generated an average IRR from entry to exit of 52.4%, compared with 34.6% for deals done by medium acquirers and 12.5% for those by large acquirers.

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