Understanding Where Investment Returns Come From: Yield, Growth, and Multiple Expansion

what is multiple expansion

In this example, yield, growth, and multiple expansion enhanced Andrew’s investment returns. Historical instances, such as the dot-com bubble and post-financial crisis recovery, emphasize the significant impact of multiple expansion on the market and investors’ returns. Okay, let’s dive in and learn more about understanding where the total money makeover returns come from yield, growth, and multiple expansion.

The two drivers of share price growth

  1. The IRR can be estimated by raising the multiple-of-money (MoM) to the power of (1 ÷ t) and subtracting the result by one.
  2. Buy-and-build deals (in which a PE firm buys a company and then builds on that “platform” through add-on acquisitions) can both accelerate revenue growth and drive margin expansion by realizing synergies.
  3. We include the Undrawn Revolver as a debt balance, because the company must pay a small amount of interest expense for the unused commitment.
  4. When negotiating with private equity, the goal is to get the highest possible multiple for your business, ideally approaching the multiple the private equity firm expects for the consolidated entity.

So let’s summarise the previous articles with some key rules of thumb for identifying the financial engines of multibaggers. When I started my career, I was working at Goldman Sachs, and my manager sat me down to talk about a little business called Hornby. Many people may have used model railway sets when they were kids, which is what Hornby sells. In some ways, it had some similarities with Games Workshop in its business model. Now let’s link Noncash Interest Expense into the Statement of Cash Flows as an add-back to Net Income. We do this, because Net Interest Expense reduces Net Income, but this portion of Net Interest Expense is a noncash expense.

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Another method to improve LBO returns is via a dividend recapitalization (“recap”), which occurs when a financial sponsor raises more debt with the sole purpose of issuing shareholders a one-time dividend. For instance, one of the more common strategies is via add-on acquisitions, in which the portfolio company of a PE firm (i.e. the “platform company”) acquires smaller-sized companies. The LBO model estimates the maximum entry multiple (and purchase price) that could be paid to acquire the target while still realizing a minimum IRR of, say, 20% to 25%. Therefore, increasing EBITDA via revenue growth and operational enhancements directly causes the valuation of a company to rise. EBITDA, shorthand for “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization”, is a profit metric that measures a company’s ability to efficiently generate cash flows from its core operations.

Multiple Expansion: Private Equity LBOs Returns Driver

Potential multibaggers often start on moderate P/E ratios, which creates significant potential for the ratio to expand. That powerful share price strength was driven by Price/Earnings multiple expansion. It’s P/E multiple grew from something like 10x, to 20x, 15x to 36x and beyond by the 2020 annual results. Since then, the multiple has come down, but still grew from 10x to 23x over xtz to eur currency converter the decade study period. You can see the earnings per share on this right axis which grew and grew and grew, especially through that significant operating leverage period, but the share price accelerated far, far, far beyond the earnings growth.

A management rollover is not uncommon, and sponsors like it, because it keeps the management team even more incentivized. If check size (how much money a sponsor is able to invest in a single deal) is a concern, a management rollover can help mitigate that. Even if the company’s EBITDA remains unchanged at $10mm, if the sponsor exits the investment five years later but at a 10.0x exit multiple, $30mm of value would have been created – all else being equal. If the financial sponsor later sells the same company for 10.0x EBITDA, then the net positive difference between the 7.0x and 10.0x is the concept of multiple expansion. The inverse of multiple expansion is called multiple contraction, which means the investment was sold for a lower multiple than the original acquisition multiple.

what is multiple expansion

Of course, there are more than three drivers that can impact the implied returns on an LBO. The bitcoin btc to tether usd exchange capital structure is arguably the most important component of a leveraged buyout (LBO). Note that each firm has its own specific “hurdle rate” that must be met for an investment to be pursued. In summary, successful investing involves understanding how these three components work together.

If a company undergoes LBO and is sold for a higher price than the initial purchase price, the investment will be more profitable for the private equity firm, i.e. “buy low, sell high”. Achieving multiples expansion isn’t just about buying and combining companies. Private equity firms look for revenue synergies and cost-saving opportunities that arise from combining operations.

We’ll now move to a modeling exercise, which you can access by filling out the form below. Join one of our email newsletters and get the latest insights about selling your business in your inbox every week. Multiple expansion is also known as the multiple effect or multiple arbitrage. Upgrading to a paid membership gives you access to our extensive collection of plug-and-play Templates designed to power your performance—as well as CFI’s full course catalog and accredited Certification Programs. In order to achieve the expansion, PE Partners plans to drive the operational efficiency of Startup Inc. by boosting production and eliminating some costs.

And it’s about understanding what drives this multiple expansion. For instance, when you see a stock’s value going from 5 to 20 times earnings, this represents a 4 x of the multiple. If fundamentals haven’t changed, this means, for whatever reason, people have valued it 4 times higher. This happens more often than you may think but you must know where to find these opportunities. Multiples expansion is a key strategy in private equity, particularly within the middle market.

Here, we’re assuming that the total leverage ratio was 6.0x LTM EBITDA and there are no other providers of capital other than the single leverage provider (i.e. debt-holder) and the financial sponsor. Since the purchase multiple was 10.0x, we can deduce the sponsor equity contribution was 4.0x LTM EBITDA (i.e. four turns of EBITDA). Next, we must figure out the initial investment contributed by the financial sponsor, or the private equity firm. Although it can be applied to just about any kind of purchase, multiple expansion is most commonly used in deals involving private equity. It can be challenging to accurately predict the multiple expansion of a given company. Private equity firm PE Partners has decided to acquire Startup Inc.

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