In order to evaluate the economics of an investment, the PE investors need to estimate a
value for their investment (or, equivalently the portfolio company) at the expected time of exit.
As noted above, this is virtually always five years into the investment. There are (at least)
three possible ways to do this valuation: (1) using the (discounted) value of a growing
perpetuity of the final year cash flow in a CAPM-framework; (2) using the value of comparable
or similar public companies; and (3) using the value of acquisitions or transactions involving
comparable or similar companies.
Table 7a indicates that PE investors are much more likely to use comparable methods—
both publicly traded companies and transactions—than discounted cash flow methods. Fewer
than 30% of the PE investors use a growing perpetuity methodology. The percentage increases
for larger PE investors, but remains below 35%. The other category is dominated by eleven
firms (or 16%) who indicate that they use the entry multiple—the EBITDA multiple the PE
investor paid for the company—to calculate the exit multiple.
Table 7b explores how the PE investors choose the comparable companies they use.
Industry and firm size are the most important criteria they match on with growth, margins, and
geography next in importance. Setting the exit multiple equal to the entry multiple also is
consistent with matching on firm industry and size. Firm riskiness ranks seventh among the
different criteria. Again, PE investors appear to be skeptical of using measures of risk that have
strong foundations in academic finance.