Eligibility and Team Rules
- The Water Street Private Equity Case Challenge is open to all Chicago Booth students.
- Teams must consist of exactly four students.
- Teams must include at least one member without prior full-time private equity experience.
- Gender-balanced teams are encouraged.
- Teams may use any widely-available resources (e.g. company data and equity research reports) to develop their application, which must include the following information and be submitted online by the deadline. In their analysis, teams should ignore the company’s share price and focus instead on how the company would be valued in an LBO context.
- If you are looking for teammates, please fill in your details on this PECC team-building spreadsheet and check frequently for updates.
Application Components:
- Resumes of all team members, combined alphabetically by last name and submitted in a single PDF file
- A presentation, not to exceed 25 slides, submitted as a single PDF file, which includes:
- Executive summary (investment rationale/key conclusions)
- Investment Thesis (key merits and key risks)
- Company description (location, history, etc.)
- Market overview (growth drivers, value chain, customers, suppliers, key players, etc.)
- Business overview (business model, competition, etc.)
- Historic financial analysis
- Business plan/growth drivers
- Strategy for growth and value creation opportunities; 100 day plan
- Forecast financials (including key assumptions)
- Debt/capital structure (including credit stats)
- Valuation/multiples (comparables, LBO analysis, etc.)
- Exit options and target buyers
- Returns (money multiple and IRR, sensitivities to the business plan, breakdown of IRR drivers amongst EBITDA growth, debt pay down, and change in purchase multiple)
- Key areas to diligence
- Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues
- SWOT analysis
- A financial and valuation model, submitted as both a printable Excel and a PDF file, which includes:
- Operational assumptions
- Operational model and forecasts
- Valuation
- Returns (money multiple and IRR, sensitivities to the business plan, breakdown of IRR drivers amongst EBITDA growth, debt pay down, and change in purchase multiple)
Application Deadline:
The application deadline for 2023-2024 Water Street Private Equity Case Challenge is Friday, October 27, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. CT
Questions?
If you are interested in or have questions about the Private Equity Case Challenge, please contact Megan Fox, Director, Svider Private Equity Program, at megan.fox@chicagobooth.edu.