You don’t need that level of precision. “Around 12x” or “12-13x” or something similar is fine. And yes, it’s probably due to projections vs. actual historical numbers.

Right, thank you.

But I was wondering if it could be calculated using historical data from the company’s financial statements. I tried to do this with the twitter example using the 2012, 2013 and 2014 statements but I didn’t get the answer 12.4x. I got something close though.

Is this because they used forecasting/assumptions in their calculations whereas I used the real figures in retrospect? I hope my questions make sense.

Capital IQ/FactSet, or you could Google press releases and other deal commentary at the time of the IPO. Renaissance sometimes has good IPO summaries/research as well.

Thanks for this insightful article. Just a question about the Twitter IPO example–how did you work out the forward multiple?

Thanks

Search for the Fairness Opinion for the deal on the sec.gov site.

Thanks!

Within the past year is best, but the past 2 years is fine as well. Yes, you can discuss pending deals.

I am currently researching M&A deals I could discuss. How recent do this deals have to be? and can I discuss deals that are still pending?

It’s a fairly common question, but you won’t necessarily get it in all interviews. It’s worth preparing for if you’re doing a single interview, but if you’re interviewing at, say, 10-15 firms, you don’t need a different deal for each one.