Project Overview
Going public requires pricing a company's equity against the market reality of comparable traded peers. This model builds the full IPO pricing workflow: peer-group multiple selection, blended valuation range, primary/secondary share allocation, dilution calculation for existing shareholders, and use-of-proceeds waterfall. The output is an offer price range with supporting sensitivity analysis — the core deliverable in any equity capital markets (ECM) transaction.
📋Problem Statement
Determine a defensible IPO offer price range that balances leaving sufficient upside for public investors with maximizing proceeds for the issuer and selling shareholders — the central tension in every equity offering.
🎯Analytical Approach
Selected a peer group of publicly traded comparable companies, computed EV/Revenue and EV/EBITDA multiples for each peer, applied a discount for IPO uncertainty, and triangulated with a DCF to establish a 25th–75th percentile offer price range.
💾Data Sources
LTM and NTM financial estimates for the issuer, peer-group trading multiples pulled from public filings, projected shares outstanding (including option pool and secondary offering shares), and WACC assumptions from comparable company beta analysis.
🔧Quantitative Methods
Trading comps: median and mean EV/EBITDA, EV/Revenue applied to issuer financials. DCF: FCFF projection with terminal growth; WACC from CAPM. Dilution: fully-diluted share count including RSUs and options. Use-of-proceeds: debt repayment, growth capex, working capital, and banker fees.
✨Key Results
A price range supported by three independent valuation methods. Model shows implied market cap at offer, equity value to selling shareholders, primary proceeds available for growth, and dilution percentage for pre-IPO investors.
🧠Key Learnings
IPO pricing is as much art as science — anchor investors and bookbuilding dynamics often shift the final price outside the model range. But the analytical framework ensures the price is grounded in fundamentals, giving bankers and investors a shared reference point.