1DCF AND MULTIPLES Table of Contents Merger and Acquisition Analysis:.............................................................................................1
2DCF AND MULTIPLES Merger and Acquisition Analysis: The merger and acquisition is an important part of a company, which plans to expand its operations to existing lines of business or a new line of business with the sole motive to create value for the stakeholders. This involves two parties, the target company and the bidding company to form a part of a merger and acquisition deal. The companies need to create a proper valuation for the target company as it involves the use of the shareholders' wealth. And it can be done by various valuation methods, which are discussing below. The method of valuation which would be undertaken by me would be to value the company on both the DCF and the multiples approach. This is because both the analysis requires a certain set of inputs that needs to be carefully selected with proper caution when undertaking the analysis. The DCF that is more based on the expected cash flows, which can be generated from the project while the multiples method in comparison with similar public firms. Thus we can calculate and provide certain elements of risk for the DCF analysis at today's date, as per our expectations of the future changes in the market. This would give a number, which would be a certain amount. Thus, the accuracy of estimating the inputs would depend on the experience in that particular field. If the merger is strategic, an aggressive method of valuation can be done with DCF as the company is in the knowledge of the risk in the industry, and DCF would be a suitable analysis. However, if the projections are too aggressive or conservative can be analyzed by the multiples method. This would providethebidder to understandwhethertheestimateshavebeenusedvery aggressively and which factor input for the same should be reduced. The part which was skipped during the DCF analysis is when the terminal value of the company is calculated. The terminal value is an important segment of the analysis requires estimation of the growth rate and the discount rate. The growth rate whichisusedisconstantwasskippedduringtheinitialanalysis.Ihadalso miscalculated on the discount rate by incorporating a wrong set of risk factors. Thus, this leads to a point which was also skipped in the analysis. The comparable company approach is required for comparing the company, and in the initial analysis the marketability and liquidity discount was not provided to the company. This can lead to the overvaluation of the company and hence provide a wrong investment decision. The terminal value is the most important variable in either of the methods for valuation of the company. An undervaluation can lead to the target company rejecting the offer, while an overvaluation can lead the bidder company to lose value for the stakeholders.