PE deal model: consumer web buyout
Made by hand · pre-AIMonthly driver builds for a consumer web business roll into an annual deal engine that sizes the financing and works out what the sponsor gets back at exit.
Overview
I built this in private equity to underwrite the buyout of a consumer web business. It opens on the memo outputs so a reader lands on the answer first.
How it's built
Each property's revenue is a monthly funnel: visits, pageviews per visit, ad impressions per page, fill rate, then price per thousand paid impressions. Every forecast month grows off the same month a year earlier, so the trailing twelve months' seasonality carries through the forecast. Expenses run off baselines, escalators and a payroll roster. Those builds drive monthly statements, while financing, amortization, fees and tax are set annually on the deal tab and spread down to months. Management's forecast feeds only the EBITDA bridge, as a comparison.
What it shows
The monthly math splits revenue into traffic, pageview, impression and new-format effects, so the EBITDA bridge reads straight off the build. The sponsor goes in mostly as senior debt with a thin equity strip, and a single exit-year input moves returns through seller notes with earn-out flags and a management profits interest. Returns show a second time with fund-level borrowing on top. If I rebuilt it, I'd tie the deal tab's annual cash waterfall to statement cash, since the two drift slightly. The figures in the screenshots are disguised.
More on the approach behind both models: How I build models.