Companion files · The Private Equity-Backed CFO

The covenant passed. On reported EBITDA alone, it would have failed.

The Private Equity-Backed CFO: Running Finance for a Sponsor: The First 100 Days, the 13-Week Cash Flow, Covenants, the Value Creation Plan and the Exit, With the Models Supplied.

This is the companion file of the book. A private equity fund buys Brennock Supply, an industrial distributor, for $136.8 million with a unitranche loan at five times EBITDA, and hires a CFO the week after closing. Five years later the company is sold. In between: a working capital peg trued up by $2.13 million, an add-on bought at 6.0 times, a bad year, a lost supplier-rebate tier, a covenant squeezed to 7.8 percent of headroom, a forecast cut three times. One workbook rebuilds the company quarter by quarter and reproduces every figure the book prints. No sign-up, no email is asked for, nothing is locked. Amounts are in millions of US dollars; blue type is an input, black type is a formula.

The workbook and the read-me, in one archive74 KB

The archive holds the workbook and 00_START_HERE.md. No macros, no circular references, no external links. It recalculates in Excel, LibreOffice or Google Sheets.

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The files

Three numbers to reproduce first

The tightest testYear 4, Q1: covenant EBITDA of $16.10 million against net debt of $74.22 million, leverage 4.61x against a maximum of 5.00x, headroom 7.8 percent; on reported EBITDA alone, 5.05x
The 13 weeksYear 3, Q2: the revolver peaks at $4.89 million in week 8 of a quarter that ends with $2.13 million drawn
The exitActual case: QoE EBITDA of $23.09 million at 9.0x, $207.8 million of enterprise value, 2.07x the money and 15.7 percent a year for the sponsor; the CFO's own units and co-investment return $1.40 million

The file is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind. The model is illustrative: Brennock Supply, its sponsor, its lender, its add-on and Kittering Labels are fictional, and the figures are the book's assumptions, not market statistics or forecasts. Nothing here is investment, legal, tax or accounting advice.

Also available as standalone free templates: 13-week cash flow model · working capital peg model.