DCF Case Study - Sensitivity Tables
- 04:47
How to build sensitivity tables for a discounted cash flow valuation using Excel.
Transcript
Once we've done the discounted cash flow valuation, there are two numbers, which we don't have a complete confidence in any single assumption, and that is the long-term growth rate and the cost of capital. So it seems reasonable to build some kind of sensitivity to these numbers, but be very careful. You want your sensitivity to be quite minor. You don't want to have big swings in the long-term growth rate or big swings in your cost of capital. Otherwise you'll be able to drive a truck through the valuation ranges. So in the data table we've got a range here of WACC and we've got a range of our long-term growth rate. Okay? One thing you want to be careful about is that you don't want to connect these midpoints of the deader table to your actual assumptions in the model. There is a workaround to that, but certainly people who are new to this, I would make sure that you hardwire this. Now this is connected to a number here and that's connected to the WACC calculation on the other sheet, but it's critically not connected to this WACC here. So you want to make sure you don't connect those data tables. And you can see this number here for the long term growth rate is just hardwired. So the first thing I'm going to do in the top left hand corner is I'm gonna pull in the implied enterprise value because that's the title of this sensitivity and that's the current enterprise value. Then I'm gonna select the whole data table, including the variable ranges, and we're then going to tell Excel to build a sensitivity table or what they used to be called a what if table. So if I do alt DT, that's a little secret shortcut for data table. Excel knows we've selected the area and it's expecting the answer to be in the top left of the selection. It's expecting the variable in a column to be in the left hand column, and it's expecting the variable in the row to be along the top of the row. What it doesn't know is where the assumptions are in the model. So the row input cell is the growth rate because that's at the top, and then the column input cell is the WACC calculation. And you must use the WACC calculation in the model. You must use that because Excel is changing that number and it wants to see what happens to the answer. When the numbers change, then I hit enter and you should see the calculation. Now in this case, it probably means that I have not got automatic turned on in my calculation. So if I do alt FT and I go down to formulas, can you see it says automatic accept for data tables. And this is put on in a lot of models because data tables are really, they're like kind of Count Dracula when it comes to the CPU unit central processing unit because it's literally sucking the lifeblood out of Excel's process. And the reason for that is that every time you make a change, Excel has to recalculate the model 25 times, and if you have iterations, it will iterate five times for each calculation. So that's actually 125 times the model has to recalculate for every single change you make. So all you need to do is hit the F9 key to recalculate. I'll actually need to use my menus to do this, otherwise I'll turn off recording and I'll just choose calculate now. And you can see the data table has populated and we have a not a reasonable range of a low point of 72 million and a high point of 87 billion. I can then do the implied multiple, the 2023 multiple, and this is gonna be much quicker. So I'll go and get the current answer for the 23 multiple. Then I'll select the data table ALT dt. The row input cell is my long-term growth rate. The column input cell is my WACC calculation, and I'll hit enter, and then I've got to just recalculate the model and then the implied terminal value multiple. I'm gonna go and pick up on the calculation here that 16.8 and then I'm gonna select it alt DT the row input cell is the long-term growth rate, and then the column input cell is the WACC. So once you get used to this, you can do it pretty quickly. And again, I'll need to recalculate the model. And there we go. We've built three sensitivity tables for this valuation.