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M&A Challenge - General Dynamics

The M&A challenge simulates a real-world acquisition scenario involving the aerospace and defense sector. Through eight structured modules, participants are guided step-by-step to analyze a strategic acquisition, forecast financials, assess valuation, build a financing structure, calculate accretion/dilution, and identify qualitative risks. The course integrates live data, professional modeling templates, and a focus on strategic thinking to ensure analysts can deliver actionable insights aligned with investment-grade constraints and shareholder value creation. The solution we are giving you is at May 16 2025. Your numbers will look a bit different if you are using live financial data, but your overall conclusion and analysis should be the same.

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8 Lessons (41m)

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  • Description & Objectives

  • 1. Briefing Call - M&A Felix Challenge

    02:22
  • 2. M&A - Requirements

    04:05
  • 3. M&A - Model Tour and Forecasts

    04:44
  • 4. M&A - Target Valuation

    06:22
  • 5. M&A - M&A Assumptions

    05:53
  • 6. M&A - Sources and Uses

    05:40
  • 7. M&A - EPS Accretion

    08:14
  • 8. M&A - Qualitative Considerations

    03:53

M&A - Sources and Uses

  • Notes
  • Questions
  • Transcript
  • 05:40

Estimating the additional debt financing based on the leverage assumption and building the sources and uses of funds section.
Download a file of the data from the free downloads section, or access the live industry data in Felix.
Access the live industry data for L3Harris Technologies here: https://felix.fe.training/company-analytics/?ticker=LHX&cik=0000202058
Access the live industry data for General Dynamics here: https://felix.fe.training/company-analytics/?ticker=GD&cik=0000040533

Downloads

Sources and Uses EmptySources and Uses FullFelix M&A Challenge HandoutFelix M&A Challenge - Felix Data GD 051625Felix M&A Challenge - Felix Data LHX 051625

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Acquisition Financing Equity backstop calculation Incremental debt capacity Maximum leverage calculation Sources and Uses Schedule
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Transcript

Now let's look at the financing structure of the deal and build our sources and uses of funds. So first we're going to work on our uses of funds.

Our acquisition equity value was calculated before at 53, about 53.6 billion.

We're going to be refinancing the targets net debt, which is 11.7 billion. And our last use of funds is our transaction fees, which are estimated at 1% of acquisition equity value. And that gives us a total uses of funds of about 66 billion. So now let's look at the financing or our sources of funds, starting with any cash that they acquire can put onto this deal. And that was calculated before at about 750 million This one is going to be calculated based on our maximum leverage assumption of three x, but before we can compute the amount of debt financing, we need to determine what is the EBITDA of this company on a combined basis. So down here we can make that calculation starting with the acquirers LTM EBITDA, which is all the way at the top of the Excel template, and that is 5.9 billion. We're going to add to that the targets LTM EBITDA, which is about 4 billion. And then we need to look at the run rate synergies. Now synergies will be estimated at 5% of LTM revenue for the target, so we'll take that 5% and multiplied times the targets LTM revenue, and that gives us about 1 billion.

We can add all of these numbers to get our combined EBITDA.

Now remember, we made the assumption of a maximum net debt to EBITDA of three times. So we can take that assumption of three at the top times our combined EBITDA, and that gives us a maximum combined net debt of about 33 billion.

Let's see what the incremental debt is for the financing of this deal. So we need to take out any existing debt the acquirer might have on its balance sheet, and then we need to add any cash on the balance sheet of the acquirer. So for the existing debt, we are going to bring that number from Felix.

We are here on the acquirer's company page. If we look at the EV bridge, you will see debt of 9.609 billion. Now the company also has a pension liability, but in the handout it states that for simplicity we're going to ignore this liability and we're going to use only the company's debt in the calculation of its net debt. So I'm going to take the 9609 onto the Excel file.

And then we need to figure out the amount of cash the acquirer will have post acquisition. Now here, we have to be careful because remember some of the cash the acquirer has before the acquisition is going to be used to finance the deal. So we only want the cash that will remain on the balance sheet post deal, and we can get that number by taking the existing cash today at 1451. And subtracting, let me go down here, take the 1451 minus any cash that will be used to finance the deal and that difference will be still there on the acquirer's balance sheet post transaction. So what is the additional debt that we can put onto this deal? The answer is we're going to take the maximum combined net debt, we're going to subtract the existing debt of the acquirer, and we're going to add the cash. And that will give us 24, roughly 24 billion. So now we can go back to our sources of funds and we can link this incremental debt financing onto this table. And that leaves us with one last row, which is our equity financing. So in this model, our equity financing is going to be a balancing figure to ensure that we have enough financing to cover all of our uses of funds. So the way to calculate the equity financing is simply taking the total uses of funds minus any cash we're using, minus any debt financing.

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