Football Field Valuation: Video Instruction with Excel Template Download

Find the video exercise for this lesson below.

One of the most common slides in an investment banking pitchbook is the football field. The football field is a floating bar chart in Excel that puts several valuation analyses side-by-side to provide clients with the full context of a company's value using a variety of methodologies and assumptions. A typical football field valuation matrix will include company value based on:

1. DCF valuation
2. LBO analysis
3. Comparable company analysis
4. Comparable transaction analysis
5. Trading 52-week high and low
6.  Liquidation analysis (optional)
7. Sum of the Parts Analysis (optional)

The purpose of the football field

The purpose of the football field valuation is to create a visual summary of all the valuation analyses that were performed on a company and to demonstrate a valuation range based on those valuation methodologies. The goal of the summary is to sanity check various methodologies against one another. For example, a comparable company analysis might show high valuations during strong equity markets while an intrinsic DCF valuation might show a lower valuation.  The football field places those alternative valuation approaches side by side when arriving at a valuation range. In addition to being a staple of the investment banking pitchbook, it is also used in fairness opinions.

Watch: building the football field in Excel

Below is an excerpt from Wall Street Prep’s full Financial Modeling Training Package. You can download the Excel file for this exercise here.