If a corporate or a private equity house wants to acquire another company, it will need to thoroughly understand that company’s current and projected performance. PwC provides a commercial due diligence report, which usually involves a comprehensive review of the company’s business plan in the context of projected market conditions and the industry/competition.
Potential issues
- You are considering acquiring a company, but there is market or competitive uncertainty, such as new technologies, customers, trends, legislation, powerful buyers, or a new geographic market etc, and you need to know how these issues might impact the current and future value of the company
- You are considering acquiring a company, and the revenue/EBIT projections appear to be very aggressive (relative to historic performance). You therefore need to test/validate the achievability of these projections
- You are considering acquiring a company, and a significant proportion of the revenue/EBIT projections appear to be based upon the success of new products, customers and/or markets. You therefore need to test/validate the reasonableness of these assumptions