James Fox

Working within the Valuation, Modelling and Economics team specialising in Valuation.

My main duties as an EY analyst include the following:

Preparing competitor benchmarking, compiling appropriate peer groups for the valuation subject company, taking account of factors such as industry focus, end market customers, projected and historical growth, margins, geographic focus, business lines and market positioning

Analysing the subject company versus listed competitors in… Show more

Working within the Valuation, Modelling and Economics team specialising in Valuation.

My main duties as an EY analyst include the following:

Preparing competitor benchmarking, compiling appropriate peer groups for the valuation subject company, taking account of factors such as industry focus, end market customers, projected and historical growth, margins, geographic focus, business lines and market positioning

Analysing the subject company versus listed competitors in order to benchmark appropriate metrics for company valuation - calculating trading and transaction multiples

Researching and analysing company and market information using sources such a Bloomberg, S&P CapitalIQ and MergerMarket

Calculating appropriate discount rates for each assignment, this involved:
- Calculating beta factors based on a peer group of publicly listed companies and scaling this based on the subject company’s positioning within the peer group

- Obtaining risk free rates and adjusting for quantitative easing

- Analysing debt spreads/margins to calculate the implied cost of debt

- Analysing company forecasts of revenue, EBITDA and distributions to shareholders to assess the achievability with reference to prior performance and market growth to add any specific premiums

- Using these discount rates to create discounted cash flows and net present values to calculate a valuation range for the subject company

Writing valuation reports for clients, including market, industry and economic overviews, as well as our assumptions and build up of the discount rate

Responding to day-to-day queries raised by client and attended client calls and meetings
Taking an active role in the team’s recruitment, creating a business case study for graduate scheme candidates to assist partners in whether to make an offer

Provided training to new team members on the use of research tools, valuation theory and various valuation approaches Show less