Publications

September 1987 (Revised November 1992)
Background Note

Note on Operating Exposure to Exchange-Rate Changes

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

Describes the effects on operating cash flows of a real change in exchange rates. Describes different elements of operating exposure and includes illustrative examples. View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Fluctuation

November 2003 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Dow Chemical's Bid for the Privatization of PBB in Argentina

By: Mihir A. Desai and Alexandra de Royere

What price should Dow Chemical bid for PBB, a petrochemical complex that is being privatized by the Argentine government? To answer this question, students are forced to consider the role of country risk, the underlying currency exposure of the business, and how to... View Details

Keywords: Bids and Bidding; Privatization; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Cash Flow; Emerging Markets; Valuation; Business and Government Relations; Multinational Firms and Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Energy Industry; Argentina

September 2000 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Netflix (2000)

By: E. Scott Mayfield

The CEO of a successful Internet start-up must decide whether to delay the company's initial public offering following a significant decline in the NASDAQ market during the spring of 2000. The company's CFO is asked to reevaluate the company's projected cash flow needs... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Contracts; Initial Public Offering; Cash Flow; Service Delivery; Financial Strategy; Web Services Industry

February 2010 (Revised June 2022)
Case

Dollarama Inc.

By: Andre F. Perold

Dollarama is the leading operator of dollar stores in Canada. The firm performed extraordinarily well after a leveraged buyout in 2004 and recently executed a highly successful IPO. The company sources its goods primarily from Asia. It has strong brand recognition and... View Details

Keywords: Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Canada

February 1997
Case

Transportation Displays, Incorporated (D): Exiting from a Successful Restructuring

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Vincent Hemmer, Eric Rahe, David Shorrock and Stephen Voorhis

Following a successful corporate turnaround and, more recently, a leveraged recapitalization, management of a highly profitable, fast--growing outdoor advertising company must consider alternative ways to harvest cash flow from the company without jeopardizing the... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Capital; Cash Flow; Profit; Taxation; Private Ownership

September 1996 (Revised September 2004)
Case

Monterrey Manufacturing Company

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

A small manufacturing company plans and budgets sales and expenses to ensure that its strategy is feasible. It must trace costs of manufacturing through work-in-process to finished goods and cost of goods sold, and project cash flows and income. View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Business Earnings; Cash Flow; Sales; Budgets and Budgeting; Manufacturing Industry

March 2022
Article

Loan Types and the Bank Lending Channel

By: Victoria Ivashina, Luc Laeven and Enrique Moral-Benito

Using credit-registry data for Spain and Peru, we document that four main types of commercial credit—asset-based loans, cash flow loans, trade finance and leasing—are easily identifiable and represent the bulk of corporate credit. We show that credit growth dynamics... View Details

Keywords: Bank Credit; Loan Types; Bank Lending Channel; Credit Registry; Banks and Banking; Credit; Financing and Loans

Find at Harvard

November 2008 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Tottenham Hotspur plc

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Joshua D. Coval and Christopher J. Malloy

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is a publicly-owned professional soccer team based in London, England. The club's chairman, Daniel Levy, is contemplating a significant investment in physical assets, including the development of a new stadium as well as the acquisition... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Capital Budgeting; Decision Making; Competency and Skills; Cash Flow; Investment; Buildings and Facilities; Sports; Investment Portfolio; Financial Strategy; Sports Industry; London

July 2023
Article

Takahashi-Alexander Revisited: Modeling Private Equity Portfolio Outcomes Using Historical Simulations

By: Dawson Beutler, Alex Billias, Sam Holt, Josh Lerner and TzuHwan Seet

In 2001, Dean Takahashi and Seth Alexander of the Yale University Investments Office developed a deterministic model for estimating future cash flows and valuations for the Yale endowment’s private equity portfolio. Their model, which is simple and intuitive, is still... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Portfolio; Analytics and Data Science

December 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Rosetree Mortgage Opportunity Fund

By: Victoria Ivashina and Andre F. Perold

In December 2008, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Rosetree Capital Management was evaluating the purchase of a pool of U.S. residential mortgages. The firm had formed an investment vehicle to acquire troubled residential mortgages... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Mortgages; Investment; Housing; Valuation; United States

December 1993 (Revised June 2000)
Case

Kochman, Reidt + Haigh, Inc.

By: Richard S. Ruback and Roy Burstin

A small company faces the dilemma of how to finance growth (i.e., internally generated cash flows vs. outside financing sources). An innovative concept positions the company in promoting a niche within the kitchen-cabinet industry and in looking for an optimal way of... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Utilities Industry

2009
Simulation

Finance Simulation: Blackstone/Celanese: No. 3712.

By: Nabil N. El-Hage and Timothy A. Luehrman

The Finance Simulation: Blackstone/Celanese is based on the landmark acquisition of Celanese AG by the Blackstone Group in 2003. Students play the role of either Celanese or Blackstone and conduct due diligence, establish deal terms, respond to bids and counter-bids,... View Details

Keywords: Bids and Bidding; Finance; Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Leveraged Buyouts; Negotiation

March 1989 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Philip Morris Companies and Kraft, Inc.

By: Richard S. Ruback

Gives students the opportunity to explore the effect of substantial free cash flow on corporate acquisition and operating strategies. Students are also given the opportunity to extract information from the common stock prices of the participating firms. A variety of... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Strategic Planning; Acquisition; Strategy; Restructuring; Valuation; Stocks

2020
Working Paper

An Empirical Guide to Investor-Level Private Equity Data from Preqin

By: Juliane Begenau, Claudia Robles-Garcia, Emil Siriwardane and Lulu Wang

This note provides guidance on the use of investor-level private equity data from Preqin for empirical research. Preqin primarily sources its cash flow data through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with U.S. public pensions. Our focus is on the components of... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Returns; Prequin Data; Private Equity; Analytics and Data Science; Investment Return

SSRN

September 2003
Case

Valuing a Cross-Border LBO: Bidding on the Yell Group

By: Mihir A. Desai, Paolo Notarnicola and Mark Veblen

A team of private equity investors must value the leveraged buyout of a Yellow Pages business that operated in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the process, they must wrestle with issues of how to conduct cross-border valuations and how to value a... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Cash Flow; Private Equity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Valuation

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Elisabeth Kempf and E. Scott Mayfield

In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Profit; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United States; North America; Texas

April 2000
Case

Financing of Project Achieve, The (A)

By: Mihir A. Desai

An entrepreneur is forced to analyze the tradeoffs between different equity providers through a detailed analysis of venture financing terms and cash flow forecasts. The founder of a Web-based IMS for schools must negotiate a term sheet, determine funding needs, value... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Forecasting and Prediction; Venture Capital; Cash Flow; Equity; Negotiation Deal; Valuation

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Supplement

MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses... View Details