lbo-featured-1200x630 | eFinancialModels

What this LBO template is for

This model shows how a private equity sponsor buys a mid-market company with debt, pays the debt down from operating cash flow, and earns its return at exit. It is built for analysts and associates who want to understand or present an LBO quickly, for CFOs of PE-backed companies who need to follow the sponsor’s logic, and for students preparing for buyout case studies. The worked example acquires a business with €25m of EBITDA at 10.0x, financed with 5.5x senior debt and €120m of sponsor equity, held for five years (2025 entry, 2030 exit).

What is inside

Assumptions: every driver on one sheet, inputs in blue (entry and exit multiples, leverage, fees, interest rate, mandatory amortisation, cash sweep, capex, depreciation, tax, timing flags).

Entry (Sources & Uses): enterprise value, transaction fees, debt and equity funding, goodwill created.

Operations and P&L: EBITDA growth, depreciation, interest, tax, net income.

Debt Schedule: mandatory amortisation plus a capped cash sweep, so the senior debt never goes negative.

Cash Flow and Balance Sheet: wired, not pasted. Net income flows to retained earnings, debt repayments reduce the debt, and a Balance Check line stays at zero in every year.

Returns: net debt, exit enterprise value, equity value, sponsor MOIC (2.53x) and IRR (20%), net leverage (5.5x down to 1.7x) and interest cover.

Sponsor Dashboard: the key outputs at a glance.

How to use it

Open the Assumptions sheet and change the blue inputs. Everything else is a formula and recalculates: the debt schedule, the three statements and the returns. Try a higher entry multiple, a lower growth rate or a shorter hold and watch the IRR move. The return in the base case comes from EBITDA growth and deleveraging only (exit multiple equal to entry), which makes it a sound starting point for a conservative case.

Why this template

Most LBO templates are either too heavy to read or too thin to trust. This one stays small enough to audit in a few minutes while keeping the mechanics that matter: a real cash sweep, a balancing balance sheet and a clean returns calculation. Formulas are visible, nothing is locked, there are no macros and no hard-coded values inside the statements.

About the author

Built by Anthony Barbey, former Director in financial modelling and project finance at Deloitte Finance, now a fractional CFO. The model was built in Layerz, a structured spreadsheet ready for AI, and exported to Excel. A documented version of the model, with its structure explained, is available on GitHub (anthomakr/finance-models).

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