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Capital Stack Challenge

You are handed the Uses side of a real buyout and the tranches that market offered. Fill the Sources side: revolver, term loans, secured and unsecured notes, PIK, a vendor note, the company’s own cash, rollover, and whatever is left for the sponsor to write. Lock it, and the sponsor’s real structure is revealed beside yours. Then one thing goes wrong, and you get to answer it.

Scored on four things, not one: cash interest, the equity cheque and return, downside coverage, and flexibility. The cheapest debt wins the first and loses the other three. 7 cases from 2006 to 2026, every figure linked to the 8-K, proxy or prospectus it came from. Or take a deal announced this week off the tape and finance it before the filings land.

Choose a deal

Every case is a real public buyout with its numbers taken from the filings. Recent deals first.

On the tape: finance a deal announced this week

All deal news on NewsViz →

The landmark cases above have closing filings behind them. These do not, yet. Pick an announcement and the release is read for its price, EBITDA and any committed financing; what it does not say is filled with a labelled assumption, and the sponsor comparison only runs on what was disclosed.

Only announcements on the current tape can be built, and one announcement is read once for everyone.

Company names, tickers and logos are the trademarks of their respective owners and appear here to identify the company whose public figures are being used. L3VLUP is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any company shown, and nothing here is a statement by or about that company. More

Why the score is not the interest bill

Scored on cash interest alone, every player would fill the stack with the cheapest tranche and stop. Real lenders never see that structure, because the cheap tranche amortises, floats, or has a cap. The returns bucket rewards a small cheque and the uplift leverage adds to the unlevered return; the downside bucket runs every structure through EBITDA down 15% and rates up 150 bps; the flexibility bucket asks what you can repay early and what matures first.

Where the numbers come from

Purchase price, committed facilities and the equity cheque come from the 8-K and merger proxy. Tranche sizes and coupons come from the closing 8-K, the credit agreement or the exchange-offer prospectus. EBITDA comes from the annual report or the results release. Where only market reporting records a coupon, the source says so. The deal file on each case lists them all.

What is simplified

One growth rate, one exit multiple equal to entry, a five-year hold, a 75% sweep of excess cash flow to the loans, and euro tranches at their dollar equivalents. Call premiums on the notes, hedging, and the tax detail of an actual structure are left out. The paper LBO trainer covers the returns arithmetic on its own; this is the financing decision.

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