Project Hollington — Quick Look Memo
A 3-hour Investment Committee Memo (Quick Look) case study with a complete model answer
Modeled After
TPG
The firm's Quick Look memo specification: a three-page maximum memo running Company Overview, Industry Overview, Investment Thesis, Investment Risks and What Really Matters, with thesis and risks each held to between two and five succinct bullets, plus an optional deck capped at nine slides of which two are discretionary
Structure and exhibit set are modeled after TPG. The company, the financials and every figure in this case are entirely our own.
The Situation
Hollington Outdoor Brands, Inc. (NYSE: HLTN) designs and sells outdoor apparel and equipment under a single brand.
Hollington Outdoor Brands, Inc.
- Sector
- Consumer / apparel — outdoor apparel and equipment, single brand
- Size
- Geography
- United States and Canada, with third-party distribution in Europe, Japan and Korea
- Ownership
- Situation
The Prompt
You are an associate at a private equity firm.
Supporting Materials
What you are handed at the start of the case, in the format a real process would use.
The assignment (material-1.pdf)
Company primer (material-2.pdf)
Investor day extract (material-3.pdf)
Terminal export (data-1.xlsx)
Blank workbook (template.xlsx)
What You Have to Produce
The deliverables, in the order the committee will read them. The exercise runs 180 minutes.
PART 1
The memorandum — three pages maximum
PART 2
Long-term financials, and the case you underwrite
PART 3
Recent momentum
PART 4
Comparable companies — screen the universe
PART 5
Long-term trading
PART 6
Analysis at various prices
PART 7
One-page leveraged buyout
PART 8
Returns attribution
PART 9
Sensitivities
How to Approach It
The order a strong candidate works in, and why. This is the shape of the answer — the finished memo and Excel model are in the solution set below.
- 0:00 – 0:35
read, and do not open the workbook
- 0:35 – 1:05
spread the history, then author your case
- 1:05 – 1:35
screen, then triangulate
- 1:35 – 2:20
the buyout, and the price
- 2:20 – 3:00
write, and stop modeling
Key Concepts
The ideas this case is built on. Know these cold and the case becomes a question of execution rather than knowledge.
The memo is the deliverable
Three pages, five sections, thesis and risks capped at five bullets each. The cap is the exercise. Anything that cannot survive being cut to three pages was not doing any work, and the discipline of choosing which four facts to keep is exactly the discipline the job requires. The format is explicit that a concise memo beats a forty-page presentation, and this case ships no deck at all.
Whose plan you underwrite is the price
Management's terminal-year Adjusted EBITDA is 30.7% above the Street's. Nothing else in the exercise moves the answer that far. The old lesson behind it is that management's $200 million may be your $150 million, and the way to handle it is to say which parts of the plan you believe, which you do not, and why, rather than averaging the two. A plan that requires a margin above the company's own prior peak owes you an explanation of what is different this time.
Basis labeling
Broker consensus covers three years. It does not cover five, and the extract says so — the estimate count for the last two years is zero. Extending the trend is legitimate; presenting the extension as consensus is not. Every projection in a memo should carry the label of what it actually is, and a reviewer who catches an unlabeled extension stops trusting the rest of the page.
Screening is two decisions, not one
The first is inclusion: which rows belong in the set at all, decided on facts like an industry code, a segment share, a pending deal or negative earnings. The second, and the bigger one, is which of the survivors are comparable to this company at all. A set can be perfectly screened and still be the wrong yardstick if the subject sits in a sub-group that trades somewhere else entirely.
Solve for the price, do not pick it
'What's the return at this price?' and 'what would you pay?' are different questions. The second holds the return at the hurdle and solves for the price, which turns an output into a negotiating position. It also protects you from the tell: a price that lands on a round ratio of a market reference — one and a quarter times the last close, say — was picked rather than derived, and it is the first thing an experienced reader checks.
Returns attribution, and what it hides
Bridge the multiple of money into earnings growth, multiple expansion, debt paydown and cash generation, less fees, less value leaked to management. The five lines must sum to the gain. Then look hard at the multiple-expansion line: it is measured against the multiple you paid, not against the multiple the market is paying now. If you are buying at a premium to a de-rated asset, holding exit equal to entry embeds a re-rating that nobody has been asked to defend.
Earnings quality behind the multiple
Any valuation running off an earnings multiple has to say what is in the earnings. Here the addbacks are 14.4% of Adjusted EBITDA, of which stock-based compensation is 9.8%. SBC is non-recurring for a buyer taking the company private — there is no public equity to grant after close — which is why the model charges the cost of management equity once, at exit, through an option pool rather than annually. Charging it both ways charges it twice. The remainder has recurred for three consecutive years and should be treated as operating until a quality-of-earnings review says otherwise.
What really matters
The section unique to this format, and the one that most rewards judgment. It is the two or three things that would change your answer, ranked by what they are worth, and each one has to be something diligence could actually settle. A make-or-break item you could not investigate is an observation, not a diligence plan.
What Makes It Hard
The specific traps in this case — the places candidates lose the assessment without noticing.
Check Your Answer
Type the figures you produced and find out how many are right before you open the worked answer. You get a verdict and, where you are off, a pointer to the part of the build to re-check — never the number itself. Everything you type stays on this device.
How to type a figure. Digits, with an optional unit: 1,234.5, $1,234.5, 2.6x, 21.4%. For a negative use (20.0) or -20.0. Enter as many decimals as you carried — precision is never penalised.
What the Case Asked For
The arithmetic is only half of it. Tick off what you actually produced — this half is yours to score, because nothing can grade a written recommendation from a checkbox.
The Model Answer
The worked answer in full: memo and Excel model, built the way a banker would actually build them. It is a reference, not a submission — a strong answer under the clock is far shorter.
What the Solution Covers
- —Company and industry overview under a page cap
- —Porter's five forces applied concisely
- —Investment thesis in two to five bullets
- —Investment risks in two to five bullets
- —What really matters — the make-or-break diligence items
- —Assessing a management plan against the company's own history
- —Screening an unscreened comparable-company universe
- —Long-term trading multiple analysis
- —Analysis at various prices
- —One-page LBO with sensitivities
- —Returns attribution
- —Solving for a price against a return hurdle
Memo
The written recommendation and how it was reached
Upgrade to Diamond
Sign up and upgrade to Diamond to unlock the memo, the Excel model and the audio walkthrough.
Get StartedThe Excel Model
The model is linked and tied out end to end — every schedule, every formula and every check, in the file itself.
Downloads are available to Diamond members
Excel Model and Memo (PDF) — yours to open, edit and rebuild
Walkthrough
A conversational walkthrough of how to approach the case under time pressure — where to start, what to cut, and how the recommendation gets defended.
Audio Walkthrough
How to approach Project Hollington — Quick Look Memo
60-second preview — upgrade to Diamond for the full walkthrough
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no deck?
Because the format says so. The source specification caps the memo at three pages, permits at most nine slides, and states that a concise, well-written memo beats a forty-page presentation and that the exercise is not about formatting the best charts. Slides are optional and this case ships none. If you find yourself building exhibits for their own sake, you are optimizing the thing that is not being graded.
How much of the three hours should go on the model?
About seventy-five minutes on the five tabs the exercise is actually budgeted around, with thirty-five for reading before you open it, forty at the end for writing, and the remaining thirty for the exhibits the Cover marks as optional. In the live version of this exercise the model is collected before the memo is, and the stated reason is that candidates spend too much time on it. The workbook that ships with this case is fuller than three hours comfortably allows, and its Cover tells you which tabs to leave if the clock beats you.
Should I build a discounted cash flow?
No. The documented exhibit set for this format has none, and adding one imports a cost-of-capital debate the format avoids. A quick look prices the business three ways: where comparable businesses trade, where this one has traded, and what a sponsor can pay for it. If those three disagree, the disagreement is the memo.
Which projection case is the right one to underwrite?
There isn't one. What is graded is whether you can describe why and how you built your base case and what you would flex for upside and downside. The strongest answers take a position on each component separately — believe the unit growth, discount the margin, or the reverse — rather than splitting the difference between two published cases.
What if my price is below what it would take to win the deal?
Then say so. A recommendation of 'this is our price and we should expect to be outbid' is a complete answer, and it is a better one than a yes that was manufactured by moving an assumption. The reviewer's next question is always why you chose that assumption, and if the honest answer is that the deal otherwise did not work, the workbook cannot save you.
Do I need to name every comparable company in the memo?
No, and space will not allow it. What the memo needs is the conclusion and the reason: which sub-group you treated as comparable, why the subject belongs there, and what the resulting range implies. The constituent list belongs in the workbook. If your peer read and your buyout read agree, say that too — two independent yardsticks converging is worth more than either alone.
How is the returns attribution actually built?
Value from earnings growth is the change in Adjusted EBITDA over the hold, capitalized at the entry multiple. Multiple expansion is the change in multiple applied to exit-year earnings. Debt paydown and cash generation is the reduction in net debt from close to exit, which must equal cumulative free cash flow. Then subtract the fees paid at close and the value that leaks to management at exit. The five lines sum to the gain, and if they do not, something upstream is wrong.
Is this format still used?
Yes, and it is the most transferable of the buyside formats, because it is what the job looks like on an ordinary day: something arrives, nobody has done the work, and a partner wants a view by tonight. The three questions it asks are the same three that get asked in a Monday morning pipeline meeting, and the ability to answer them in three pages is why the format has outlived every fashion in modeling.
About This Investment Committee Memo (Quick Look) Case Study
Investment Committee Memo (Quick Look) case study for private equity interviews. 180-minute format covering company and industry overview under a page cap, porter's five forces applied concisely, investment thesis in two to five bullets. Includes the full prompt, a written memo, a tied-out Excel model and an audio walkthrough.
This case study sits in Private Equity, under Investment Committee Memos. Every case ships with the full prompt, the supporting materials, a complete model answer and an audio walkthrough of the judgment behind the recommendation.
180-Minute Format
The time limit a real assessment would give you
Memo
Included in the model answer
Excel Model
Included in the model answer
Audio Walkthrough
How to approach the case under time pressure
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