Project Grayling — 105-Minute Case Study & One-Page Memo
A 105-minute Timed In-Office Case Study + IC Memo case study with a complete model answer
Modeled After
TPG
The firm's timed in-office case study: five minutes of instructions, fifteen to twenty reading the packet, forty-five to sixty on the model — which is physically collected at the seventy-five minute mark — and the balance on a one-page bullet memo, followed by a thirty-minute discussion, with all materials and notes surrendered at the end
Structure and exhibit set are modeled after TPG. The company, the financials and every figure in this case are entirely our own.
The Situation
Grayling Prescription Analytics, Inc. buys anonymized prescription data from retail pharmacy chains and anonymized claims data from clearinghouses, links it into a single longitudinal asset, and sells three things off it: prescription data subscriptions, which is the standardized feed itself; commercial analytics, which is field-force targeting, territory alignment and incentive compensation built on top of the data; and patient services and adherence programs, which is people rather than software.
Grayling Prescription Analytics
- Sector
- Healthcare information services — anonymized prescription and claims data, and the commercial analytics sold on top of it, to pharmaceutical manufacturers
- Size
- Geography
- United States; headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania
- Ownership
- Situation
The Prompt
You have one hundred and five minutes and the packet in front of you. Answer three questions.
Supporting Materials
What you are handed at the start of the case, in the format a real process would use.
Blank model template
XLSXUnlock
What You Have to Produce
The deliverables, in the order the committee will read them. The exercise runs 105 minutes.
PART 1
How the business makes money — and what it pays for its raw material
PART 2
Interrogating the management case
PART 3
The evidence: fifty-five customer interviews
PART 4
Comp bucket selection
PART 5
Anchoring the entry and exit multiple against ten years of trading history
PART 6
Structure, returns and the price
PART 7
The one page
How to Approach It
The order a strong candidate works in, and why. This is the shape of the answer — the finished Excel model and memo are in the solution set below.
- 01
Read the supply section and the interviews before the plan (15 minutes)
- 02
Answer question one properly, and finish with a number
- 03
Build the third column of the margin bridge
- 04
Screen the peers, then check your own homework
- 05
Choose the exit multiple off the decade, not off today
- 06
Run the structure and solve for the price (through minute 75)
- 07
Write down five figures, let the model go, and write the page (30 minutes)
Key Concepts
The ideas this case is built on. Know these cold and the case becomes a question of execution rather than knowledge.
Timed in-office case study
A case sat under supervision with a hard clock, where the intermediate deliverable is taken away before the final one is written. The collection is the design: it forces a candidate to decide what the answer is while they still have the working in front of them, and to carry it forward in a form a reader can use.
Comp bucket selection
Choosing which set of listed companies a subject actually belongs to, before taking any median from it. Buckets that sound adjacent frequently trade turns apart, so a blended 'market median' across all of them is an average of four different questions rather than a market view, and it usually flatters the seller.
Anchoring against trading history
Striking an entry or exit multiple against where a peer group has traded over a cycle rather than where it trades today. Today's level is a single observation; a decade of medians tells you whether it is normal, and an exit assumption is a claim about the future rather than a screenshot of the present.
Contracted input cost
A cost of revenue that is set by an agreement with a renewal date rather than by volume. It behaves like a fixed cost until the renewal and like a step function at it — which means the honest question is what happens when it reprices, and that is a document you can ask for.
Acquirer-type screen on precedents
Separating strategic buyers from financial ones before taking a precedent median. A strategic can pay for synergies a sponsor will never earn, so a blended precedent median is a price a financial buyer cannot rationally match.
Bullet term loan with a cash sweep
A loan with no mandatory amortization, repaid at maturity, where the only deleveraging before then is an excess-cash-flow sweep. It keeps a five-year model to a handful of rows, which matters on a clock — and it means net debt at exit is a function of cash generation rather than of a repayment schedule.
A ceiling truncates
The highest price at which a return hurdle still clears is a bound, not a measurement. It rounds toward the side that keeps it true, which is down. A maximum rounded up is a price at which the hurdle is missed, and every figure struck on it inherits the error.
The locked one-page format
A page count, a minimum type size and, implicitly, a maximum amount of text. Those are three rules rather than one, because any two of them can be satisfied by breaking the third: one page in seven-point type with no white space has failed the exercise as completely as a second page would.
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: Excel model and memo, 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
- —Reading a 23-page case packet under time
- —Interrogating a management case
- —Entry multiple anchoring against trading history
- —Comp bucket selection
- —One-page bullet memo under a locked format
- —Defending a price verbally
Memo
The written recommendation and how it was reached
Upgrade to Diamond
Sign up and upgrade to Diamond to unlock the Excel model, the memo 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 Grayling — 105-Minute Case Study & One-Page Memo
60-second preview — upgrade to Diamond for the full walkthrough
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no discounted cash flow in this case?
Because nobody is asking what the business is worth in the abstract. They are asking what a specific buyer would pay against its own return hurdle in a live auction. That is a price solve: you fix the return and the financing and solve for the price. Building a terminal value in a fifty-five minute model spends time you do not have on a question that was not asked.
How should the hundred and five minutes actually be spent?
Five on instructions, fifteen reading, fifty-five on the model and thirty on the page. The workbook leaves 540 cells across 207 authored rows, which collapse to 209 distinct formulas — roughly sixteen seconds each against the modeling budget. That is a real pace, and it is only achievable if you never retype a number that already exists in the file.
If all three forecasts are given, what is actually being tested?
Twenty-six cells of the workbook are typed judgments rather than arithmetic: a keep flag beside each of the eighteen peers and each of the six precedent transactions, the exit multiple, and which plan you recommend. Those twenty-six cells move the answer more than the other five hundred put together, and the exercise is built so that the marks follow them.
How do you know whether you picked the right peer bucket?
The packet gives ten years of one bucket's median multiple without naming the bucket. The current year of that series is the same statistic your screened table produces, so a check row in the workbook goes green only when the set you kept is the right one. The exercise checks your homework without telling you the answer.
What does 'one page' actually mean here?
One page, bullet points, ten point type or larger, one-inch margins, single spacing — and the format is graded. The trap is treating it as a packaging problem and shrinking the type until everything fits. Compression is the exercise: a recommendation, the two or three things it turns on, the numbers behind them, and the one thing that would change your mind.
What separates a strong answer from a competent one?
Three things: naming which single driver carries the disagreement with management rather than saying you are more conservative in general, pointing at the row of the trading history your exit multiple came from, and stating what your maximum implies about winning the auction instead of recommending a price you know will not clear and calling that participation.
About This Timed In-Office Case Study + IC Memo Case Study
Timed In-Office Case Study + IC Memo case study for private equity interviews. 105-minute format covering reading a 23-page case packet under time, interrogating a management case, entry multiple anchoring against trading history. Includes the full prompt, a tied-out Excel model, a written memo 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.
105-Minute Format
The time limit a real assessment would give you
Excel Model
Included in the model answer
Memo
Included in the model answer
Audio Walkthrough
How to approach the case under time pressure
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