Companion files

The Private Credit Investor

A Practitioner's Guide to Direct Lending, Underwriting, and Portfolio Management in Private Markets

Julian R. Sterling

These are the three Excel workbooks that go with the book. Every number in them is a live formula, and both coverage ratios the modelling chapter publishes are reproduced exactly. Nothing is locked, protected or watermarked.

Free to download. No sign-up, no email address, nothing to fill in.

The workbooks

• The modelling chapter

  The lender's model

  The Halstead Precision Components case, live. The chapter underwrites a unitranche at 6.25x leverage and publishes two numbers — a fixed charge coverage ratio of 1.7x in the base case and 1.15x in the downside, thin but still above 1.0x. This file computes both. Switch the case on sheet 1 and the whole five-year model re-runs; the stress case, a 20 percent decline with margins at 15 percent, returns 0.93x — which is the chapter's argument made arithmetically. There is also a panel for the parts of the business that are not seasoned, and a flag for any that has not been stressed separately.

  DownloadXLSX · 18 KB

• Appendix C

  Underwriting and diligence checklist

  Worked out into its sections: financial information, the business, legal and structural, collateral and security, structure and terms, conditions precedent, and what must be true before the deal reaches committee. Thirty-three items with a status dropdown, a notes column and a progress sheet.

  DownloadXLSX · 11 KB

• Appendices B and D

  Interview and memo preparation

  The twenty practitioner questions, each with what it is testing and a self-score, and the credit committee memo outline as a fillable structure with what each section is for. Useful in two directions — for a candidate preparing, and for a reviewer assessing readiness.

  DownloadXLSX · 12 KB

Conventions used throughout

Blue text	a hardcoded input — you may edit these
Black text	a formula — do not overtype these
Green text	a link to another sheet
Yellow fill	the assumptions that carry the answer

One calibration, declared

The book publishes the two coverage ratios without publishing the model behind them, so two inputs are calibrated so that both reproduce exactly: the all-in cash coupon and capital expenditure as a share of revenue. Both are ordinary inputs on the first sheet. Everything else is used as the text states it — 6 percent growth, 22 percent margins, 6.25x leverage, a 12 percent revenue decline and a 17 percent margin in the downside.

Note where the leverage covenant sits: above the downside level rather than close to closing leverage, which is what the book describes when it says the downside result informed where the covenant was set. Tighten it and watch the downside turn into a breach.

Opening the files

The workbooks open in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers. They use no macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted.

Also by Julian R. Sterling

The other books with companion files. The full list of titles is on the author page.

• Real Estate Financial ModelingBuilding property, development and fund models — and passing the modelling test.
• REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO and AFFO, net asset value, leverage and dividend safety.
• Private Markets PerformanceIRR, TVPI, DPI and PME — what each measure can and cannot say.
• The Real Estate Asset ManagerBusiness plans, leasing, capex and the hold-or-sell decision.
• The Private Equity Secondaries InvestorPricing a portfolio bottom-up, and underwriting the discount.
• The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookAccounting, NAV, capital calls, valuation and investor reporting.
• Real Estate Fund ManagementBuilding, operating and scaling institutional property funds.
• Private Equity Real EstateStrategies, structures and the arithmetic of the promote.
• The Distressed Debt InvestorSpecial situations, restructuring, and the fulcrum security.