Private equity: from the first-look LBO to quarter-end monitoring

A private equity deal lives through several models. A first-look LBO decides whether to spend time on it. An underwriting model decides the price. After closing, the same company is monitored quarter by quarter against the plan that justified it. In most firms these are different files built by different people, and the link between what was underwritten and what is happening is rebuilt by hand every quarter.

This playbook describes how a deal team runs the life of an investment in Aqmen. Four properties hold: every return traces to the assumption behind it; base, management and downside cases sit side by side; when the quarter lands the models refresh; and every figure in the IC deck traces to its cell.

Set up

Each deal is a project in the firm's workspace, its investment thesis and open questions in the project notes. Collections hold the LBO, the underwriting model, the diligence inputs and the IC materials. Diligence outputs (a market model, an advisor's report, a quality-of-earnings schedule) are sources or datasets the models read, cited.

Workstream 1: the first-look LBO

Entry, debt, exit and returns are built in your template, in a spreadsheet connected to the target's financials as datasets. The structure is the familiar one: sources and uses, the debt schedule by tranche, cash sweep, exit, and the returns bridge.

Private equity

Returns, base case

	Entry	Exit · year 5
EBITDA · €m	42	68
Multiple	11.0x	11.0x
Net debt · €m	(250)	(96)
Equity · €m	212	652

3.1x

money multiple

25%

IRR

5.9x

leverage at entry

Sources and uses balanceBase, management and downside side by side

What changes is how the cases and sensitivities are held:

• Cases are named assumptions. Base, management and downside are sets of assumptions on one model, not three files. Each can be explained by listing what it changes.
• Sensitivities are a table, not a copied tab. Entry multiple against exit multiple, leverage against margin: each grid is computed from the same model.
• Checks show the model closes. Sources equal uses, the debt schedule balances, cash flows bridge to net debt.

Workstream 2: the underwriting model

The full model is built from bottom-up schedules (revenue by product and channel, headcount, capex, working capital) in the firm's standard, connected to the data. The management plan is one case among others, so where it departs from the base case is a list of named assumptions, not a feeling.

If the diligence included a market model, the underwriting model reads it. The plan's growth is held against the market's, and what outruns the market is visible: a plan that assumes 14% a year in a market growing at 5.7% is a plan that depends on share, and the IC should see that on one line.

Review notes from the investment committee become named assumptions with a reason and an author, not overwritten cells. Your assistant can apply a case or a review note over MCP and report what it changed in the returns.

Workstream 3: portfolio monitoring

After closing, each company's model stays in the workspace. When the quarter's actuals land, they are appended to the company's datasets, and the models that read them refresh. Nobody re-keys the monitoring pack.

Portfolio · third quarter

Against plan, this quarter

	Revenue	EBITDA	Leverage
Alpha	+4%	+2%	3.1x
Beta	−6%	−11%	4.8x
Gamma	+1%	+3%	2.2x
Delta	+9%	+6%	3.6x

Refreshed on the quarter's actualsTwo conclusions to re-check

• Actuals appended, models refreshed. Revenue, EBITDA and leverage against plan come from the same model that underwrote the deal.
• One page per portfolio question. Covenant headroom, plan variance, cash conversion: each a focused view across the companies.
• Conclusions re-checked as numbers move. The findings written last quarter (that a company was on plan, that leverage was falling) are flagged when the new actuals put them in question.

One honest limit: portfolio monitoring happens inside one workspace. Companies tracked together live in the same workspace; Aqmen does not consolidate across workspaces.

The IC deck

The IC deck is a deck built in Aqmen: the cases, the returns bridge and the sensitivities, each chart added by source from the model. If an assumption changes the day before the committee, the slides that depend on it are flagged. The deck exports editable, in your house style.

Where did that number come from?

Every return walks back: the IRR to the exit equity, the exit equity to the EBITDA and multiple assumed, the EBITDA to the schedule that built it, and the schedule to its data and sources. The method that derived each figure is stored with it, a confidence is stated where an input is a proxy or an estimate, and before a source is replaced you can see everything it touches. Two years later, at exit, the question "what did we underwrite?" has an exact answer.

Hand over the workspace, not a file

The IC deck and the monitoring pack still come out as files. Co-investors, lenders or the portfolio company's management can also join the workspace as guests: read the pages and the models, see every source, and ask the next question through their own assistant, from the same data.

Chat, workbook or workspace

What it runs on

Aqmen works inside the assistant your team already uses (Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP-capable assistant). The step-by-step practice is in the open Aqmen skills. Models, documents and decks export editable. The workspace is private to your firm and never used to train models.

To see your LBO template and a quarter of monitoring run this way, talk to our team.