Pharma Demerger Valuation: Building a Comparable Set from Scratch
Led solo secondary research for a listed pharma demerger where no direct comparable existed
Gurbani Makkar
Consultant at Bough Consulting
From their time as
Valuations Analyst
KPMG • 2022 - 2024
Overview
Gurbani took on this engagement as the sole analyst on the project. A publicly listed pharmaceutical company was separating its generic and consumer businesses into two distinct listed entities, and the team needed a fair valuation for each.
The Story
Gurbani took on this engagement as the sole analyst on the project. A publicly listed pharmaceutical company was separating its generic and consumer businesses into two distinct listed entities, and the team needed a fair valuation for each.
The core challenge was that no direct comparable existed. The company had global revenue figures, but the demerger was India-specific, and segment-level revenue breakdowns were not publicly available. Standard benchmarking against listed peers was not viable.
She built the competitor framework from first principles. She mapped the company's therapeutic areas, identifying that it held dominant positions in diabetic medicines, neurology, and respiratory. She then sourced competitors by therapeutic category rather than by overall revenue size, and constructed a peer set that could support a defensible valuation.
She owned the entire secondary research layer: analyst reports, annual reports, news coverage, and quantitative translation of qualitative findings into usable financial inputs. No other analyst was involved.
The valuation was delivered on time. The board passed the resolution at its scheduled meeting, a deadline the team had initially believed was at risk given the time constraints.