case library / m&a and investment decisions
Prairie Biofuels Capacity Build
A medium m&a and investment decisions case, interviewer-led, built for live practice with an AI interviewer that grades like a coach.
- Capital investment cashflow
- interviewer-led
- medium
- ~25 min
- 1 exhibit
Your client is Prairie Biofuels, a large midwestern producer of the fuel additives blended into gasoline. Their lab has developed a substantially improved ethanol formulation that raises fuel efficiency, miles per gallon of ethanol, by 25%, and they hold the patent on the production process. The catch: it is costly to produce, and Prairie has no capacity to make it at scale, even as blending mandates keep the market large and growing. Management is weighing a new mass-production facility. Their goal: the project must be cumulatively cash positive within 10 years. Should they build it?
What happens when you run it live
Your interviewer holds answers to 5 clarifying questions candidates usually ask, so opening the case correctly gets rewarded. The case unfolds over 4 phases, with 1 exhibit handed to you at the right moments. You structure, do the math out loud, and close with a recommendation. Then you get a graded report across structure, quant, insight, synthesis, and communication, with the specific moments that cost you points. The exhibits, numbers, and answer key stay inside the live session, the way a real interviewer keeps the case packet on their side of the table.
How to approach a m&a and investment decisions case
Acquisition and investment cases ask whether a deal or a capital project is worth doing. The spine is almost always standalone value, plus synergies or incremental cash flows, versus price and risk. Interviewers expect you to separate the value of the asset as it is from the value the buyer adds.
Bring the finance instincts: payback period, break-even, simple NPV logic, and cannibalization when the new thing eats the old thing's revenue. Strong candidates also name the deal-breaker risks (integration, regulation, construction lag, financing) and end with a clear go or no-go with conditions.
Run Prairie Biofuels Capacity Build live, free. About 25 minutes, graded in the same sitting.
Start practicing freefree · no card · graded in minutes