ARGUS Excel Model - Basic Information Section

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Transcript

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Welcome to this video. After the overview of Argus Excel model video. We will go through the model section by section. In this video, we will cover the basic model information section on the top left of input tab. Before we jump into it, I would like to introduce the overall structure of the model. As a regular user, I only need to input my assumptions in the input tab and rent roll tab. In very rare cases, I might hardcode something into other tabs.

Deal Name

Let’s go back to the basic model information section. We see close date, holding period, and deal name in this section. The first two are mandatory inputs and the last one is optional input. What we mean by mandatory, is the input is required in order for the model to work properly. And optional means the input is information-based. In other words, it is nice to have it because it shows more information to someone looking at your model. Some might argue that deal name is essential to every investment. That is true but we are talking what is essential to the model calculation here. As I input ABC as the deal name, we can see the header of this input tab updates. In fact, every tabs’ header update in this model. However, the deal name is not involved in any calculation in the model so it is defined as optional.

Close Date

On the other hand, close date is mandatory. I type in October 1st 2018. Basically, this is date you plan to buy the asset and complete the transaction. We click on the monthly CF summary tab. We can see the first date shows up is October 2018. This date is also the start date of our projection.

Holding Period

Now we are going to cover one of the most important input in the model – holding period. Holding period is the period between the date you buy the asset and the date you sell it. The model is designed to have a maximum holding period of 20 years. If I try to input a number outside that range, Excel will prompt me to type in a valid number. Actually, how further into the future I define my rent roll assumptions will also put a cap on the holding period. I will save this topic when we cover the FIX EVERTHING button as the button will tell me if I exceed that cap. There are quiet a few things change with this holding period parameter. Let’s put 8 year here and go to the annual cash flow tab. We can see 8 columns are nicely laid out here. If I go back to change the holding period to 5 years, we can see the number of visible columns become 5. We can see this kind of automatic column adjustment in other places in the model. Alright that is all for this video, thank you for watching.