Why are the last quintiles within the Deal Characteristics selection often quite large?

Answer

When data is not symmetrical it can have very high or very low values and quintiles, which cut the data into 5 parts, can be very uneven. This is just the nature of the data.  

For instance, most infrastructure companies have very low CapEx once they are operational. However, Greenfield companies (defined as companies aged 1-10 years) under construction are capital intensive and their capital expenditure can be up to 20-30% of total assets. Therefore the range other last quartile can appear to be very broad but it’s largely due to a skewed distribution of the underlying dataset. 

The Comp Builder offers the capacity of inserting a specific value instead of using the pre-defined quintile (switch the toggle to “Factor Value” instead of “Quintile”). When you insert a value, it will be used to build a custom bucket centred around your data point and this select assets with similar financial profile or ratio, thereby excluding any outliers from the selection.