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The Traditional Levels of Value Chart

There's More to the Story

Business appraisers have dealt with concepts related to the levels of value for many years. These levels of value are conceptual in nature and relate to where, on a continuum of value, a particular valuation interest should lie. Does the interest exhibit elements of control? The appropriate level of value should reflect this. Is there no control for a minority interest? The appropriate level of value should reflect this, as well. What about if there is no available market for the interest? The appropriate level of value should reflect this, also. It seems so simple and basic.

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Differing Expert Witness Valuation Conclusions

Differences May Not Be the Result of Advocacy

Because of the large difference between the two appraisers, courts may assume that business valuation experts are being advocative. This judicial attitude is fairly widespread based on my experience, and accounts for many decisions where courts “split the valuation baby.” Perhaps, there’s more to the story. In this post, we discuss six sources of differences in valuation opinions between opposing experts.

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Corporate Finance in 30 Minutes

For Private Company Owners and Directors

Mercer Capital’s Travis Harms wrote a series of four whitepapers under the umbrella of Corporate Finance in 30 Minutes. In this series of white papers, Travis makes something that can sound arcane and difficult, like corporate finance, accessible for business owners and advisers. The first paper is an introduction to corporate finance for private businesses and introduces the three key questions of corporate finance that owners of private businesses face. The subsequent whitepapers address these key questions.

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Where is the Boom in Business Sales by Aging Business Owners?

Are You Ready for Sale Anyhow?

More than a decade ago, Richard Jackim and Peter Christman wrote a book called The $10 Trillion Opportunity. In the book, the authors forecasted massive future sales of private businesses because of the aging of baby boomer business owners. They were right in that there were millions of aging business owners. However, they were early in their prediction of a tsunami of private company sales by those baby boomer owners. Now, more than ever, business owners should be preparing themselves, and their businesses, for the next transaction wave.

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Buy-Sell Agreements for 100% Owned Companies

A Better Idea Than You May Think

In a recent conversation with an author, lawyer and business transition planner, the topic of buy-sell agreements for companies that are 100% owned by a single shareholder came up. Nick Niemann, author of The Next Move for Business Owners, was talking about transition and exit planning when the broad topic of buy-sell agreements arose. I’m not sure who mentioned the subject first, but we both agreed that it is a very good idea for a company to have a buy-sell agreement with its shareholder, even if there is only a single owner.

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Overview of Corporate Finance for Private Businesses

#5: Handbook on Business Valuation for Business Owners

We continue the series today with the topic of Corporate Finance, which is about maximizing the value of a firm or business. The three parts of the corporate finance decision tree for public and private businesses are: an investment (or reinvestment decision), also called capital budgeting; the financing decision, also called capital structure; and the dividend or distribution decision. By addressing each of these decisions, corporate managers and boards determine what will be done with available cash flows. The effectiveness with which they make these decisions determines, in large measure, the success of value creation for private firms.

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Shotgun Buy-Sell Agreements Are Not Ideal

Shotgun agreements are found in some buy-sell agreements, but we do not see them regularly. Often used to break deadlocks between owners, a shotgun buy-sell agreement is an agreement where, upon the occurrence of a trigger event, one party makes a determination of price and the other party chooses whether to buy or sell at the given price. While I don’t recommend this type of agreement, in this post, we discuss some of their common characteristics as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

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#4: Handbook on Business Valuation for Business Owners

Direct Derivation of the EBITDA Multiple

Did you ever wonder where EBITDA multiples for private companies come from? Everyone talks about transaction pricing in terms of multiples of EBITDA. Transactions in many industries for attractive private businesses often occur in the range of 4.0x to 6.0x EBITDA, plus or minus a bit. Why? Every business owner should have an idea.

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#3: Handbook on Business Valuation for Business Owners

EBITDA, Enterprise Value and Enterprise Value Multiples

In this post, we look at what are called total capital, or enterprise-level earnings indications like Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBIDTA). In addition, we will look at EBIT and EBITDA multiples to see how they compare with equity-based multiples like the net income and pre-tax earnings multiples.

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#2: Handbook on Business Valuation for Business Owners

The Gordon Model and Equity-Based Multiples

In the last post, we talked about the basic valuation equation. This equation is derived from something called the Gordon Model (and a couple of other names). We said before that valuation is a combination of art and science. It is time for a bit of the science. We’ll introduce a few equations in support of the basic valuation equation, so don’t let this bother you. After we see the “science” underlying this equation and understand a few more things about valuation, we can talk about more interesting questions.