JPAbusiness

People typically request a valuation of their business in reaction to an event, for example:

• they’ve decided they want to sell or exit, so they want to know how much the business is worth;
• they want to restructure the legal entities in the business and need a valuation for tax and/or statutory purposes;
• there is a relationship breakdown between joint shareholders or spouses and they need to transfer or split the business so one can sell to the other, so they need to know its value;
• they’re seeking finance and the finance company or bank has requested a valuation of the business.

Those are event-orientated valuation requirements and we certainly offer that service on a regular basis.

However, we also advocate using valuation as a proactive management and investment tool and we’ve been very excited to provide this service to more and more business owners over the past 12 months.

When it comes to valuing businesses – listed or private – you will often hear people refer to ‘rules of thumb’. Some will say the value of a business is:

• ‘x times its revenue’ or
• ‘x multiples of its earnings’ or
• ‘a function of its after-tax profit’ or
• ‘a function of its gross profit’ and so on.

These ‘rules of thumb’ tend to be industry based i.e. “a business in Industry A is worth ‘x’ times multiple of earnings” while “a business in Industry B is worth ‘x’ times revenue”. (I won’t repeat the actual ‘rules’ I’ve heard – I don’t want to encourage anyone to use them!) 

Business valuation is not an exact science and nor is it a simple science. However there are some factors you should always consider when assessing a business’ value.

The following video lists 3 key factors to consider when valuing a business and 3 questions you need to ask to uncover this important information.

At JPAbusiness we often say that business valuation is both an ‘art’ and a ‘science’.

In this video I explain just what that means. 

We provide a range of services to business buying clients, from initial review and feasibility, through to business valuations, a preliminary assessment of the strength of the opportunity, full due diligence services if the party has lodged a non-binding offer and is seriously interested in the business, through to merger and acquisition facilitation services.

We have helped some clients find the right business within six months while, for other clients, it has taken over three years.

The key phrase is ‘the right business’; I’m sure we could speed up the process if our aim was just to help our clients buy ‘a’ business, but that’s not our job.

We are often asked by clients whether they need a valuation or a market appraisal.

The answer has a lot to do with the ultimate purpose of the valuation or market appraisal. For example:

• Does the valuation/appraisal need to stand up in a court of law?
• Will the valuation/appraisal form part of a transaction/settlement process?
• Is the client seeking an indicative view of a business' fair market value and the likely factors that add to and detract from that value?

When business owners come to see us, wanting to sell their business, we often get involved in providing what we term ‘vendor due diligence’.

Vendor due diligence has two main components:

1. Understanding what my business is really worth

This is something we have covered previously in eBooks and blogs about business valuation and market appraisals.
It involves getting independent advice on what your business is really worth in the market, on a realistic, fair value market basis.

Business purchasers want to know: If I buy a business today, how long will it take me to get my money back? 

Remember, the purchaser doesn’t want to pay for opportunity that they create in the future. They only want to pay for what has been built up by the vendor.

In the small- to medium-sized business market, purchasers are generally looking from one, to four and a half years, to recover the money they’ve invested.

In order to determine a business’s value we assess business health factors, which may include:

• Financial performance
• Quality of product or service delivery
• Point of difference and competitive position
• Staff culture and performance
• Physical location and geographic coverage
• Diversity, size and quality of clients
• External pressures on business, including industry trends and dynamics
• Future projections and prospects.

In the past five years, a critical new health factor has been added to that list: ‘Online presence and quality of online interaction’. 

The following infographic illustrates some of the factors we take into account when assessing a business' online position.

Business owners often come to us and say things like: “I want to sell my business/I’m interested in taking on a new shareholder/I want to get some finance for my business … and I have been advised that my business is worth X.”

My common response is: “We’re happy to help, but on what basis is your business worth X?”

The answer is usually along the lines of: “Oh well, that’s what I was told by my business advisor/financial planner/tax advisor/etc.”