SELL YOUR BUSINESS FOR MORE

Anyone can put a number on a business, that’s the easy part. Yet, any number given for a business may be nowhere near what a buyer would be prepared to offer.

It is our recommendation that any valuation you need to take seriously should be backed up with actual data. So when we developed our calculator we took into account a number of reliable sources.

MARKET DATA ON BUSINESS VALUATION

We have access to a number of sources of Market Data which helps us understand the disposal market better, both in the UK as well as Internationally.

Dealsuite has a regular report on transactions which it monitors every half year. In the most recent report, they outline feedback from over 100 advisors covering hundreds of transactions between January and June 2023. They break down the average multiple per sector, demonstrating the different weightings between attractive sectors such as Software, and more challenging ones such as Retail. In fact Software has twice the multiple of Retail.

It is reported, for example, the average multiple for a £1m EBITDA business is just over 5 times the EBITDA. Dealsuite also covers transactions in mainland Europe to compare relative multiples between countries and regions. It is an excellent starting point for this kind of data.

Mark to Market is also a really powerful resource and their data gathering is done through investigation of all deals and transactions in the UK marketplace. This is not a poll but a detailed exploration of deals and analysis of the data around the deals assembling factual evidence necessary to make accurate estimations of the valuation. Their data compares very favourably to the Dealsuite data and confirms its veracity.

Arx Corporate Finance is a third source of comparable data, which also has access to a wide range of deal news and activity across the UK and Europe. Again, the deals and values reported across the advisory network underscores previous findings.

Across all three platforms, we have access to historic data on 60,000 deals, 5,600 corporate buyers, 1,000 corporate finance firms and 6,000 active mandates. So we have confidence in the figures that back our calculator as they are confirmed by deals completed.

OUR PERSONAL
DEAL EXPERIENCE

Our experience broadly reflects this too. When we compare with these figures, it allows us to come to the same conclusion: if all things are the same, then a company will sell for about the same multiple as a similar business in the same sector.

So, that’s where we need to shake it up. This valuation is a starting point before we use our reach to find the right buyer, and then focus on building value by demonstrating the right strategic fit.

We outperform the market when it comes to disposal because we are experts at finding the buyer who will pay you a premium because they really want to acquire your business.