For business brokers

Add-backs in the open
beat add-backs in a footnote.

Owner-operated businesses are sold on normalized earnings, and every buyer has been burned by a normalization they could not check. Putting the adjustments on the page, where the buyer can switch each one on and off, converts your weakest slide into your strongest one.

What you are up against

Every add-back looks self-serving

A list of adjustments in a footnote reads as a list of reasons the real number is lower.

Margin compression gets blamed on the business

If the cause is not shown to be fixable, the buyer prices it as structural — and structural is worth a lower multiple.

The multiple is argued, not derived

Two parties trading multiples at each other is a negotiation about nothing. It only becomes a conversation when the earnings underneath are agreed.

A look inside

Earnings, and what they are worth

The adjustments that actually move the number, with the buyer picking the multiple — and released working capital shown separately rather than capitalized twice. From Kestrel Fabrication Ltd..

Trailing EBITDA

$588k

as reported, before any adjustment

Once the fixable items land

$759k

unpriced escalation and sub-floor work, corrected

Cash off the balance sheet

$1.39M

shown beside the multiple, never inside it

A multiple the buyer sets, from 3× to 7×

Each adjustment isolated, with the counter-argument costed

Customer concentration and margin shown together

Working capital treated separately from earnings

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Other situations

Five more we build for.

Listing brokersThe trailing numbers are soft.Buyer's repsYour number is the honest one.BorrowersA breach and a failing business LendersHold or act.Raising capitalA plan they can interrogate

Send us a live file and we will tell you within a day.

If there is an edge worth communicating in your numbers, we will say what it is and how we would make it. If there is not, we will say that instead and charge you nothing.

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