"Business Valuation" Posts

12 Ways To Increase Company Value

have combined what I personally consider to be the top 12 ways a business owner can increase the value of their most valuable asset—their business. A wide array of tips are outlined, so choose one or employ them all. No matter what your reasons for desiring the increase, application of these tips is not only great for your company’s value…its just good business sense.

Diversify Your Revenue and Profits: Maintain multiple profit centers and keep a diversified product/service base to diversify your profits. This is also known as analyzing your company’s revenue sources for risk. A concentration of revenue in …

The Value Of “It”

A balance sheet doesn’t tell an owner the company’s true worth, or fair market value. The difference between a company’s book value and its fair market value is its intangible value.

A study conducted by business consultants Richard Boulton, Barry Libert and Steve Samek compared the market values and book values of 3,500 U.S. companies over a 20-year period. Their findings indicate that in 1978, a company’s book value was 95 percent of its market value; however, in 1998, book value accounted for a mere 28 percent of a company’s market value. An unrelated study conducted by the Brookings Institute …

What Lies Beneath

Where is your company’s value lurking?

In combination with mapping the value of the entity or benchmarking, an owner must ascertain other aspects of the business that differentiate it from the pool of existing industry participants.

A professional business valuation, conducted by an objective expert, is the vehicle that identifies where a company’s underlying intangible value is lurking to help sellers increase shareholder wealth, as well as obtain a better deal price and identify strategic buyers.

In some cases, the intangible value of the business is far more valuable than the actual tangible value of the business. There are two …

Which Half Is MINE?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, for individuals under age 45, approximately 50 percent of first marriages for men and between 44 percent and 52 percent of women’s first marriages end in divorce. The likelihood of a divorce is lowest for men and women age 60, for whom 36 percent of men and 32 percent of women may divorce from their first marriage by the end of their lives. Business owners of course, are not excluded from these daunting statistics.

For many married business owners the business is both the most valuable and most illiquid asset in the marital …

Beware Of Sheep In Wolves’ Clothing

BUYER BEWARE: Inexperienced valuators don’t come cheap. In fact, they may cost you your business. Case law is abundant with testimony of so-called valuation experts who expose themselves in the courtroom as nothing more than sheep in wolves’ clothing.

They are not the smoking guns their clients hired them to be. In fact, under oath, some “experts” revealed they lack the core knowledge of the very topic they were hired to defend. Some may say it’s just plain bad luck the defendant hired a professional who “turned amateur” on the witness stand and others may say it’s just pure luck …