Business VALUATION

Align Corporate Advisors use a sophisticated, reliable method for calculating a realistic business valuation. Our teams’ in-depth process starts with gaining a full knowledge of your business and concludes by comparing it to current market data and, when applicable, comparable business sales.

Valuing Your Business

The value of a business is based on three things: what it owns, what it earns and its risk versus return.

What it owns

The tangible assets are the furniture, fixtures, equipment, inventory and real estate. The intangible assets can include the trade name, (Goodwill) contracts, leases, processes, client lists, licenses, recipes and patents, proprietary software, etc.

What it earns

A business provides a certain financial benefit to the owner. The benefit generally comes in the form of business profits and a salary for the owner. It can also provide the owner with fringe benefits such as health insurance, a company car or a retirement plan.

Risk versus Return

Every investment has a perceived level of risk and an expected rate of return. In determining the goodwill component of the business sale, the likelihood of future income and the replicability of current income are quantified.

Beware of Rules of Thumb

There are many different rules of thumb available, but in most cases, they do not give an accurate value of a business because they are based on an “average business.” Even though most industries have one or more such rules, there are not any “average businesses.” Each business is unique, and a rule of thumb can be off by as much as 100% or more. Our Advisors decide what the most relevant information about a business is and then make an informed decision about its value.

Making a good selling decision requires good information. Knowing how much your business is worth, in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and business sales context, is far too important to rely on informal advice (even from well-meaning sources), rules of thumb, or dissimilar comparisons.

If you undervalue your business, you leave hard-earned money on the table. If you overprice it, you needlessly delay or even prevent the sale of your business.
Our determination of actual market value may be greater than your expectations … or it may be less. Either way, you can be confident that the values we report to you will accurately reflect your company’s market value in a variety of sale scenarios.