The Art and Science Most businesses have special characteristics that affect its value. Some are endemic to the industry and some relate to the personal nature of those managing the business. Wealth management businesses have both characteristics. Here are some considerations that go into determining the valuation. Most businesses have special characteristics that affect its value. Some are endemic to the i ...

The Problem with Exit Multiples Most of an Income Approach-based valuation is frequently in the terminal value. Thus, an Income Approach-based valuation that relies on an exit multiple to arrive at a terminal value is essentially a Market Approach-based valuation in disguise. Many practitioners do not use an exit multiple to arrive at a terminal value for this reason. Nevertheless, numerous practitioners pr ...

Must Know Accounting Rules Earnouts are often used in transactions to bridge the gap between what a buyer is willing to pay up front and what a seller wants in the way of total compensation to complete a deal. Therefore, earnouts are typically constructed to allow the seller to enjoy additional upside if the acquired company reaches certain performance targets after the sale while providing the buyer with d ...

Understanding Terms and Bridging a Potential Valuation Gap It is not uncommon for litigation to stem from disagreements over the value of privately held companies and ownership interests in those entities. In those situations, many different values are often discussed as the parties attempt to reach a resolution. It is important to make sure that the parties are speaking the same language as far as the type ...

Adherence to Development and Reporting Standards in Family Law Litigation When applied correctly, the Market Approach can link value to market evidence and help support a thorough and well-reasoned valuation. However, valuation analysts often struggle with a variety of challenges when applying the Market Approach that include locating and selecting good comparable companies, selecting or calculating various ...

Perils of Selling to Family Members and Delaying a Sale Now to Third Parties Are the increases in market multiples and the access to capital a sign of the impending surge of business exits? In this article, the author shares his views on selling to family members vis-à-vis to a non-heir third party, the perils of waiting to sell a business, discussing the valuation gap and seller’s expectations, and delayin ...

Earnings season will get underway next week.  Banks should live up to their reputation as being boring albeit with pretty good results.  Loan growth looks as though it will be modest, but net interest margins should increase following the March and June rate hikes and the accompanying move higher in the London Interbank Offered Rate.  Jeff Davis, CFA, managing director of Mercer Capital’s Financial Institut ...

When and how do externally-driven events affect company value?  What certain events constitute meaningful data points from a valuation perspective?  And are they benchmarks or outliers?  Lucas Parris, senior member of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, explains. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: Amazon, Whole Foods, and Value Implications. This ...

How do you get buyers and sellers to execute an M&A transaction when the prospects of an industry are extremely uncertain?  Part of the answer may be to structure the deal in a way that defers payment of a (significant) portion of the purchase price in the form of contingent consideration.  In this blog post, Sujan Rajbhandary, vice president, interviews Travis Harms, who leads Mercer’s valuation for fi ...

When it comes to money, “enough” is the hardest word to define in the English language.  The challenge of defining “enough” extends to corporate managers deciding what cash balance is appropriate.  Travis Harms, lead of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, takes us through the data offering helpful tips. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: Is Cash A ...

Hotel Business Value QuickRead’s Technical Editor, Roberto Castro, reviews BVR’s What It’s Worth: Hotel Business Value.  There are few resources available for business valuation professionals that focus on the valuation of hotels.  The “go to” reference books have been Stephen Rushmore, MAI and Erich Baum’s Hotels & Motels: Valuations and Market Studies, a 2001 Appraisal Institute publication, and David ...

The magnitude of the equity risk premium, or required return in excess of the risk-free rate, is a perennial question for valuation specialists.  Travis Harms, Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group lead, explains that the aggregate equity premium is typically broken into two pieces: 1) a market risk premium, and 2) a size premium. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporti ...

What risk assets are not near record valuations, aside from assets in a few sectors such as energy and retail?  Investing when multiple expansion occurs over a holding period is a great thing, but multiples cannot expand forever; they also can contract.  Jeff Davis, managing director of Mercer Capital’s Financial Institutions Group, explains. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting ...

Since the Federal Reserve issued guidance on leveraged lending limits, borrowers and lenders have been interested in the ratio of debt-to-EBITDA in proposed financing packages.  However, banks are supposed to steer clear of deals for which the ratio is 6.0x or greater.  Travis Harms, Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group lead, explains the topic of earnings adjustments. To read the full artic ...

In August 2016, Pfizer announced it would acquire Medivation for $14 billion.  The transaction made headlines for how the size of the deal escalated over a period of approximately six months prior to the announcement.  In Part I of this series, Sujan Rajbhandary, senior member of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, presented a broad outline of the PFE-MDVN transaction.  Part II will delve ...

In August 2016, Pfizer announced it would acquire Medivation for $14 billion.  The transaction made headlines for how the size of the deal escalated over a period of approximately six months prior to the announcement.  Sujan Rajbhandary, senior member of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, presents in this blog post (and Part II) a broad outline of the transaction and explore what a potent ...

Part 1 of this series offered an overview of observed transaction premium data (from the 2016 Mergerstat Review) for acquisitions of public companies.  That post also deliberated on one of five common avenues to incremental economic benefits that motivate market participants to transact.  Part 2 walks through the four remaining variations on the incremental economic benefits theme, and offers some concludin ...

The consistent theme of the Appraisal Foundation’s exposure draft The Measurement and Application of Market Participant Acquisition Premiums is that acquirers do not value control for its own sake, but rather for the tangible economic benefits that can be achieved by the exercise of control.  Travis W. Harms, Mercer Capital Financial Reporting Valuation Group lead, explains the analyses and discusses his vi ...

While observers appear to be increasingly worried about the proliferating use of non-GAAP measures, a useful debate on non-GAAP measures would probably focus on the nature of their presentation within various disclosures rather than whether or not they should be outlawed altogether.  Sujan Rajbhandary, vice president, senior member of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, explains. To read t ...

The debate over the use of non-GAAP performance measures continues.  Even as the prevalence of these items grows in the financial reports of public companies, cautionary tales of the uses and abuses of such metrics garner headlines.  Lucas M. Parris, senior member of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, explains. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: ...