By: Wesley Legg Cash is king; however, the highest offer doesn’t always seal the deal. This is especially the case when the seller is a founder-based company, i.e., the seller is the founder or an heir of the founder. Most founders, of course, want to maximize value, but that is generally not their sole focus,…
By: Wesley Legg Have you ever visited a friend or family member who lives in a city with major traffic congestion? I live in a smaller city. When hunger strikes my wife and me, and there is no desirable food in the pantry, we get in our car and we go out to eat. That decision…
By: Zane Tarence Companies are generally valued based on their risk adjusted future cash flows. Therefore as cash flows increase (bottom line), the value of the company increases. Normally companies are valued as a multiple of this bottom line, EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization). If a company generates $10mm in EBITDA and…
By: Gene Bazemore This article was originally published in Control Design. The biggest trend affecting all businesses, but especially the industrial automation business, is the extremely tight labor market. Other important trends affecting this sector are supply chain problems, the push for more safety and reliability in manufacturing, and the increasing complexity of the automation…
Multi-Unit Community Buzz: Inflation, Rate Hikes, War… Are Valuations Cresting? “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has set the stage for faster-rising consumer prices, with the mayhem of war driving up manufacturing costs for food, consumer goods and machinery in places far from the battlefield.” -Patrick Thomas, Reporter at The Wall Street Journal “Tech-savvy consumers demand digital…
By: Wesley Legg A lifestyle company is a business operated with the purpose of providing a level of income or particular lifestyle for its founder. There is nothing wrong with having a lifestyle company, but the founder/entrepreneur must understand that the “lifestyle company” mentality does not fully align with building enterprise value or creation of…