Friday, July 31, 2009

3 Business Valuation Methods

How much your business is worth depends on many factors, from the current state of the economy through your business's balance sheet.

Let me say up front that I do not believe that business owners should do their own business valuation. This is too much like asking a mother how talented her child is. Neither the business owner nor the mother has the necessary distance to step back and answer the question objectively.

So to ensure that you set and get the best price when you're selling a business, I recommend getting a business valuation done by a professional, such as a Chartered Business Valuator (CBV). In Canada, you can find Business Valuators through the yellow pages or through the website of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators.

A Business Valuator (or anyone valuating your business) will use a variety of business valuation methods to determine a fair price for your business, such as:

1) Asset-based approaches

Basically these business valuation methods total up all the investments in the business. Asset-based business valuations can be done on a going concern or on a liquidation basis.

  • A going concern asset-based approach lists the business net balance sheet value of its assets and subtracts the value of its liabilities.
  • A liquidation asset-based approach determines the net cash that would be received if all assets were sold and liabilities paid off.

2) Earning value approaches

These business valuation methods are predicated on the idea that a business's true value lies in its ability to produce wealth in the future. The most common earning value approach is Capitalizing Past Earning.

With this approach, a valuator determines an expected level of cash flow for the company using a company's record of past earnings, normalizes them for unusual revenue or expenses, and multiplies the expected normalized cash flows by a capitalization factor. The capitalization factor is a reflection of what rate of return a reasonable purchaser would expect on the investment, as well as a measure of the risk that the expected earnings will not be achieved.

Discounted Future Earnings is another earning value approach to business valuation where instead of an average of past earnings, an average of the trend of predicted future earnings is used and divided by the capitalization factor.

What might such capitalization rates be? In a Management Issues paper discussing "How Much Is Your Business Worth?", Grant Thornton LLP suggests:

"Well established businesses with a history of strong earnings and good market share might often trade with a capitalization rate of, say 12% to 20%. Unproven businesses in a fluctuating and volatile market tend to trade at much higher capitalization rates, say 25% to 50%."

3) Market value approaches

Market value approaches to business valuation attempt to establish the value of your business by comparing your business to similar businesses that have recently sold. Obviously, this method is only going to work well if there are a sufficient number of similar businesses to compare.

Although the Earning Value Approach is the most popular business valuation method, for most businesses, some combination of business valuation methods will be the fairest way to set a selling price.

Business Valuation.

Definition:

Business Valuation is the process of determining how much a business is worth.

It's not as simple a question as it first appears. The basic problem of business valuation is how to set a value on all the assets of a business, including the intangibles. How much, for example, is goodwill, a business logo, a trademark, or a client list worth?

There are several different business valuation methods that can be used to tackle the problem and attempt to determine a fair price for the business to be sold.

No one method is the solution for any business; if you use (or your professional valuator) uses a variety of business valuation methods, you'll have a more accurate idea of just what your business is worth and a range of prices that you can use as parameters for your negotiations.

If you are selling your business, in my opinion, you should not try to do your own business valuation. Because so many factors need to be taken into account, business valuation is best left to professionals such as Chartered Business Valuators.

Common Misspellings: Busness valuation, bizness valuation, business valation.
Examples: After getting a business valuation done, Monica decided that she would try to increase the value of the business before she sold it.
More Business Terms Glossary

AssetsBalance SheetSee All Business Terms

Business Planning

Definition:

Business Planning encompasses all the goals, strategies and actions that you envision taking to ensure your business's survival and growth.

Huge, isn't it? For convenience, think of business planning as being broken into two large topics; profit-making business planning and contingency business planning.

Profit-making business planning is all the general business planning that must be done to start and run a successful business. The best known example of this type of business planning is the business plan. The business plan isn't a do-it-and-forget-it business planning exercise but a living document that needs to be updated throughout the lifecycle of your business.

Once the business has officially started, profit-making business planning will center on setting and meeting goals and targets. While some businesses make business planning an annual event, business planning is most effective when it's done frequently and consistently. The business planning process of reviewing progress on business goals and targets and setting new ones should take place at least monthly.

Daily business planning is an incredibly effective way for individuals to focus on achieving both their own goals and the goals of the organization.

Contingency business planning (also known as business continuity planning) is the type of business planning that focuses on dealing with crises. A business contingency plan is a proposed implementation plan to deal with some new emergency, event or new information.

Also Known As: Business Plans, Business Continuity Planning.
Common Misspellings: Bisness Planning, business planing.
Examples: To increase her business's customer base, Laura focused her business planning efforts on developing a marketing plan.