Valuation

The most important factors in valuing an unquoted business are business performance, market activity and, most importantly, potential purchaser appetite. It is very easy to arrive at a valuation of a business by looking at comparable quoted multiples and comparable unquoted deals, however this gives only an indication of the market in general. No two businesses are the same and an unquoted business is a very different case in valuation terms to one which is quoted or listed. Therefore the only way to go further and really understand how much a business could be worth is to consider who will buy it and how badly they want it. A business could be making millions of pounds in profit but if there are no purchasers then what is it really worth? Therefore to perform a full valuation at PCF we perform a similar research exercise to the one we would perform were we selling the business. This will give us the level of potential purchaser appetite for the particular business, as well as all the market information available on comparable deals (by relevant potential purchasers) and market multiples. We feel that the resultant product is extremely robust.