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By Allan Tepper, Co-Founder and Managing Director
Since the Great Recession, 2014 may be the best year yet for an exit. This is true for sales of companies as well as IPOs. For private equity transactions, average hold periods are at an all-time high of nearly six years. These companies must be sold at some point. See BB&T Capital Markets video for macro developments over the past decade here.
For IPOs, 2013 proved to be one of the best years for the IPO market since the tech boom of the early 2000s, and PWC reports that 2013 has been the most active IPO environment since 2007. See PWC's article, "Being Prepared in a Hot IPO Market" for references and additional information here.
In preparing for your exit, we suggest the gathering of both historical and projected numbers. Historical data should include all your key numbers and should present a clear picture of your business. Your forecast data should be driven by the key drivers of your business, and all forecast numbers should be supported by sound assumptions.
Unfortunately, some of the information required in producing historical and forecasted numbers may not be available in your accounting system. We recommend that companies would be wise to develop processes to capture those "non-accounting system numbers" on an ongoing and consistent basis.
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Our firm is a team of senior financial executives. We provide a broad range of financial management services to public and private companies. We work for CEOs, CFOs, Controllers, as well as audit committees and boards.
Our mission is to apply our consultants' considerable collective experience to resolve client issues in a professional and efficient manner.
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