Planning for the right time to sell your company can mean the difference between millions of dollars. Mastering the crucial variables includes timing your life events with the M&A market, the stock market, your company’s financial performance, and the actions you take to increase your value. This is not an easy task. Orion’s Exit Timing Analysis™ takes the guesswork out of determining the right time to sell your company.

If our Exit Timing Analysis™ indicates that you only have 1-4 years before your anticipated exit, there is a significant amount of staging to be done to prepare your company for a sale. Acquirers like to see companies that have a good infrastructure for long-term growth and low risk. Since more than likely, you have been running your business for maximum cash flow or tax efficiency, you probably haven’t thought about how to increase your company’s value through creating the infrastructure and reducing risk. Doing so is a 2-3 year process and it takes that long to get a return on the investment you make during that process. However, some improvements will provide a return and some won’t. For instance, do you need to make a $500K investment in a new machine? If you do, will you simply be giving away $500K to a acquirer in a few years because you received a multiple of EBITDA or you will actually receive a return on that investment? It’s not an easy answer and requires careful planning.

Orion’s experience in M&A and working with corporate acquirers has provided us with the ability to help our clients with the value building process and the exit planning process.