Companies like Business Valuation Resources and Bizcomps are leading providers of information about private company transactions. They sell reports to business brokers, which they can use to do comparable company searches and evaluations. When it comes to valuations using comparable companies, the values are based on a lot of financial analysis data such as net sales, cash flow, net income, book value, gross profit, etc.
Inc. magazine used to publish this data every few years or so. However, they have not published this data since 2009. The data from the 2009 issue of Inc. is impossible to locate on the internet, but I saved a copy years ago as a reference for my clients. You can find it under the Free Downloads tab of SteveBizBlog.com.
Not only does this reference provide comparable company valuations, it also looks at which appraisal methods are the most accurate and ways to predict their value based on industry type. While the data is a bit dated, it is free and should give you a rough idea of a company’s worth.
Based upon comparable transaction data, what is your business or target acquisition worth?
