Why do so many business owners allow the true value of their companies to be stolen by Private Equity firms?

Posted on by Stanton Associates

 

There are estimated to be about 2,000 Private Equity (“PE”) firms in the US who buy middle market companies (that is companies with revenues from $10 million to $500 million). In general, PE firms have shown an ability to offer a superior return to the limited partners who provide their investment capital. This must be true or they would no longer exist.

On average within 5 years of buying a company a PE firm will sell it again, often for more than double the price they paid.

How do they do this? How can so much value be created so quickly when it may have taken the original owner 25 years to build up his/her company? Without question, most PE professionals are very clever and well-educated, and they can bring skill and knowledge to the companies they buy to create additional value. However, they aren’t geniuses either, and their knowledge and skills are not proprietary and unique. They will rarely reinvent the product design, core engineering, or the services. Instead, they bring a disciplined approach to driving value creation: a focus on revenue growth and gross margin expansion; upgrading business processes; and a commitment to professionally managing by the numbers.

So, PE firms view middle market companies as this ripe field of potential to which they just need to apply their business know-how in order to harvest the opportunity, because the middle market business owners did not do it themselves. Really this is letting the PE firms steal the true value from the business owners. What PE firms do is perfectly legal. The crime is letting them do it.

But why don’t owners unlock the potential in their businesses before selling to a PE firm or other buyer? In many cases, owners are unaware of how to go about effecting the full set of changes needed to drive value creation. But the simple fact is they can. With the right assistance, business owners can develop and execute a plan that will deliver significant value creation – and then they can sell the company. That means the long-time founders/owners of the company get to keep the intrinsic value, rather than let it be stolen by a PE firm.

I’d love to hear what you think about this issue. Please let me know in the comments section below.

Learn more about our approach to helping business owners unlock the value of their companies.

About Stanton Associates: Stanton Associates is passionate about helping business owners unlock the value in their companies and keep it for themselves. We are different from most exit planners. Like others we help prepare the company for sale and guide business owners through the process. What sets us apart is our ability to drive significant value creation. It is our mission to ensure that business owners don’t allow to be stolen what is rightfully theirs. Members of the Stanton Associates team have been the CEO, CFO, COO, CMO and Head of Sales at many mid-market companies. We know what it takes to drive value creation prior to an exit.

 

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