For owners
Exit readiness
Making a company saleable before the first buyer looks inside. We work on what a buyer will later examine, while there is still time to change it.
Enterprise value
5–200 Mio. Euro
EBITDA
0,5–25 Mio. Euro
Offices
Zug, München, Wien
Starting point
Typical situations
Three constellations owners usually come to us with.
Two to five years before a sale
Owners who still have time and want to use it. In that window the company itself can still be changed; once a process is running, it cannot.
After an aborted process
Anyone who has been to market and failed in due diligence knows the findings. Before going out again, they need to be dealt with.
Before an investor comes in
Even selling a minority stake means being examined. The same topics, the same preparation, only with a different objective.
Scope
What we do
Four steps that build on each other. You take the decisions, we do the work.
- 01
Reducing dependence on the owner
In the Mittelstand, customer relationships, pricing knowledge and decisions regularly sit with one person. We work out what genuinely only you can do, what is transferable, and in which order it gets handed over. It is the slowest lever, which is why it comes first.
- 02
Building a second management level
A buyer pays for a company that runs without the seller. That means responsibilities that exist beyond the org chart, and people who stay. Where a level is missing, we clarify whether it is built or hired.
- 03
Putting contracts, rights and structure in order
Customer contracts with change-of-control clauses, trademarks and domains held privately, unresolved shareholder arrangements, leases with the owner. These are the findings that cost money in due diligence, and almost all of them can be cured beforehand.
- 04
Making figures and reporting robust
Three years in a consistent structure, monthly accounts with clean cut-off, adjustments that can be evidenced. Not to make the numbers look better, but so that they withstand scrutiny.
- 05
Improving revenue quality
Reducing customer concentration, expanding recurring revenue, extending framework agreements. These points move the multiple more than good negotiation does, but they take years rather than months.
- 06
A roadmap with a sequence
What comes first, what runs in parallel, and what is deliberately left to be settled in the contract rather than in the company. Plus an honest view on when a sale makes sense and when it does not.
The price is made in the preparation, not in the negotiation
Negotiation can still move the purchase price by a few per cent. The order of magnitude is decided by what the buyer finds when the books are opened. A finding you disclose yourself gets priced in; the same finding in due diligence gets deducted, at a point where the buyer already has exclusivity and you no longer have an alternative.
The most common value discount in the Mittelstand has no line in the balance sheet: dependence on the owner. When the key customer relationships, the pricing knowledge and the decisions hang on one person, an investor is buying a company that is weaker without that person. This can be changed, but not in six months. The same applies to customer concentration, unresolved contracts and accounts that do not hold up under review.
Exit readiness is therefore not a document but work on the company. What you get is a list ordered by impact and effort, and a timeline to go with it. What you act on is your decision. A sell-side mandate is explicitly not a precondition.
The four phases of a process are set out in the process overview, completed transactions under mandates.
Questions
Frequently asked
There is effectively no such thing as too early. It becomes worthwhile two to five years before a possible sale, because the most effective levers need time: a second management level, recurring revenue, less reliance on individual customers. Starting six months out allows the documents to be prepared properly, but nothing about the company itself can still be changed.
No. Some of the owners we start with this way do not sell in the following years but work through the list instead. That is a good outcome: a company that is saleable also runs better without a sale.
The first conversation is non-binding and free of charge. After that the scope depends on how much groundwork is needed, from a one-off assessment to support over several years. We tell you upfront what we consider sensible, and we do not bill towards a later sale.
It is the usual first step, but a separate service. Without a defensible figure there is no yardstick for which lever is worth pulling. If you only want to know where you stand, see Valuation.
Contact
Let us get to know each other
A first conversation, in person or remote, with no obligation. We will tell you plainly whether and how we can help.