Before you Sell Your Lift Truck Dealership

Engage other professionals that have experience in business sale transactions and especially the unique valuations of heavy equipment dealers. You may have a great outside accountant that has done your books for years. If he has not been involved in multiple business sales transactions, you should consider engaging a CPA firm that has the experience to advise you on important tax and accounting issues that can literally result in swings of hundreds of thousands of dollars. What are the tax implications of a stock purchase versus an asset purchase? A lower offer on a stock purchase may be far superior to a higher offer on an asset purchase after the impact of taxes on your realized proceeds. Is the accountant that does your books qualified to advise you on that issue? Would your accountant know the best way to allocate the purchase price on an asset sale between hard assets, good will, employment agreements and non-compete agreements? A deal attorney is very different from the attorney you engage for every day business law issues.

Remember, each element of deal structure that is favorable to the seller for tax or risk purposes is generally correspondingly unfavorable to the buyer, and vice versa. Therefore the experienced team for the buyer is under instructions to make an offer with the most favorable tax and reps and warranties consequences for their client. You need a professional team that can match the buyer's team's level of experience with deal structure, legal, and tax issues.

You need to be reasonable in your expectations on sales price and terms. The days of irrational exuberance are over. Strategic buyers, private equity groups, corporate buyers, and other buyers are either very smart or do not last very long as buyers. I hate rules of thumb, but generally there is a range of sales prices for similar businesses with similar growth profiles and similar financial performance.

That being said, however, there is still a range of selling prices. So, for example, let's say that the sales price for a business in the XYZ industry is a multiple of between 4 and 5.5 times EBITDA. Your objective and the objective of a good M&A advisor is to sell your business at the top end of the range under favorable terms. In order for you to sell your business outside of that range you must have a very compelling competitive advantage, collection of intellectual property, unusual growth prospects, or significant barriers to entry that would justify a premium purchase price.

If you think about the process of detailing your car before you offer it for sale, a good M&A advisor will assist you in that process for your business. Let's say, for example, that 4 to 5.5 multiple from above was the metric in your industry and you had an EBITDA for the last fiscal year of $2.5 million. Your gross transaction proceeds could range from $10 million to $13.75 million. A skilled M&A firm with a proven process can move you to the top of your industry's range. The impact of hitting the top of the sales price range vs. the bottom more than justifies the success fee you pay to your M&A professionals.

If your company has any issues like a pending legal action, under funded pension, ground water contamination, etc. get those issues out on the table early in the merger acquisition discussions. A seemingly insignificant minor negative revealed early in the process is an inconvenience, a hurdle, or a point to negotiate around. That same negative revealed during negotiations, or worse yet, during due diligence, becomes, at best, a catalyst for reexamining the validity of every piece of data to, at worse, a deal breaker. No contract in the world can cover every eventuality if there is not a fundamental meeting of the minds and a trust between the two parties.

Unless you are lucky enough to get an all cash offer without any reps and warranties, you are going to be partnered with your buyer for some period in the future. Buyers try to keep you on the hook with reps and warranties that last for a few years, employment contracts, or non-competes that last, escrow funds, seller notes, etc. These all serve a dual role to reduce the risk of future surprises. If future material surprises occur, buyers tend to be punitive in their resolution with the seller. Volunteer to reveal your company's warts early in the process. That will build trust and credibility and will ensure you get to keep all of the proceeds from your sale.

You should be flexible and open to creative deal structure. Everything is a negotiation. You may have in mind that you want a gross purchase price of $13 million and all cash at close. Maybe the market does not support both targets. You may be able to get creative in order to reach that purchase price target by agreeing to carry a seller note. If the sale process produces multiple bids and the best one is $11.3 million cash at close. You may counter with a 7-year seller balloon note at 8% for $3 million with $10 million cash at close. If the buyer is a solid company, that may be a superior outcome than your original target because the best interest return you can currently get on your investments is 4%. Be flexible, be creative, and use your team to negotiate the hard parts and preserve your relationship with the buyer.

You may have spent your life's work building your heavy equipment business to provide you the income, wealth creation, and legacy that you had planned and hoped for. You prepared and were competitive and tireless in your approach. You have one final act in your business. Make that your final business success. Exit on purpose and do it from a position of strength and receive the highest and best deal the market has to offer.

About The Author-- Dave Kauppi is a business broker and President of MidMarket Capital. We help business owners with all aspects of Mergers and Acquisitions.

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