Owners & Sellers
Build a stronger business. Whether you’re selling or staying.
Whether you’re preparing to sell or simply want a stronger business, LIMESTONE helps you understand earnings, improve financial visibility and address operating issues that affect performance.
Start with an Exit Readiness Review or sell-side QoE, or engage us directly for ongoing strategic finance and operating support. You don’t need to be planning a transaction to work with us.
Where you are
Where you are decides where to start.
Five places owners find themselves, the constraint that usually goes with each, and the page to go to.
The usual constraint
The finding owners name first takes the longest to fix.
Owners say “It runs through me.” Pricing, purchasing and the three largest accounts route to one person, and nobody else has ever set a price or negotiated a vendor program. A buyer will ask what breaks in the first month without you, and will price the answer. The fix is a seat for someone else to hold, and time for them to hold it. The proof a buyer accepts is repetition, so the structure takes two to five years and the books one to two.
Selling in the next year?
Inside a year, the paperwork and the price file are what you can still change.
Four things fit inside a year: retention agreements for the people a buyer must keep, the equity understanding in writing, consents requested on the change-of-control agreements, and a price file with a margin floor on quoted work. A sell-side Quality of Earnings runs the buyer’s test first, so the add-backs and the working capital peg are defended before a buyer sets them. The five findings in the table come from the sample sell-side report, each with what pre-empts it before market.
If you want it run with you
The two roles run the list with you, from inside the business.
Some owners complete the readiness work with their existing teams. Others want help running it: the Exit Readiness Partnership puts a CFO partner, an operating partner or both on the list, and we agree on that work separately.
Raising or borrowing
Lenders and investors decide on the package you hand them.
A model that ties to history, add-backs that survive a committee, a 13-week cash view and a file organized the way the money reads it. Owners raising equity or refinancing start with Capital Readiness; owners who are selling start with the Review, because a buyer’s lender will read the same package.
Get started
Find out where the business stands this quarter.
Take the free Foundation Check in about ten minutes, or book a call and tell us how far out you are. The Check names the weak link worth fixing first; on a call we tell you where to start.