What if you are a CEO, and you have no idea what the intrinsic value of your business is? What do you do then? 1
Company Valuation: My personal experience
I founded Sarah Lawrence, a women’s clothes distribution company in 1982, and I was the CEO for 37 years. During that time we experienced successes and failures. We did a lot of things right but we also made mistakes. I do not regret any of them – except one.
I have regrets because until 2007, I didn’t bother to spend time to calculate the value of my company seriously and I have no excuse for this omission. This is what I had studied during my MBA at Columbia. No one from my professional circle, neither my business friends nor I, made annual valuations of our companies. We had not realized the importance of knowing the value of the company we led and how useful that knowledge could be.
In hindsight, I wonder what kind of CEO I was, who did not know the intrinsic value of my company. I bought out my partners on three different occasions and even today I am not certain whether I underpaid or overpaid them and whether I was fair with them.
Worse of all was when I tried to sell the whole company in 2006. Not having a clear picture of the value of the company, I was not sure on what I was supposed to ask, hence negotiations failed. In retrospect, I know we suffered a lot of damage.
This occasion gave me the incentive to attend a seminar in New York, to refresh and enhance my knowledge of how a company is valued. Since then, the annual valuation of my company became a routine and I finally managed to successfully sell my company.
How much is your company worth? Why is it important to know the value of the company we lead and why is this knowledge useful?
CEO’s are not required to know different valuation procedures or perform valuations themselves. It is however their responsibility to deal with the valuation of the company at regular intervals in order to manage and develop the company; especially at a time when Mergers and Acquisitions will be a lever for survival and growth. It is not coincidental that laws are currently being promoted in Greece to facilitate mergers.
The valuation process of a company is important because it reveals interesting aspects about the company’s strategy and helps the entrepreneur to achieve the company’s goals, whether it is growth, a merger or a sale.
Only few of the CEO’s I know have a clear picture of their company’s intrinsic value. What about you?
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Company Valuations: Fast- Effective- Economical
1 Taylor J.L., (2018) The Rebel Allocator, (1ST Edition), 5GQ Publishing