Business Valuation

Independent valuations, prepared to withstand scrutiny.

We prepare business valuations for transactions, tax and compliance matters, estate and gift planning, partnership transitions, and litigation. Engagements are grounded in recognized appraisal methodology, with documentation suitable for the most demanding audiences a matter may reach — counterparties, regulators, the IRS, or a court.

Engagements

— Valuations of closely held businesses for sale, purchase, or recapitalization
— Partner and shareholder buy-ins, buy-outs, and buy-sell agreement valuations
— Estate and gift tax valuations of operating businesses and family-held entities
— Physician practice and healthcare entity valuations, including fair market value and commercial reasonableness opinions under Stark and Anti-Kickback frameworks
— Equity compensation and option-related valuations for private companies
— Goodwill analyses, including personal versus enterprise goodwill
— Litigation support and expert work in valuation disputes

Methodology

Each engagement applies the appraisal approaches — income, market, and asset — that best fit the entity, the purpose, and the standard of value. The income approach typically anchors operating-business valuations through discounted cash flow or capitalized earnings analysis; the market approach is layered in via guideline public company and transaction comparables; the asset approach is used where appropriate for holding companies or as a floor analysis.

Reports are prepared in conformity with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) and the AICPA Statement on Standards for Valuation Services (SSVS-1), with additional standards applied as the engagement requires.

Industry fluency

A valuation is only as credible as its grasp of the underlying business. Customer concentration means something different in staffing than in software; goodwill behaves differently in a law firm than in a restaurant group; reimbursement risk shapes healthcare values in ways no general-purpose model captures. We maintain working fluency across the sectors where closely held value is concentrated — with particular depth in healthcare, where regulatory requirements make specialized expertise a precondition rather than an advantage.

See the industries we serve →

How an engagement works

A structured process, from first call to signed report.

Most engagements complete in three to six weeks from signed engagement letter to final report, with expedited timelines available for court and closing deadlines. We do not subcontract analytical work — every report carries the signature of the senior practitioner responsible for it.

What we ask for

Each engagement begins with a document request tailored to the entity and the purpose of the valuation. The core of the request is consistent:

— Three to five years of financial statements — income statements and balance sheets — and federal tax returns
— Year-to-date interim financials as of the valuation date
— Debt and fixed asset schedules; aged receivables and payables
— Organizational documents, including operating or partnership agreements and any buy-sell agreement
— Revenue detail: concentration by customer, and by service line or product where relevant
— Compensation detail for owners and key employees
— Key contracts and leases, prior appraisals, and any offers received

We walk through the list with you or your CPA at the outset so nothing is ambiguous. All materials are handled confidentially. Document delivery is the single largest driver of timeline — engagements move as fast as the data arrives. Preparing ahead? See our valuation preparation guide.

Our process

An initial consultation establishes the purpose, the interest being valued, and the valuation date — details that matter more than they appear, because the purpose determines the standard of value, and an estate tax valuation and a shareholder dispute valuation of the same company can reach legitimately different conclusions.

The analytical core of the engagement is normalization and modeling: adjusting historical statements to reflect true economic earnings (owner compensation to market rates, related-party transactions to arm's length, non-recurring items removed), researching the industry and its outlook, applying the income, market, and asset approaches as the facts warrant, and supporting any discounts for lack of control or marketability.

A draft report follows, reviewed internally for technical accuracy and logical coherence before it reaches you. We incorporate factual corrections and new information from your review into the final report.

Bull case, bear case

Every business has a bull case and a bear case, and we build both deliberately. The bull case is the strongest credible version of the company's prospects: the durability of its earnings, the growth that is genuinely supportable, the qualities a motivated buyer would pay for. The bear case is the strongest credible version of what could go wrong: customer concentration, key-person dependence, reimbursement or regulatory exposure, cyclicality, the competitive threats management would rather not dwell on.

Most valuation errors are errors of omission — adopting management's narrative without testing it, or applying a skeptic's haircut without justifying it. Building both cases explicitly, and testing the conclusion's sensitivity to the assumptions that matter most, is how we make sure the concluded value sits where the weight of evidence actually points.

Constructing the narrative

A valuation that is merely a stack of exhibits persuades no one. Every report we issue is built around a clear account of the business: where its earnings come from, why they are durable or fragile, and what the holder of this particular interest actually owns. The numbers must be disciplined by that narrative, and the narrative must be supported by the numbers — every material assumption, from growth rates to margins to the discount rate, traces back to something observable about the business.

The test we apply is simple: a skeptical reader — a counterparty, the IRS, a court — should be able to follow the chain from facts, to reasoning, to conclusion, without being asked to take anything on faith. That is what "defensible" means in practice.

Discuss an engagement

Initial consultations are confidential and offered without obligation. We are selective about engagements to ensure each receives the senior attention it warrants.

Request a consultation