George Spilka & Associates

Exit Strategy Planning

In 1990, George Spilka and Associates (GS&A) introduced the Exit Strategy Planning process to the middle market. GS&A is the only firm that executes it with the sophistication and business-oriented approach required to maximize a selling owner's transaction price. We help you define the personal and financial objectives you want to achieve from an exit strategy. Various business alternatives are evaluated and their financial consequences quantified. GS&A then recommends the exit strategy that best satisfies your personal and financial objectives. We define what you can and can’t expect from a sale. Furthermore, GS&A can explain what is likely to happen after a transaction is consummated, including the emotions that you can expect and how to effectively deal with them. This ensures that your decision to sell will be an informed one. Consequently, it minimizes the risk that you will be disappointed with the decision you made and your life after a sale.

Exit Strategy Planning helps you decide if selling is the right alternative for you, as it is not the right alternative for everyone.

If Your Exit Strategy Is Selling

If you decide that selling is the exit alternative for you, GS&A helps you plan and time the sale and provides the guidance to strengthen your business foundation through the Sale Price Maximization Planning process. This will increase your transaction price. We not only determine the current market value of your company, but also evaluate and discuss current and expected future pricing levels. Based on your personal and financial objectives, the fundamentals of your company, the strength of its business foundation and the expected future deal pricing levels, we advise you of the appropriate time to place your company on the market.

Sale Price Maximization Planning (Positioning The Company And Timing The Sale)

In 2001, GS&A greatly expanded its original Exit Strategy Planning process with the introduction of the more comprehensive Sale Price Maximization Planning process. This process encompasses a thorough review of all major marketing, operations, personnel, financial, legal, tax and economic matters affecting the company. GS&A will recommend the changes that enhance your business strategy and improve your operations. These will position the company to realize a significant increase in its sale price. The recommendations could include changes in the product mix, the markets and customers served, or the sales and distribution methods used. Recommendations are made regarding business expansion and/or diversification strategies. The organizational structure and personnel are evaluated to determine if they need strengthening.

An evaluation is made of the corporate structure, tax policies, and accounting systems and procedures. Changes are often recommended in these areas that increase the sale price, however their major impact is usually to reduce your “tax bite”. In many cases, the changes that we recommend substantially reduce the tax on the seller’s deal proceeds.

The end result of the process is a strengthened business foundation, an increase in the expected future earnings/EBITDA, a substantial increase in the selling price and in some cases a sizeable reduction in the taxes that will be due on the deal proceeds.

In certain situations due to the types of changes necessary, it can take several years before the full impact of the benefits will either be apparent to acquirers or are reflected on the bottom line. When either of these events occur, the company will be capable of obtaining the maximum premium price. However, in many other situations the results can be achieved relatively quickly, thereby producing a significant increase in the transaction price in a short period of time. Two actual case studies defining the results this process produced for GS&A’s former clients are described in detail in George Spilka’s nationally syndicated article on Exit Strategy Planning.

Other Benefits Of Sale Price Maximization Planning

As the Sale Price Maximization Planning process evaluates your company’s fundamentals, long-term opportunities, and potential threats to its business niche, it helps you better understand your company and its future.

In today’s fast-paced global marketplace, most middle market executives and entrepreneurs don't have either the time or perspective to evaluate their company’s long-term outlook and develop a long-term business strategy with the same thoroughness and intensity they bring to maximizing short-term earnings. They are usually focused on increasing sales and pricing power, instituting cost reduction programs and keeping operations technologically current. In so doing, they often miss major expansion and diversification opportunities or overlook major operational changes that should be made to maximize long-term profitability.

The Sale Price Maximization Planning process assures that a selling owner’s price expectations will not be sabotaged by a preoccupation with short-term considerations. It usually produces a significant increase in a company’s long-term and future profitability, which is essential to obtaining the maximum premium price.

Former Clients Describe Process Benefits

The following are selected comments of former clients:

.....	“Over and above significantly increasing the eventual transaction price, the benefits of the process enabled me to run a much more profitable business prior to its sale. The process is a meaningful and necessary exercise.”
.....	"The knowledge gained from the process increased profits and produced benefits that exceeded the cost of the services many times over. It is truly a value-added process."
.....	"I have never felt so secure in understanding where my business is going and what must be done to get it where it should be."
.....	“The changes you recommended in our corporate structure and accounting practices should produce very substantial tax savings, when we sell the company. Neither our attorneys or outside accountants had made me aware of the tax reduction opportunities available to us. As you know how important taxes are to me, I can’t thank you enough for your knowledge and perceptiveness.”
.....	"This process helped me learn things about my business that I never realized before."
.....	"This is a process that I would use, even if I didn't want to sell my company."

If you would like to speak to former and current clients that have or are currently using these processes, please contact us to obtain a list of references.