Thinking of selling your business? Wondering what it might be worth? Or what the process of selling might be like?

SiVal Advisors can help answer these and many other critical questions.

With decades of experience and a few hundred closed deals, our team of seasoned Silicon Valley M&A professionals can find the right buyer at the best possible price!


Interested in learning more? Come take a journey with us…


Learn more about working with SiVal on The M&A Journey from the client perspective


“We are very happy with the outcome of this transaction as this will allow Citilabs to continue building a world-class traffic simulation and analytics solution for customers across the globe. Throughout the process, we have been truly impressed by the skillful execution from the SiVal team. Their knowledge and experience have played an instrumental part in closing this successful transaction.”

ARIF JANJUA, CHAIRMAN OF CITILABS

Our Bi-coastal US presence and Global Reach enables us to leave no stone unturned in sourcing the right set of prospective buyers for your business!

“Jan Robertson, with SiVal, is the investment banker who did a GREAT job on an exit for a client of mine. Diligent, effective, responsive, efficient. Can’t say enough good things about her and her team.”

GREG O’HARA, PARTNER AT NIXON PEABODY

Software, Business Services, Manufacturing and Healthcare Technology……there’s hardly an industry we haven’t worked with.

“We have hired SiVal Advisors on multiple occasions to assist us with acquisition due diligence and negotiations on both public and private technology companies. They demonstrated strong leadership skills in the negotiations, and were able to find information and data only professionals with deep industry knowledge and creative thinking could acquire. SiVal has delivered a wide variety of valuable services to us and our portfolio companies over the years. We look forward to a continued strong relationship with SiVal in the future.”

JOE JULIAN, PARTNER, SUNRISE CAPITAL PARTNERS

“I’ve worked with SiVal’s partners on two successful transactions: first, an acquisition of our Quik-Pak Division, and second, our management buyout and restructuring of Delphon (formerly Gel-Pak). We were pleased with how SiVal executed these transactions and would definitely hire them for another engagement. In my view, their knowledge of the M&A process and their professionalism in handling every detail are impressive. SiVal has demonstrated to me that they take the time to learn a client’s business and stay with their clients for the long term. I would recommend them highly.”

JEANNE BEACHAM, CEO, DELPHON INDUSTRIES (formerly Gel-Pak, Inc.)

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About SiVal

For years, business owners thinking of selling their business have turned to SiVal Advisors for help answering the critical questions.

With decades of experience, a few hundred closed deals, and vast global reach, our team of seasoned Silicon Valley M&A professionals leaves no stone untuned to find the right buyer at the best possible price!


SiVal Advisors, founded in Silicon Valley in 2002, advises its clients on a wide variety of merger & acquisition and financial advisory engagements, with particular emphasis on technology and emerging growth companies. The partners at SiVal, with their diverse backgrounds as business enterprise founders, CEO’s, technology executives and investment bankers, combine this unique blend of operating and transaction experience for the benefit of each client engagement.

Continue reading “About SiVal”
Panel 2

What We Do

SELLING, DIVESTING & MERGING

Though many entrepreneurs dream of an IPO, history says that a company’s successful outcome is more likely to be a sale.

ACQUISITIONS

SiVal assists companies seeking to make acquisitions in order to complement a technology or product line, enter new markets or simply to provide growth in their existing business. 

CORPORATE/STRATEGIC ADVISORY

SiVal advises clients on strategies to successfully grow and create value in their business.

Panel 3

Insights

Panel 4

The Process

You’ve made an important decision – it’s time to sell your business! For most people who have spent years building a successful business this is one of the most critical and life-altering decisions they will make. And having the very best process and experienced team at your side to guide you is paramount.

What defines a good process? Maximizing your proceeds on optimal deal terms, minimizing your risk during and after the sale, minimizing taxes, and ensuring employees and other key stakeholders are treated fairly for a smooth transition to the buyer upon closing.

Let’s look at the steps illustrated below:

Businesses within the same industry or sector can have widely different values, depending on a large range of factors, including: revenues & profitability; growth rates; customer profile, tenure and diversification; risk profile; liabilities, existing and contingent, etc. Before preparing to go-to-market it’s critical to get a sense of valuation. Do you understand the potential worth of your business? Curious to learn more? Complete this brief questionnaire to get your valuation. 

One of the most important steps is thorough preparation, the foundation needed to launch a successful sale process! Buyers need accurate financial and other information to assess your business and make a bid. Here’s a sample what’s needed:

    1. Financial – accurate historical (3-5 years) financial statements, plus a forecast that’s credible and based on realistic, defensible assumptions. Buyers are buying the future so make sure your forecast showcases the potential growth of your business and its industry.
    2. Other Records – getting your house in order to prepare for due diligence, including legal, employment, intellectual property matters, etc. Buyers will carefully review and analyze all of these and more. Be prepared for lots of detailed questions!
    3. Positioning – here’s where the right M&A advisor can make or break your deal. How your business is described to each type of prospective acquirer, stressing important nuances to appeal to different types of buyers, is mission-critical to getting the highest bids! It’s the persuasive aspect of the sale documents. Thoughtfully probing and understanding your business’s strengths and creating often multiple variations of the pitch documents for these different groups of buyers will pay huge dividends.
    4. Buyers’ List – your M&A advisor’s job is to prepare a comprehensive buyers’ list to set up for a broad, global canvas to expose your business to the widest array of logical prospective buyers. This includes groups of buyers not only from your specific industry/sector, but adjacent sectors. Our experience over the years is that the buyer willing to pay the highest price often comes from an adjacent sector. These buyers are eager to add capabilities outside of their core area to gain a strategic advantage.
    5. Go-To-Market Documents – sometimes called a ‘deck’ or a ‘confidential management presentation’ this comprehensive document showcases your business in its best light. Your M&A advisors will prepare this together with your input, and make it available under NDA to interested buyers. It needs to be thoughtful, thorough and focused properly to best position your business with buyers.

Once all the documents are ready, your M&A advisor will go to market, contacting the list of prospects. How this is done and by whom is key to your success vs. possibly having a failed deal. Does you advisor pick up the phone and call the prospective buyers or just send blind emails not knowing if they’re reaching the right decision-influencers / gatekeepers at each company? Do the partners with years of experience make these outbound inquiries, or delegate to juniors who are recent grads? How well do they know your company to tell your story, including the all-important positioning? Ask these questions as you evaluate which M&A firm you want to represent you. It makes a huge difference in the outcome of your deal.

Also known as the screening process, where your advisor and you vet buyers to determine seriousness, financial capability to do the deal, and ability to make a bid/no-bid decision in a timely manner. This step aims to weed out ‘lookers’ who are not serious. Similarly, prospects will be evaluating fit with their strategy and culture, and forming their initial views on value.

After initial discussions and exchange of information under NDAs with serious buyers, the advisor will typically set dates for receiving Letters of Interest/Intent (LOIs). Assuming the canvas of prospects has been conducted broadly (see above) and garnered sufficient interest, setting a deadline date for LOIs and providing specific guidance as to the content of these, is appropriate. This ensures a level playing field and ease of evaluating the relative merits of each bid.

With bid letters in hand the next important phase is negotiations on price and terms, while advancing further sharing of information to the bidders. There is an art to this, where the leverage of having multiple bidders comes in to play. The more competitive the process, with multiple LOIs, the stronger hand one has in getting the best possible price and terms in the final LOIs.

All the company documents organized and created in the preparation phase will have been uploaded to a data site, ready for buyers to review. Decisions need to be made along the way as to how much information is shared and what questions are answered at each stage of the process: before initial LOIs, before final LOIs, before definitive agreement is drafted, etc. Experienced judgement is necessary to guide such decisions, step-by-step.

With a competitive process where multiple bids are received, it’s often a good idea for the seller’s legal counsel to provide a form of Definitive Agreement which bidders are required to comment on in conjunction with their final LOI. Engaging the right legal counsel who specializes in M&A deals is important to smooth the process of finalizing the Definitive Agreement, working in concert with your M&A advisor towards a successful closing!

So many issues to consider: reps & warranties, escrows and holdbacks, earn-outs if any, cash and stock distributions, options / warrants. The list is long and it takes a team of professionals: M&A advisor, legal counsel and CPA to ensure everything is handled impeccably to protect you, ensuring proper payment of proceeds on closing, mitigate post-closing risks and overall take care of your best interests.

Proper planning ahead of time, during the final phases of the deal, for post-closing procedures and seamless integration is an important element to a successful deal. The seller needs to be mindful of this and work together with the buyer’s team in advance of closing to ensure a smooth transition. This is especially critical if selling management is required to stay on for a period of time, and paramount to realizing synergies and preserving post-close value.