What Is My Business Worth? 

A smiling man and woman look at a tablet together in a bright, modern office with colleagues working in the background.

Quick Answer

Your business is worth what a buyer will pay and a lender will support. Buyers reach that number through more than one lens: what comparable businesses have sold for, what the future cash flows are worth today, and what a particular buyer can afford to pay. Which lens carries the most weight depends on the size of the business and on who the buyer is.

By Torey Hinkson

A Market Price Analysis puts a defensible market price on that, grounded in how buyers and lenders actually evaluate businesses like yours.

How a buyer arrives at that number, and which lens carries the most weight for a business your size, is worth understanding before you request an analysis. That is covered in detail here


What a Market Price Analysis answers


Most owners expect a single number. Buyers do not converge on one, so the analysis gives you the range the market supports, where your business sits inside it, and why. Whatever the size of the business, the analysis works through three questions:


  • What does the business earn in a buyer's hands? Reported profit is not the figure a buyer prices. Owner compensation, non-recurring items, and personal expenses come out. Costs a new owner would have to carry go back in.
  • What is that earnings stream worth? Measured against what comparable businesses have actually sold for, and against what the future cash flows justify.
  • What can a buyer actually pay for it? A price the market supports but no buyer can finance is not a price.


How the analysis is built for your business

A Market Price Analysis is both an art and a science. The science is in the data: comparable completed transactions, current buyer behavior, and the financial mechanics that drive deal value. The art is in knowing which tools the business in front of you actually calls for.


There is no standard template for this, and reaching for one is how a business gets mispriced. Which methods apply depends on the size of the business, the quality of its financial information, and who is likely to buy it. That judgment is the work, and it is what twenty years of M&A experience is for.


Where a business will sell to an individual buyer with bank financing, what a lender will support matters as much as what the market says. Where a business will draw institutional buyers, the analysis reflects how those buyers underwrite. Most businesses need more than one lens, and the weighting is a judgment rather than a formula.


The work looks backward and forward. Adjusted earnings across prior years are the foundation, because history is what a buyer can verify. Where a business has a credible forward view, whether that is contracted backlog, a record of hitting its own projections, or growth already underway and committed, that is weighed as well.



The depth of analysis on each question depends on the financial information available, and further review refines the picture.

What the analysis examines


Beyond the earnings themselves, the analysis weighs the factors that move what a buyer will pay for them. Which ones matter most, and how much attention each warrants, depends on the business:


  • Earnings quality and margin, which adjustments a buyer will accept rather than which ones you claim, and whether profitability is expanding or compressing
  • Customer concentration, and how much of the revenue rests in one place
  • Recurring revenue, and whether it is contracted or simply reliable
  • Working capital, and how much the business needs to keep running
  • What transfers with the business, including equipment and inventory, and how inventory is handled in a transaction
  • Any real property you own, which is typically priced separately from the business, and whether a buyer purchases it or leases it from you
  • Owner dependence, and whether the business runs on its people, processes, and systems or on you personally, which decides how much walks out the door at closing
  • Industry conditions, and where your sector sits in its own cycle


These are the same conditions a buyer examines, and how each one moves a number is covered in depth in the Insights section.


What if the number is not what you hoped?


Honest valuation is the first of our three tenets, and it is first for a reason. An inflated price is easy to deliver and expensive to act on. It costs an owner months of market time, and it costs them credibility with the buyers who saw the first number.


A price the market will not support and a lender will not finance does not sell a business.


You will get the price the evidence supports. If it is below what you hoped, that is worth knowing while you can still do something about it, and most of what produced it is a condition of the business rather than a verdict on it. Which of those conditions are worth your attention is its own subject.


Knowing the number is not the same as deciding to sell


What your business is worth and whether now is the right time to sell are two different questions. Plenty of owners want the first answered with no intention of acting on it, and that is a legitimate reason to ask.


If the timing question is the one actually on your mind, there is a three-part framework for working through it: whether the market is ready, whether the business is ready, and whether you are ready.


A Market Price Analysis speaks directly to the first two. The third is yours to answer, and it is usually the one that decides. Most owners work through it with their accountant, their financial planner, and the people closest to them.


Who you would be working with


First Choice Business Brokers Peachtree provides sell-side advisory to business owners across Georgia and the greater Atlanta area, from Main Street to the lower middle market. Choosing who runs the analysis is part of the decision, and that is easier to judge from a conversation than from a page.


Torey explains what a market price analysis involves and when an owner should reach out on camera.


You receive a written Market Price Analysis prepared for your business. The work starts when the financial records are in hand, and it moves as efficiently as the information allows. Information you provide is held in confidence and used solely to prepare your analysis. There is no cost and no obligation.



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*Honest valuation. Disciplined process. Confidential execution.*