The verification discount: why the businesses you look at trade at a fraction of the PE multiple
I spent twenty years as a hedge fund portfolio manager working out what businesses actually earn and what they are worth. I now do that for people buying small businesses, and I started writing about the method. This first piece is on the verification discount: why the businesses you are looking at trade at a fraction of the multiple a PE buyer pays for the same company at ten times the size, and how much of that gap is the price of not knowing. Three habits from the institutional side that carry straight to a $3M deal are in the middle section. Would value a searcher's read on where it is wrong. redacted