Business Valuations

The Minnesota Business Valuation Group (MBVG) is proud of its ability to deliver robust / defensible valuations of businesses and intangible assets. Randy Schostag manages valuation for MBVG and is joined by Laurel Sorensen, a Certified Public Accountant who has received the Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) from the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). They are supported by other professionals from Olsen Thielen CPAs and has several Affiliates with whom it collaborates on special projects.

MBVG is qualified to satisfy all of your valuation needs: shareholder disputes or settlements, divorce, goodwill impairment analysis, purchase price allocation, ESOP valuations, options pricing analysis, transaction analysis for buying or selling, and numerous other applications.

MBVG professionals are certified by accrediting organizations: the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA), the American Society of Appraisers (ASA),  and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

MBVG is often asked to “just give us an idea of what the value is. We’re not looking for a complete valuation.” The question arises in the context of a business value or intangible asset value assessment. A business valuation must be complete, robust, and defensible. We are not asked to do valuations merely because someone is curious. A simple business valuation may cost from $6,000 to $20,000. They are needed mostly for compliance reasons such as litigation support, goodwill impairment analyses, purchase price allocation, commercial or business damages, and/or for ESOP implementations or annual review. Three approaches are required: the income approach, the market approach, and the asset-based approach. They require detailed efforts which include looking at the company, its industry, its place in the economy, and its future. This all requires many hours of detail and cross-checking. There are no shortcuts.

As certified appraisers, we cannot offer you an “expert” business valuation within the acceptable parameters of either the Uniform Standards of Professional Practice or our accrediting organizations without completing all the appropriate due diligence that is required to deliver a determination of value that we can defend. However, we have noted that several off-the-shelf software packages that are now advertised profess to do such a complete valuation. We are able to provide you with “consulting services”, meaning we are not independent, and we are also able to provide you with “Restricted Usage” reports and “Calculations” so that you and your Company management are better able to understand value drivers and value creation within your business or one you may be considering purchasing. You simply understand that in this capacity, our work is advisory in nature instead of independent.

We have reviewed many of the software packages for doing this kind of analysis, and believe that most of them are very misleading in the valuation conclusions that they offer without providing an appropriate disclaimer about the probable limitations on the values that they produce.

There is no replacement for in-depth analysis and review by an accredited appraiser.