Tham khảo tài liệu ' bloomberg press 2005 practice made perfect the discipline of business management for financial ad_11', tài chính - ngân hàng, tài chính doanh nghiệp phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | 178 Practice Made Perfect but the buyer will be investing in a practice that has a short life. If so this can turn out to be a very expensive purchase even on an earnout because these formulas generally assume high growth in perpetuity. 3. Price based on rules of thumb. It s not uncommon for advisers selling practices to cite recent publications and articles in the trade press that encourage transactions by pumping up the price multiples. But a rule of thumb by definition relies on the past not the future. In other words the rule implies that the business will continue at least at the same level it has maintained in the past. If I were a seller I would always rely on rules of thumb because these values will be the highest available. If I were a buyer I would dismiss these rules for one simple reason most small practices are sold on an earnout and it s impossible to know what multiples of gross revenue a practice has sold for until the earnout period is over. To our knowledge no studies have yet been published that revisit the price realized through the term of the earnout. The prices agreed to when the deals are consummated which form the basis for the published rules of thumb are rarely the prices the sellers actually realize through the earnout. 4. Insufficient cash flow to support the purchase. Sellers tend to focus on gross revenue rather than net income or cash flow in an acquisition. According to both the 2001 and 2003 FPA Financial Performance Study the average operating costs of a practice hover around 45 percent of gross revenue. If you add to that the cost of administrative and professional labor including the seller s which you have to consider no matter what the margins get very tight. So the question is at the current rate of income at what point can you expect to break even on the purchase 5. Lack of capacity. One of the great surprises for many practitioners is the time it takes to transfer these client relationships. You can do it by adding staff .
