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Your business is worth what it can prove.
Exit readiness for New Zealand businesses
Complimentary Discovery Meeting for owners of established businesses. 60 minutes, confidential, no obligation.
Exodus prepares owner-led businesses turning over $10 million or more for sale, succession or an unplanned handover. We examine the business forensically, document how it actually runs, and present it in a form that a buyer, a board or a successor can rely on.
Three reasons owners engage us
Protect the price.
Buyers pay for earnings they can verify and a business that runs without its owner. We build the evidence for both, so the valuation holds through due diligence.
Make the business transferable.
We document finances, operations, people, systems and obligations in a single operating record. The business can then be sold, passed to family or management, or run by someone else at short notice.
Keep control of the timing.
Ill health, a downturn, a regulatory change or a missing successor can force a sale on someone else's timetable. Preparation done now keeps the decision with you.
The cost of an unprepared sale
Most owners spend decades building value and a few months trying to realise it. The difference shows up in the price.
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Buyers discount what they cannot verify. Earnings that rely on owner adjustments, handshake agreements or undocumented processes are treated as risk, and risk comes off the multiple.
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Owner dependency is priced in. If key customers, suppliers and decisions run through you, a buyer is acquiring a job rather than a business. Expect an earn-out, a long retention period or a lower offer.
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Due diligence rewards preparation. A business that answers every question with a document closes faster, and on better terms, than one that answers with explanations.
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A successor cannot be assumed. Family members may not want the business, and management may not be able to fund it. Without a documented handover the options narrow quickly.
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Time is the one input you cannot buy back. Meaningful preparation takes one to three years. Owners who start in their seventies have less room for delay than they expect.
Your business, documented as an operating system
A well-run business behaves like an operating system. It has defined inputs, repeatable processes, controlled outputs and clear rules for who decides what. In most owner-led businesses that system lives in the owner's head. Our work is to take it out, test it, and write it down.
We analyse the business in four layers: financial performance, operations, people and governance, and the environment it trades in, using a full PESTLE review of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. The result is a verified record of how the business earns its money, what could disrupt it, and how someone else would run it tomorrow. That record supports the valuation, the Information Memorandum and the succession plan.
Prepare on your terms, before circumstances set them for you.
