Corporate Finance Services

Business Forecasting And Modelling

No doubt you’d love to know where your business will be financially in three to five years.

Of course, no one has a crystal ball, but with the help of our experienced financial modelling experts, we can help you develop forecasting tools to project the direction of your business.

Think of it as a road map for your business. We can help you create it, giving you a clear understanding of where your business is heading

Depending on your particular needs, business forecasting can involve:

Producing full financial models and forecasts, considering elements such as plans for business growth, assumptions for future trading and market conditions
Providing constructive advice on improving existing forecasts
Helping with the research and financial assumptions involved in generating a forecast
Carrying out regular reviews of the forecast, helping keep your business on track, and recommending any necessary changes to the forecast
Assisting you to set KPIs to monitor your progress.
We build financial models and forecasts in many situations, including to support on:
Acquisitions
Management buy outs
Private equity and venture capital transactions
Large angel funding rounds
Accessing bank and alternative lender debt
Large CapEx intensive projects and valuations
Strategic planning and business growth

Our approach to financial modelling depends wholly on the circumstance, and whether we use software to assist the build or build a financial model from scratch in Excel. We are experienced in creating financial models for international businesses with multiple currencies, to simple and complex group structures.

In addition to a variety of revenue modelling types, we can also create models for those with varying tax arrangements, different types of funding instruments, and complexities regarding stock management and labour costs.

Forecasting for your particular situation

Whether you’re a start-up wanting guidance, or an established firm with big ambitions, we can help put your future plans in context. We understand how your business faces its own unique challenges and has very specific goals – and we tailor our services to suit. The advice you get from us is for your business, and no other.

Commercial Due Diligence

Our speciality is in understanding and aligning a company’s growth tactics, their data and conclusions with what the markets they are growing into expect. We then layer this against financial forecasts and marketing assumptions to provide a collaborative, pragmatic view on the opportunities, risk and investment rationale behind a consumer businesses’ growth plan.

We have worked in a variety of sectors, internationally, to help businesses that are buying, selling, taking on investment or growing into new markets demonstrate to their transaction partners, and their wider Board and shareholders, the objective evidence behind their commercial assumptions.

Our experience is cross-sector, cross-border. We:

have produced CDD reports that vary from short succinct reports focussed on the key material views on growth plans through to detailed diligence reports,
Operate in a collaborative and pragmatic way to understand a company’s brand, positioning, tactics, and expected pivots, and
Use a combination of primary and secondary data to form out judgements, and always look to bring out case studies of peer companies to raise comparisons for discussion.

We provide independent, data driven views that frame the answers to growth questions

Our team draws from expertise in business strategy, digital marketing, brand marketing, modelling and data analysis. We have a variety of backgrounds and qualifications varying from MBAs to maths and economics degrees, CFAs and CIMs through to accountants.

We have particular experience working in

Consumer technology
Ecommerce
Retail
Luxury goods
FMCG sectors

Our services include:

Buy-side Commercial Due Diligence for transactions
Exit readiness and strategy development
Vendor commercial due diligence
Acquisition target assessment
Market mapping and sizing
Customer referencing

Debt Advisory Services

In the current environment businesses need to have flexibility to adapt and a funding structure that enables change. Having the right debt funding is critical for a business’ success. An inappropriate structure can suffocate a business or worse. Our debt advisory team works with clients to ensure they have a debt structure that is suitable to their business and strategy.

Our Debt Advisory team works with clients to help them assess their funding needs and implement the right funding structure. We also work with banks helping them to assess funding requests, and can provide insight from this perspective.

We work with clients to:

Review their strategic plans and funding needs
Help build robust financial models
Advise on appropriate debt structures and identify suitable providers
Provide insight on what the debt market is offering
Secure new debt facilities
Negotiate covenants and other terms with debt providers
Restructure existing facilities
Debt funding is typically part of a wider strategic project and our team frequently works alongside Corporate Finance and Tax colleagues delivering an integrated service.

We have expertise across:

Banking facilities, sole bank and bilateral facilities
Structured finance
Invoice discounting and stock financing
Asset based lending
Alternative lenders and challenger banks
Government support loan schemes
Venture debt providers

We work with:

Ambitious businesses looking to grow organically or through acquisition
Management buy-out teams and Employee Ownership Trusts
Businesses that are looking for an alternative banking facility or relationship
Businesses that find their current facilities are not meeting their needs

Financial Due Diligence

Our Strategic Corporate Finance (SCF) team offers clients a flexible, relationship-focused, and partner-led approach to financial due diligence (FDD).

We have extensive experience undertaking a large number of FDD assignments across a variety of sectors and for a range of clients, including acquisitive corporates, investors and lenders.

We have a strong reputation and track record as an FDD provider of choice, due to our ability to report to desired timescales and delivering on scope across a range of transaction types.

Our sector experience includes:

Property & real estate
Software and technology
Manufacturing
Leisure
Food and beverage
Professional services
Retail and beauty
Healthcare
Facilities management
Agri-tech

Adaptable to your needs

Working in collaboration with our specialist tax and accounting colleagues across the ourpractice, we offer you an efficient and rounded approach to your due diligence needs.

Mergers And Acquisitions

A strategic way to expand

If you’re looking to grow, a merger or acquisition could give you the opportunity to enter new markets, develop your market share, or protect your existing interests.

The process of buying, selling, dividing or combining businesses is a complicated one – and you’ll only want to do it as part of a clear strategic plan. We’re here to help ensure the whole process is planned, implemented and completed successfully.

Supporting you throughout

We guide you through the strategic and operational planning of the process, analysing your options to help determine the best course of action. Then we help you through every step, including:
Providing strategic advice to ensure your merger or acquisition fits your business goals
Carrying out due diligence
Raising finance
Conducting reliable valuations
Advising on tax, deal terms, compliance and financing
Ensuring success through advice and implementation of a post-acquisition integration plan.

Selling Your Business

Beside you as you make your exit

When you’ve decided to sell your business, you’ll naturally want to get the best price.

We can advise you on what’s likely to affect your sale price – and help you take steps to achieve the most favourable figure.

Most importantly, we do all we can to make selling your business as simple as possible, minimising the impact of the sale process on the business.

A proven procedure

We break the process down into stages, and work with you every step of the way:

Establishing an exit plan

Ideally, you’ll want to plan your exit from your business several years in advance. However, according to research we conducted survey over 400 business leaders, only 24% of UK business leaders have an exit strategy in place. This indicates a big opportunity for SMEs to improve their long-term planning. We can help ensure the decisions you make now will benefit you as you move towards exit.

Preparing for sale

To get your business ‘sale ready’, we can advise you on maximising its value and making it attractive to potential investors. We carry out an in-depth analysis of your current position, before putting a plan into action to optimise performance and ‘polish’ the business – locking in revenue and management, enhancing your brand and reducing debt.

Fine-tuning your approach

Once we get to know your company, we pinpoint any problem areas and help you decide how best to approach potential buyers. We can carry out independent valuations and develop professional marketing collateral that presents your business in the best light.

Researching potential buyers

We research suitable buyers, using a variety of methods – including M&A transaction and corporate intelligence databases, web-based research, and our extensive national and international professional networks.

Marketing

Alerting potential buyers is obviously vital. We send out personalised teasers to specific targets to identify interest, and take care of the necessary non-disclosure agreements.

Negotiating

We can help you consider indicative offers, select preferred bidders, and meet with interested parties. We can also help you negotiate heads of terms, and make sure potential buyers have adequate funding and the access they need to carry out due diligence.

Handling due diligence, legal and completion

Once you’ve chosen a buyer, we support you as you finalise the deal, ensuring all paperwork, legal documents and tax forms are completed and submitted to the proper authorities.

As you can see, forward planning is the secret of success. To ensure the right outcome, we suggest you talk to our strategic corporate finance team at least two years before the sale.

Strategic Planning

We help clients put in place and execute ambitious, achievable and data driven strategies that bring leadership teams together, mould direction and bring a vision forward into reality.

We have decades of experience of helping companies, charities and public sector bodies form meaningful and impactful strategies.

Sometimes, we start from a clean slate with a fresh organisation, a start-up or a new division with bold aspirations, and other times we are starting from a complex contextual web of history. Either way we have the knowledge, experience and expertise to help you grow.

Helping the bold and the brave grow

We can take a facilitative and consultative approach to helping you form your growth strategy. We always look to meld opinions from leadership teams with our experiences and organisational and external data.

This combination of information and views forms the perfect ingredients to start making structured, prioritised and sometimes difficult judgements from on the most intrinsic matters to any growth ambition.

From judgements comes outputs. We don’t like writing long meaningless, standardised, strategy documents that sit in a dusty part of the cloud. We make sure that the outputs are pre-agreed and are as sharp or broad as the context requires. From there we support with execution at a leadership and operational teams level as required.

We have supported businesses through the following strategic challenges:

Setting a vision that everyone is unified behind
Building a strategy to increase the value of a business 3x in 5 years
Building a strategy to develop a housing company within a public sector organisation
Helping several businesses build ambitious strategies to expand internationally
Improving the operational efficiency of several companies
Succession planning and management buyout preparation
Helping a struggling software business pivot and then raise £13m of additional funding
Merging two companies following an acquisition
Growing a community interest company through acquisition
Building a strategy to develop a company over 3 years to optimise its sale value
Crafting a Joint Venture strategy to help two companies work together to enter a new market

Vendor Due Diligence

If you are selling your company, or part of the business, a sales process which allows you to control the flow of information and the timing of the sale can be key to achieving the best result. Our sell-side due diligence advisory services enable you to do just that.

Sell-side due diligence can typically be divided into two types:

Vendor Assistance, and
Vendor Due Diligence.

Vendor Assistance

Vendor assistance involves collaborating with advisors to prepare essential financial analyses, identify risks, and focus areas for potential buyers to ensure transparency in the sale process. Vendor Assistance can enhance data credibility and address issues proactively. The resulting report is generated for the benefit of the pool of buyers to refer to when bidding on the business, however, this process doesn’t usually negate the need for the traditional, more extensive, due diligence process that buyers will conduct once they achieve preferred bidder status, as they will appreciate the Vendor Assistance report was commissioned by the sellers.

In Vendor Assistance, we work alongside senior management and the finance team of the business to assist in the preparation of key financial analyses, the early identification of risks and potential areas of focus to a buyer. Our aim is to ensure that there are no surprises once the Information Memorandum (“IM”) and Vendor Assistance report has been issued to short-listed potential purchasers, and that all bidders take this information into consideration when making their final offers. The intention is that the vendor selects their preferred bidder from a pool of well-informed buyers and that any subsequent, more in-depth DD undertaken by the chosen bidder using their own independent advisers is less likely to identify any significant areas of concern.

Vendor Due Diligence

VDD can also support a controlled sales process where a number of seriously interested potential purchasers have been identified. The process of undertaking VDD adopts a buyer’s perspective as VDD reports are produced by independent advisers and are typically relied upon by the successful buyer in a controlled sales process, enabling the identification and resolution of potential risks before they become deal breakers. The report, demonstrating the independence and credibility of the advisor’s findings, is shared with potential purchasers and the duty of care is owed to the buyer, not the seller, with the successful purchaser typically covering the costs of producing the VDD if they wish to rely upon it as part of their own DD.

The benefits of Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance

Both Vendor Assistance and Vendor Due Diligence offer various benefits. By leading the dialogue throughout Vendor Assistance or Vendor Due Diligence, sellers can identify and address potential issues before reports are released, providing all bidders with identical information during the competitive bidding stage. This proactive approach enhances negotiation positions and keeps more potential buyers engaged, fostering increased competition and potentially leading to higher bids.

The value we provide

We can add real value to you at each stage of the process by not only offering you the benefit of our extensive sell-side experience, but also the advantage of valuable insights acquired through our buy-side experience to anticipate and proactively address issues, and improve the price you achieve. We help to ensure that the financial information you present to third parties is accurate, credible, and will stand up to scrutiny during any subsequent financial due diligence the chosen buyer might choose to commission.

We offer our experience of working on both buy and sell-side transactions with UK & International trade buyers, Private Equity buyers on sales and leveraged buyouts, as well as banks’ pre-lending reviews on transactions across a wide range of industry sectors and transaction types.

To protect your interests and secure the best outcome during the sale process, consider leveraging the benefits of Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance. Engaging with experienced advisors like us will provide you with the insights and support necessary to navigate the complexities of a business sale successfully.