Valuation

Subscribe to Valuation via RSS

Times of economic volatility often increase disparities between a seller’s valuation and the buyer’s valuation of the same company. Earn-out provisions are one tool frequently used to address such disparities. An earn-out provision requires the buyer to make one or more post-closing payments (the “earn-out consideration”) to the seller if the company being sold (the “earn-out entity”) meets certain milestones during a defined post-closing period (the “earn-out period,” which is usually between one to five years). These milestones may include EBITDA, gross revenue, net income, the expansion of the business into defined geographic or product areas, or other metrics.

Private credit has become an essential source of financing globally, with fund sponsors enjoying strong demand from borrowers, market participants, and investors.  However, as the industry’s “golden age” continues, regulatory scrutiny is growing.  Media coverage and legislative inquiries have pressured agencies — particularly the SEC — to take action.

The “Liberation Day” tariffs and associated countermeasures have created significant market volatility, prompting renewed scrutiny of private fund managers’ compliance with longstanding SEC focus areas such as valuation, investor communications, liquidity, borrowing and related disclosures. Sponsors should document any changes to valuation practices, maintain transparent and timely communications with investors…

Big fund-raising rounds and high valuations have some wondering whether the AI sector is in a bubble in the nature of the dotcom boom. As of this writing, OpenAI is valued at over $80 billion; Amazon added another $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic; and even some very early-stage startups, like France-based Mistral AI, have racked up hundreds of millions in venture-capital funding at valuations over a billion dollars. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichar has said AI could be more profound than the invention of electricity or the discovery of fire. Is the hype real?

Adviser-led secondary transactions have seen explosive growth over the last five years.  That growth has brought increased regulatory concerns over the conflicts of interests inherent in these transactions and a perceived lack of transparency into this market.  New SEC rules adopted in 2023 will arm regulators with additional tools to identify, exam and investigate market practices.  It is therefore critical for managers running an adviser-led secondary transaction to not only comply with the new rules as they become effective but to structure any such transaction with the SEC’s concerns in mind. 

Economic headwinds and the interest rate environment that developed over the course of 2023 increased financial stress on portfolio companies and portend heightened litigation risk in 2024 for portfolio companies and their private fund sponsors. Specifically, interest rate increases that accelerated through 2022 continued in 2023, and compounded existing economic stressors including tight liquidity and inflation coming out of 2020 and 2021, as well as increased cost and other burdens related to ESG and regulatory compliance. These pressures put portfolio companies in often unsustainable financial positions, causing them to prematurely seek liquidity events, violate debt covenants with lenders, and resort to bankruptcy, all of which has led to an increase in disputes and litigation, which we expect to continue in 2024.

Amid rising interest rates, tightening credit markets, geopolitical concerns in Europe and Asia, stubborn inflation and continuing supply chain issues, there is a growing sense of economic uncertainty.  This uncertainty will no doubt increase the frequency of valuation disputes in the year ahead. We generally see valuation disputes spring from four primary sources:

  1. breach of representations and warranties in purchase agreements, which raise questions as to company value absent the breach;
  2. unfair prejudice to minority investors or limited partners;
  3. disagreements about price paid at exit, including earn out disputes; and
  4. increased regulatory focus on exams, which may assess valuation policies and require recurring asset valuations.

Valuation disputes tend to be centered on disagreements about accounting practices, dates of assessed value, and valuation methodology. 

Everything, everywhere, all at once is our risk thesis for 2023, but one must not forget about concentration risk.  This issue has rocketed up diligence agendas for LPs and GPs alike as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank proved it really was the bank for venture capital.The entry of SVB into receivership on March 10, 2023 highlighted just how central it had become to U.S. venture capital, providing deposit and credit facilities not just to asset managers, but also to many (and in some cases the vast majority) of their portfolio companies and investors.  While deposit accounts were protected in full, companies unable to access those accounts for several days faced significant disruption.  Further, while borrowers were still bound by terms of credit agreements, there was no immediate obligation on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver to honor drawdown requests (although the bridge bank did announce it would honor credit facilities). Net asset value (NAV) lines, subscription lines and investors’ own deposit and credit lines were also affected. The deposits and loans of SVB were acquired from FDIC by First Citizens Bank on March 27, 2023.

Everything, everywhere, all at once, as a descriptor, captures the litigation and regulatory risks for the asset management industry in 2023. Every corner of the market faces greater risks than at any time since 2008. After years of breakneck growth fueled by low interest rates and a largely laissez faire regulatory regime, significant change is here.

We reported last year that unprecedented SPAC deal volume signaled an increased risk for disputes given their unique structure, including risks associated with disclosure requirements, material non-public information, valuation, and conflicts of interest. Our assessment proved prescient, as the SEC began to flex its enforcement muscles vis-à-vis SPACs as the year progressed, and took specific notice of potential asymmetries between SPACs and traditional IPOs that may form the basis for disputes in 2022.