Category: Alternative Investments

Alternative Investments, Business Valuation, Buying & Selling a Company

Mergers & Acquisition Trends – November 2019

Gregory Pearl

Alteris LLC tracks Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) generalized valuation and other trends/metrics from its various partners and research sources.  We will periodically report on what we find here.  For more detailed information on valuations and M&A trends contact us directly. Please note that this information is a summary of many different types of companies of various sizes in a variety of industries. The specific valuation for any individual company, for your business, may and probably will vary greatly.  Each company and set of circumstances is unique and must be considered individually. This data is collected from various sources and includes…

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Alternative Investments

Venture Capital Activity in Q2 2019

Gregory Pearl

My valuation and financial consulting business, Alteris LLC, has worked with startups and early stage investors in the USA (including Silicon Valley), Europe and Africa.  We track activity in this market and will periodically report on that here. For definitional purposes, we define venture capital as investments into early stage businesses.  Private Equity is investing in later stage business. New business, venture capital and startups and are a critically important part of the economy in the USA.  I recall reading where over 1/3 of all jobs in America in the last 20 + years came from this source. In the…

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Alternative Investments, Decision Making

Consumer Products Industry Trends

Gregory Pearl

Companies in the consumer products industry are developing newer and bolder strategies to execute with the environment of a more stable US and worldwide economy. Among the latest trends are: Globalization continues. Companies that have the resources will try to capitalize on growth in emerging markets and seek opportunities to acquire or partner with companies to enable access to consumers, leverage marketing and access sources of raw material.  In particular, emerging markets represent a growth opportunity.  We believe this will remain true regardless of individual national efforts to protect markets or create trade barriers or the implementation of industrial policy…

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Alternative Investments, Decision Making

Business Services Industry Trends

Gregory Pearl

The business services industry consists of a very broad variety of services sold to other businesses. Companies from this sector help other firms focus on their core competencies.   These companies help benefit others by increasing their operating efficiencies and avoid spending resources on what is not the most important to them.. Business services companies provide support to other businesses, such as office administration, hiring and of personnel, security services, telecommunication,  travel,  cleaning and maintenance, waste disposal and so on.  The USA and Europe are the primary markets for these types of services. USA business services consists of about 400,000…

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Alternative Investments

Early Stage Company Fund Raising: 80% of all Venture Capital Goes to Just Four States

Gregory Pearl

Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) is one of the largest accounting-multiservice firms in the world. They produce business-oriented research that can be (sometimes) interesting. PwC has teamed up with CB Insights to track VC investing in the USA. The result: Most of the investment in the USA is in only a handful of states. It’s interesting to note that the PwC results vary somewhat from what is reported by the Hyde Park Angels, that I wrote about earlier.  Differences are to be expected I suppose due to methodologies, completeness of the report etc. Though the general trends are the same. According…

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Alternative Investments

The Private Equity Environment Now (Mid Year 2018)

Gregory Pearl

    From what we are seeing from our clients and research sources plus hearing about in the marketplace, here are some trends in the private equity industry now (mid-year 2018)       The two most important factors in Private Equity activity is economic strength and so-called “dry powder” levels. When people have money to invest and the economy is good, activity is high.  That seems to be the case in 2018. Most Private Equity Groups (PEGs) expect to see more equity in 2018 transactions (less leverage) than from earlier years. For debt, favorable terms (covenant-lite) is the most…

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Alternative Investments

Intellectual Property (IP) Trends – 2018 Q2

Gregory Pearl

Alteris LLC and its affiliates have valued and tracked IP values over the years for purposes of M&A, financial reporting and litigation support. Intellectual Property (IP)  is often one of the most valuable assets that a company can possess.  The importance of IP assets to individual companies has grown tremendously over the last decades. Traditionally, royalty payment agreements are usually expressed as a percent of sales.  Gross or net with net being the most common.  This is because of simplicity.  If profit based agreements are used complications can arise from other factors. In recent years, alternate forms of royalty payment…

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