Owners of remodeling companies commonly employ one of three exit strategies: close the company and live off well-invested profits; hire a general manager and work part time; or sell the company outright, either to employees or to an outside buyer.
Most remodelers hope to sell the company, and at first this seems to be a straightforward process. As with selling a house, you spruce things up a bit, find a willing buyer, pocket the proceeds, and live happily ever after. In reality, however, preparing a remodeling company for sale is much like training for a marathon; it requires three to five years of focused attention.
The first step is to find out what your company might be worth. Before you begin, however, ask your accountant to normalize your financial statements for the past five years by removing any income or expenses not related to standard operations. Normalized financial statements might exclude expenses such as depreciation or prepayments made to reduce taxes and non-remodeling–based income such as rent paid to you by your company. Also adjust owner's salary to the amount required to hire an experienced general manager in your area.
Using normalized figures, calculate net profit for each of the past five years, then calculate a weighted five-year average that favors more recent years. For example, multiply 2005 net profit by 2; 2004 net profit by 1.75; 2003, by 1.5; and so on.
Click here to read full article from Remodeling