Corporate Finance & Planning Insights for Multi-Generational Family Businesses
In this week’s post, we take a look at the year that was in middle market M&A and offer a few thoughts regarding the potential for elevated deal activity in 2024. Despite depressed levels of deal activity in the middle market in 2023, there are reasons to be optimistic for increased levels of dealmaking in 2024. We’ll cover that and more in this week’s post.
In 2023, family businesses experienced varying degrees of success, prompting a focus on key strategies for 2024. These strategies include assessing the economic outlook, understanding customer needs, maintaining and growing profit margins, revising M&A strategies, and adapting to emerging trends like generative artificial intelligence. Directors are encouraged to proactively address these areas to ensure 2024 is a successful year for their family businesses.
This week’s blog centers around the challenges of asset allocation and investment decisions for family businesses, touching upon the importance of understanding a family’s appetite for risk and growth. We explore how the meaning assigned to the family business influences investment choices options and the necessity of balancing risk and expected returns. While there may not be a perfect answer for deciding how to invest, reevaluating what your family business needs and what it means to you will help you decide more wisely.
The Inflation Reduction Act allocates an $80 billion budget increase for the IRS, significantly boosting enforcement capabilities, particularly targeting complex tax filings and high-dollar noncompliance. Recent data indicate a stable trend in gift and estate tax audits, but the increased focus on wealthier individuals hints at a potential shift, urging family businesses and estate planners to brace for more scrutiny. As the landscape evolves, selecting a seasoned business appraiser becomes crucial for family businesses, underscoring the importance of expertise, early involvement in tax planning, and high expectations for appraisal accuracy and thoroughness.
Revenue growth and profitability are critical measures for the health of any family business, but by themselves, they tell only half of the story. As a family business director, you need the whole story. We’re not aware if Paul Harvey was a financial analyst, but if he were, we suspect his favorite performance metric would have been return on invested capital (ROIC), because it tells you the Rest of the Story.
There is an urgency to consider a range of estate tax strategy options in order to maximize gifting family wealth rather than family drama. The options range from straightforward gifts to heirs, accelerated gifting, use of irrevocable trusts, and other estate freeze tactics to lock in assets at current value and transfer future appreciation to heirs without triggering additional taxes. Why? The current basic exclusion amount ($12.92 million per individual) is due to sunset to its pre-TCJA level of $5 million, as adjusted for inflation, at the end of 2025. Tax planners expect a spike in estate planning transactions between now and then. Don’t be caught unprepared. Read more in this week’s post.
Private equity and institutional investors have been increasingly targeting family-owned businesses for potential acquisition. Recent industry data shows that smaller deals account for over 61% of all private equity transactions in the first quarter of 2023, and founder-owned business purchases, especially those valued under $100 million, are rising. In this week’s post, we look at some of the pros and cons of private equity investment in your family business.
Everyone agrees that communication promotes positive shareholder engagement, but what does it look like to communicate financial results effectively? In this week’s blog we introduce a whitepaper that offers practical suggestions for presenting key financial data in ways that family shareholders find useful.
The contrasting fates of shoe brands Hoka and Allbirds in recent years have provided a couple important lessons for family business directors. As part of its growth strategy, Hoka harnessed the value of scarcity. Allbirds, on the other hand, stumbled by losing sight of its core customer in the race to pursue continued topline growth. In this post, we review these contrasting narratives to help family business directors evaluate their own growth strategies.
As the U.S. enters another earnings season with anticipated profit drops, family businesses are encouraged to leverage these reporting periods for enhanced internal communication and strategic planning. Unlike public companies focusing on quarterly results, family businesses prioritize long-term decision making, but can still improve shareholder relations by consistent, contextual, and future-oriented reporting. Family businesses should identify if they are in a “planting” or “harvesting” phase, as it may significantly influence their growth strategy and investment decisions.
Warren Buffett is regarded as one of the world’s preeminent investors and most shrewd businessmen. Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger recently drew thousands to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Omaha. Buffett’s 2022 shareholder letter analyzes the company’s strategy, performance, and vision for the company going forward. This year’s letter provides several lessons for investors and family businesses alike.
In “The Psychology of Money,” Morgan Housel challenges the conventional view of financial decisions being purely data-driven. He emphasizes the role of luck, risk, and adaptability in financial outcomes. His lessons include the importance of recognizing risk and luck rather than skill, focusing on broader patterns rather than individual cases, and maintaining adaptability in long-term financial planning. This analysis provides a fresh perspective on managing family businesses and reshaping financial decision-making.
Bernard Arnault, founder of LVMH and the world’s wealthiest person, is meticulously planning the future of his luxury empire. Through a blend of creativity and pragmatism, Arnault has built LVMH into a global powerhouse while maintaining its status as a family business. Learn how the “Wolf in Cashmere” has prepared his children for leadership roles, and the Arnault family’s approach to long-term planning, stewardship, and collaboration.
Looking to unlock the secrets of corporate finance in just 5 minutes? This concise and engaging video will demystify the world of finance, providing you with an essential understanding of key concepts and strategies. Perfect for aspiring business leaders, entrepreneurs, or anyone looking to expand their knowledge, this video will give you the background you need to understand financial business decisions made by your company’s board and directors.
A recent Barron’s article on the link between Elon Musk, corn, and John Deere piqued our interest. Enduring almost 200 years as a company compelled us to dig a little more. The present firm, Deere & Company (NYSE: DE), was incorporated in 1958. The company had five generations of Deere family leadership until the early 1980s when non-family members took the driver’s, or tractor’s, seat. The road from steel plows to $500,000+, 60,000-pound behemoths had its share of droughts and plentiful harvests. But what can family businesses take away from this American icon? We see two lessons: be open to seeking non-family members to run your business, and don’t be afraid to be a fast follower.
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank will be talked about for years. What really happened? What caused SVB to fail? Was it just the long-term Treasury securities that everyone has talked about? Well, no. SVB was on a self-imposed path to destruction that had been waiting for an adverse change in the economy or a rising interest rate environment to kick it into oblivion.
There are, indeed, lessons for family business directors from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. In this week’s post, we discuss four.
In this week’s post, we attempt to divert your attention from interest rates and banking crises by looking at recent private company transaction multiples and some implications of these measures. As detailed in the latest edition of “Mercer Capital’s Middle Market Transaction Update,” transaction activity, both in terms of deal values and volume, ended 2022 with a thud, as expected. Multiples on deals across all size tranches in the middle market (which we define as deals with total enterprise value between $10 million and $250 million) fell to close the year—implying a broad decline in private company valuations in that time. However, asset prices across most classes were susceptible to these declines, creating opportunities for prudent family business managers and directors to evaluate potential transactions in a “down” market. Family business owners should not bury their heads in the sand regarding the current environment–one of the most important facets of a successful transaction is that sellers have reasonable and informed expectations of what their business may command in the market. These reasonable and informed expectations are difficult to develop without a solid understanding of current market conditions for privately held businesses.
On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”) as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. The main purpose of the Corporate Transparency Act is to protect the United States financial system from being used for money laundering and other illicit activities. Effective January 1, 2024, the CTA requires a range of different entities to file a report with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”). The CTA regulations are written so broadly that nearly every family business in the U.S. will be swept under this new law.
So, what does that mean for business owners? In this week’s post, we answer the main questions stemming from the Final Reporting Rule of the Corporate Transparency Act that will most likely affect you and your family business.
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) imploded last week in a “gradually, then suddenly”’ fashion. Regulators stepped in quickly and aggressively, promising to back up deposits at the bank of the VC world and stave off a contagion of fear at other banks. And while the body was still warm, politicians stepped in and dusted off their 2008 talking point notes.
This post from Family Business Director aims to highlight three relevant family business lessons from the failure of SVB: diversification, succession planning, and keeping a long-term focus.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had both professional and personal conversations with family business owners who utilized a business transaction to maximize their charitable giving and minimize their tax burden. While taxes are not generally the primary driver in making large gifts to charity, a little foresight and planning can create flexibility in your giving, yield more bang for your buck, and result in fewer taxes owed to Uncle Sam. In this week’s post, we discuss the tax strategy that charitable family business owners should keep in mind when selling their business.
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the trend of newly-public companies reverting back to private ownership after a very short time in public hands. Among the boomerang IPOs mentioned in the article was that of backyard grill maker Weber. With the advent of grilling season, we were curious about Weber’s experience in the public markets and any lessons that family business directors might be able to draw from the tale. Among the lessons available for family business directors from the tale, we will focus on two for this post.
In this week’s Family Business Director post, we look at a few key macroeconomic trends that developed in the fourth quarter of 2022 and early 2023 and their impact on family businesses. In the final quarter of 2022, the effects of the Fed’s rate hiking campaign began to permeate throughout the economy, particularly in inflation readings. Still, GDP outpaced consensus estimates, and U.S. equity markets reacted positively to signs of slowing inflation in October and November. The Fed continued to raise the benchmark rate with a 75-basis point increase in November and a 50-basis point increase in December. This post provides a brief look at these trends.
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), released fourth-quarter earnings and full-year 2022 results earlier this month. The stock is currently trading at its highest level in the last six months, albeit still at relatively low implied valuation multiples. This comes after a notably tough year for Facebook, as its stock fell 64% last year due to heightened competition from TikTok and a slump in the digital ad market.
So, what changed? The two main changes for this significant increase are cost cuts and the announcement of a $40 billion increase in their share repurchase authorization. While Meta previously taught us about long-term planning and plant/harvest decisions, Facebook’s belt-tightening and share repurchase plan bring up another few lessons on forecasting and share repurchasing, which we revisit in this blog.
Family business directors and shareholders do not need to be valuation experts. However, there are six basic valuation principles that can help directors and shareholders make better long-term financial decisions for their family businesses. In this video, we identify and explain these six principles, which are great additions to your family business toolbox.
