Wadebridge editorial desk
Business valuation methods, written in plain English
Climebit is a UK blog about how a business is actually valued: discounted cash flow, market comparables, precedent transactions, and the asset base. Four languages for one question, and the question is usually being asked in a hurry.
Four methods, one decision
A number without a method is a mood. These essays show the arithmetic, the UK context, and the places each method quietly fails.
12 March 2026
Discounted cash flow
Forecast free cash flow, discount it at a rate you can defend, and refuse to let the terminal value do all the talking. A full worked build for a fictional Cornish fabricator.
Read the essay
4 June 2026
Market comparables
EV/EBITDA is the sentence people finish for you in a meeting. This essay shows how a peer set is built, and why a flat private-company discount is a confession.
19 August 2026
Precedent transactions
A deal multiple is the price of control, often with the buyer’s synergies still inside it. Averaging a strategic sale with a distressed one is how ranges become fiction.
9 October 2026
Asset-based valuation
When earnings are thin, disputed, or about to stop, the balance sheet becomes the argument. Book value, fair value, and break-up value are three different sentences. We write all three against FRS 102 habits UK SMEs actually keep.
How to choose, before you calculate
The method follows the decision. A retirement, a bank refinance, a shareholder dispute and a trade sale do not deserve the same model just because they share a spreadsheet.
If you cannot say what the number is for, you are not ready to argue about the discount rate.
Name the decision
Succession inside a family, a buy-out of a minority holder, security for a lender, or a price in a sale process. Each one changes whether you are valuing a going concern, a controlling stake, or the assets if the trade stops.
Use two methods
A single method hides its own bias. Climebit’s worked cases put cash flow beside a multiple and an asset floor, then explain the gap instead of averaging it into false precision.
Show the bridge
Enterprise value is not what a shareholder receives. Debt, surplus cash, a capex overhang and an earn-out change the cheque. The essays keep that bridge visible in pounds, not in a footnote.
From the desk
Written for UK owners who have been handed a multiple and told it is a valuation
Most of the letters we answer from Wadebridge start the same way. Someone has said “businesses like yours go for six times”. Six times what, on whose figures, for whose benefit, and with whose debt left behind, is the rest of the work.
The worked cases follow one engineering firm through three methods, then a seasonal guest-house business where the forecast is mostly weather, then a clinic partnership where the buyer’s synergies are trying to sneak into the seller’s value.
Read the worked casesBring the question, not just the spreadsheet
The desk reads notes from owners, finance managers, journalists and students. We do not issue formal opinions and we do not take instructions to “certify” a number. If a method essay is missing a step, write and say so.
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