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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Whether you are taking a Gold Coast business to market or weighing up an acquisition, the price has to rest on evidence the other side's advisers cannot pick apart. We build that figure and stand behind it.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
A Gold Coast sale or purchase valuation fixes three things: the earnings a new owner can keep once owner and related-party costs are adjusted, a multiple backed by comparable transactions, and the deal terms that shift value, such as working capital, net debt, earn-outs and scrip. Vendors use it to set a range; buyers use it to set a ceiling.
Private deals on the Gold Coast usually come down to the same two questions: what the business earns once the owner's personal arrangements are stripped out, and what multiple a buyer should pay for those earnings. Take a Molendinar joinery business offered to a trade competitor. The vendor's accountant adds back the owner's ute, the family wages and a one-off legal bill; the buyer's adviser accepts some of those and rejects the rest. The side with the better-documented workings usually wins the point, and the money at stake is far larger than the fee for the analysis.
Seasonality makes this harder here than in most markets. A Surfers Paradise or Broadbeach hospitality venue, a short-stay operator in Main Beach or a tour business that relies on visitors arriving through Gold Coast Airport at Bilinga can post a very different year depending on school holidays, major events and interstate travel. A buyer will ask whether the last twelve months were typical, and the vendor needs the answer ready. A Robina allied health clinic with a broad referral base and a Burleigh Heads cafe run by its owner will not command the same multiple, and the report explains why in writing.
The people who approve the deal need a record as well. Directors signing off a purchase or a sale owe a duty of care and diligence under the Corporations Act 2001, trustees answer to their beneficiaries, and minority holders may later want to know how the price was reached. A signed opinion from a certified valuer whose fee does not depend on completion is the usual way to show the duty was taken seriously, and a lender funding the purchase will normally ask for it early.
We act for vendors, buyers and boards from Coolangatta to Coomera and up into the hinterland: builders and trades working through the residential construction cycle and the 2032 Games works, boat builders and marine suppliers in the Coomera marine precinct, distributors in Yatala and Arundel, health and education businesses around the Parklands precinct, and professional firms in Southport and Bundall. Our fee does not change with the outcome of the deal, and if the evidence does not support the asking price, the report says so.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Negotiations tend to fixate on the headline multiple. Much of the value in a private deal is in fact settled in less visible places: the earnings figure the multiple is applied to, the mechanism that fixes the price at completion, and any consideration that is deferred or paid in shares. Every engagement tests all four.
Owner and family pay reset to the cost of filling those roles, rent to a related property trust brought to market, private spending removed, and one-off items taken out whichever way they cut. Vendors notice unusual costs quickly and unusual income slowly. Each dollar adjusted here flows straight into the price through the multiple.
Built from named Australian private deals and listed comparables, then adjusted for size, growth, customer concentration, the depth of management beneath the owner and the proportion of revenue that recurs or is contracted. A multiple based on what people say the market pays will not survive a request for its source.
Under a locked box, the price is fixed off an earlier balance sheet and trading after that date belongs to the buyer. Under completion accounts, the price is adjusted for the net debt and working capital actually present on the day. The working capital target is the figure most often neglected, and it should come from monthly balances over a full trading cycle, not one month end.
A payment tied to future results is worth its discounted, probability-weighted outcome rather than the cap written into the contract, and the metric needs protecting from how the new owner runs the business. Shares in the buyer are valued as the vendor will hold them: typically a minority parcel, often escrowed, seldom easy to sell and not necessarily worth the issue price.
For a vendor, the work happens before the business is listed: a supported range, the adjustments behind it and the ones a buyer will probably dispute, each answered in advance. For a buyer, the valuation runs alongside financial due diligence but answers a different question. Diligence confirms what the historic figures were; the valuation asks what they are worth and whether the earnings will hold once the vendor leaves.
A management buy-out, an asset transfer between related companies or buying out a founder who is also a director may prompt the board to seek an independent view of whether the terms are fair to the company. That opinion is different from the expert report the Corporations Act 2001 requires for takeovers, schemes of arrangement and certain member approvals, which is licensed work. Have your lawyers settle the statutory position before commissioning either.
In a private sale the standard of value is market value: the price at which a willing buyer and a willing seller, both informed, neither under pressure and dealing at arm's length, would transact. Extra value that only one buyer could capture by folding the business into its own, for example a Helensvale plumbing group taking over a competitor's maintenance contracts and vans, is strategic value. We show it separately so the vendor knows what is realistically on the table and the buyer knows how much of its own upside it would be paying away.
The income approach is normally the lead method. For an established business, capitalising maintainable earnings reflects the way buyers reason: an earnings base after adjustments and a multiple or capitalisation rate that prices the risk of those earnings continuing under new ownership. When earnings are moving quickly, the business needs heavy capital spending or there is a clear forecast period, such as a Coomera boat builder with a contracted build schedule, a discounted cash flow fits better. Vendor forecasts are tested against history, capacity and the capital required before we place weight on them.
The market approach checks the result, and for businesses that change hands often on the Gold Coast, such as cafes, hair and beauty salons, pharmacies and physiotherapy practices, it can provide the primary evidence. Australian transaction data carries the most weight and is the hardest to find, since private deal terms are seldom published and quoted multiples often omit the earn-out and the working capital adjustment. The asset approach sets the floor, and it comes forward where the company holds surplus assets, like the freehold of a factory unit in the Burleigh industrial estate, or runs divisions that would fetch more sold separately.
We see these patterns most often when a deal reaches us after a price is already out, heads of agreement are signed or the diligence has finished.
The depth of report depends on who will read it and how closely they will check it. An owner deciding whether to answer an unexpected approach, or a buyer screening a target before spending on diligence, needs a sound range for internal use. When the figure will be shown to the other side, a bank, a board or a trustee, one of the certified reports is the right fit.
Every report opens with why the valuation was prepared, the standard and premise of value, the valuation date and the material relied on. Each normalisation adjustment appears on its own line with its reason. Multiples and discount rates are tied to named sources, each relevant approach is worked through, and the results are brought together into a range with the weighting explained plainly. Where a locked box, an earn-out or scrip changes what the vendor really receives, each piece is valued on its own so the full bargain is visible and not just the headline.
The report is signed by a certified valuer who will walk your advisers through it, prepare you for the negotiation and defend the conclusion when the other side's adviser pushes back. Should a completion accounts or warranty dispute later reach the Supreme Court of Queensland, or the District Court of Queensland sitting at the Southport courthouse, the same reasoning has to work as expert evidence, so it is written to that standard from day one. The valuation supports the transaction without running it: your broker or corporate adviser leads the sale, and we work with them, your lawyer and your tax adviser.
Which single assumption in this valuation would the other side attack first, and how do we answer it? If your adviser has no reply, you are holding a number, not a negotiating position.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.