Sell-side advisory · Portugal & Spain
You will sell your company once.
Your buyer has done it twenty times. They know what a tired seller looks like, what an unprepared data room means, and exactly what both are worth to them. Our job is to remove that asymmetry — and to hold the process together from first approach to signing, without your staff, customers or bank finding out before you decide they should.
The readiness problem
Buyers price what they can verify — and discount what they cannot.
Owners begin a sale by asking what the business is worth. Buyers begin by testing whether the earnings, the customers, the management and the growth story are credible and transferable. The gap between those two views sets the price, the terms, the timing and the certainty.
What a buyer will test
- The quality, normalisation and sustainability of EBITDA.
- Customer, supplier and key-person concentration.
- The depth of the management team and how much still depends on you.
- The quality of reporting, contracts, governance and data.
- The credibility of the growth plan and what it will cost to fund.
- Whether the process is competitive, controlled and properly prepared.
Where sales in this market go wrong
- The firm that would run your process properly will not take a mandate this size. The firm that will often staffs it with juniors.
- One unsolicited approach becomes the entire process — no benchmark, no tension, no alternative.
- Accounts optimised for tax efficiency read as risk in diligence, and get repriced accordingly.
- A confidentiality leak costs customers, key staff and negotiating position — usually in that order.
- International buyers ask for information in a format most Iberian SMEs have never been asked to produce.
We help you see those questions early — while you still have choices about the answers.
Our Services
Start where you actually are.
Most owners are not ready to appoint an advisor on the day they first think about selling. These three engagements are designed to be entered in sequence — or separately. Each one is useful on its own.
01 · Fixed fee
Exit Readiness Review
Price is set long before a process starts. A short, structured review of the business through a buyer’s eyes: what they will pay for, what they will discount, and what you can still fix. Delivered in weeks, with no obligation to run a process with us.
Best for
Owners one to three years from a sale, or who want an independent view before committing to anything.
What you receive
- An indicative valuation range, and the multiple drivers behind it.
- A buyer-perspective risk review — customer concentration, owner dependency, margin visibility, revenue recognition, retention of key technical staff.
- A review of reporting quality, EBITDA normalisation questions and information gaps.
- A prioritised value-gap list with an eighteen-month action plan.
- A view on the likely acquirer types, and what motivates each of them.
- A readout with Kelvin to discuss timing, options and the sensible next step.
Know what strengthens the story, what weakens it, and what can still be changed.
Request an Exit Readiness Review02 · Retained programme
Value-Creation Partnership
For owners with time to prepare, we convert the review’s findings into a focused, milestone-based programme. The objective is the quality, clarity and transferability of the business — the conditions that produce better options later.
Best for
Owners with twelve months or more before they want to go to market.
Typical workstreams
- Management reporting and transaction-ready financial information.
- Earnings quality, recurring revenue, margins and concentration priorities.
- Reducing owner dependence and clarifying management accountability.
- Commercial focus, the growth narrative, and what funding it requires.
- Governance, documentation and data-room preparation.
- Coordination with your legal, tax, accounting and operational specialists.
Build value. Create options. Choose the timing from a stronger position.
Discuss a value-creation programme03 · Full mandate
Sell-Side Advisory
We prepare and run the full process: clear positioning, the right buyer access, disciplined process management, and the person who won the mandate present at every decision that moves the price.
Best for
Owner-managed businesses, €5M–€50M enterprise value. Full exit, partial exit or succession.
What we manage
- Transaction objectives, readiness and the design of the process itself.
- Equity story, information memorandum, financial model and data room.
- Strategic and financial buyer mapping across Iberia and Northern Europe.
- Confidential outreach, qualification and control of the process.
- Indicative offers, management meetings and negotiation support.
- Diligence coordination, SPA negotiation alongside your lawyers, and closing.
A prepared process gives the owner more control over price, terms, timing and the choice of partner.
Discuss a sale mandateThe process
From first decision to closing.
Every engagement starts with a conversation that costs nothing and commits you to nothing. What follows is the same sequence every time. The judgement inside it is what changes.
Assessment
What the business is worth today, what it would be worth prepared, and whether this is the right moment. Confidential, and yours to keep either way.
Preparation
Numbers, contracts, customer concentration and management structure put into a state that survives diligence. Most of the value is won or lost here.
Positioning
Information memorandum, financial model and equity story built for the specific buyers who should want this business most — not for a mailing list.
Process
A curated approach to a shortlist of strategic and financial buyers, run to create genuine competitive tension rather than the appearance of it.
Negotiation
Offer comparison, structure, and the diligence questions that quietly change the price — managed alongside your lawyer and tax advisor.
Signing and after
SPA negotiation through to signature, and the handover terms that decide what the business feels like on the Monday after.
Non-negotiables
What the process has to protect.
Price is the number everyone remembers. It is not the only thing a sale can cost you.
Value
A credible story, the buyers who should want it most, and enough tension between them that the price is tested rather than accepted.
Confidentiality
Staged disclosure and hard qualification before anything sensitive moves. Your staff, customers and bank find out when you decide, not before.
Choice
More than one real option on the table, so that price, terms and strategic fit are all tested before you choose.
Continuity
Respect for the management, the employees and the customers — and for whatever you want to be true about the company after you leave it.
Licences, rotas, key staff, the relationships families trust. In regulated businesses diligence goes deeper — and most of the delays it causes are avoidable.
Questions owners ask
Before the first conversation.
How do I know if my business is ready to sell?
You do not need to decide before the first conversation. The Exit Readiness Review exists to identify what a buyer will test, what can still be improved, and whether the timing supports a process at all. Plenty of reviews end with the honest answer that waiting eighteen months is worth more than selling now.
Will you value my business?
A sell-side engagement includes an indicative valuation range and transaction scenarios, based on the information available and relevant market evidence. It is not a guarantee of price, and a formal valuation for tax or legal purposes needs a separate specialist.
How is confidentiality protected?
Buyers are qualified before anything sensitive is shared. Disclosure is staged, supported by confidentiality agreements, and adapted to the specific risks of your process — a competitor in your own city is handled very differently from a fund in Amsterdam.
How long does a sale take?
A prepared lower-middle-market process commonly runs six to nine months from launch to closing, and proper preparation before that can take as long again. We agree the expected phases and decision points before anything starts, so the timeline is a plan rather than a hope.
What size of company do you work with?
Owner-managed businesses with roughly €5M–€50M enterprise value, in Portugal and Spain. What matters more than the number is whether we can genuinely improve the outcome. If we cannot, we will say so and tell you who else to speak to.
How are fees structured?
Sell-side mandates normally combine a retainer with a success fee, scoped around complexity, expected workload and transaction economics. The Exit Readiness Review is a fixed fee. Terms are agreed in writing before any work begins.
A stronger exit begins with a clearer view.
If a sale may be relevant now, or in the next three years, the useful first step is the same: get clear on the objective, the timing and the real constraints. That is exactly what we do in an introductory call.
Arrange a confidential conversationThirty minutes with Kelvin Klatt. No cost, no obligation.