Buying a business
Diligence that rebuilds the earnings from source, prices every gap, and tells you plainly when to walk.
Buying with usAcquisitions & Advisory
Deals turn on what is not in the room.
Birdie Capital advises buyers and sellers of owner-operated Canadian businesses. We test every number against evidence the seller did not prepare, and we tell you what a deal is worth before you commit to it.
Selling a business
Find what a buyer will find, while it is still cheap and private to fix.
Preparing to sellFor advisory firms
Finished transaction work, in your house format, for your professionals to review and sign.
Working with firmsA completed engagement
236 files, and the deal turned on four that were not there.
The seller's advisors had already run a full financial and legal review. The data room was large, audited and clean. We read all of it. The seller's claimed earnings included a one-time owner bonus, booked in the sale year, worth 22.8% of the figure. Sustainable earnings came in about 19% below the asking basis. Four standard documents were missing, and each one on its own blocked a binding offer. None was provided, and our client walked away.
236
files read, every one22.8%
of claimed EBITDA was a one-time bonus~19%
sustainable earnings below the asking basis4
missing items, each one blocking an offerDe-identified. Figures are shown as a share of the seller's own claimed earnings.
What we hold ourselves to
Every figure traces to a source.
We re-derive every figure instead of just citing it. If nobody can reproduce a number, it does not go in.
Seller material can only confirm itself.
We test earnings against bank records, deposits and third-party documents the seller did not prepare.
Every gap has a price.
Each finding is a fix, a disclosure, a discount or a reason not to close. None of them is a to-do list.
We publish our own weak points.
Estimates are labelled as estimates, and the weakest case stays in the table.
A negative search result is not proof. An empty result usually means the extraction is wrong, not that the thing is absent. Check a second way.
Looking at a deal, or thinking about a sale?
Start with one conversation. We will tell you what we would look at first.